Are you a Golf aficionado quarantined at home? The global pandemic has been a significant off-putting phenomenon for all of us, especially for golf enthusiasts who don’t have easy access to any golf course and are stuck at home.
In times like these, there is a very trusted friend you can rely on, which you can use for your own house, and you can play or train under any weather condition and at any time of the day.
You can make the most out of all the extra time on your hands with the advent of a golf simulator projector, an easily accessible indoor apparatus. Here’s how you can pump up your A-game in an outdoor sport like golf, which needs constant training and perseverance.
How was This List Made
Projectors come in assorted sizes and are used for different applications. Although there are other projectors available for home use, we have looked for the best projectors for golf simulators in this piece. Golf Simulators do not come cheap; we kept that fact in mind as well. Selecting the best is made even harder by the number of options out there, so we have put together this comparative guide on all the choices you can look into when you’re trying to create your affordable golf simulator at home.
Best Projector for Golf Simulator
The LG HF65LA Ultra Short Throw projects vivid imagery within an exceptionally short distance of the projection surface. By just setting it 5 inches away, you get 60 inches of vivid and bright view and can go farther to get images up to 100 inches.
The HF65LA provides a cinematic viewing experience with up to a 100- inch picture in clear Full HD 1080p picture quality, which is the closest you can get to having a movie theater at home.
It’s like playing golf at the exact scenic places you wished for. For ideal projection image alignment, the HF65LA comes with a 4-corner keystone technology, allowing every corner of the image to adjust. The LED light source displays natural and vibrant colors and lasts up to an estimated 30,000 hours.
The HF65LA sets up quickly. You just need to set it on a flat surface a few inches from the wall without any mounting brackets required. Then, connect it to your simulator source and home audio, adjust the lights, and start hitting eagles, albatrosses, and birdies. Well, that’s easy, right?
The Wi-Fi enables you to Wirelessly screen-share content to the HF65LA using an Android or Windows smartphone or a tablet to watch your favorite shows. You can quickly connect it to your game console, BluRay player, laptop, or other devices using an HDMI cable.
The HF65LA has a Bluetooth compatible sound system to pair big sound to the significant viewing experience, including home audio, headphones, or portable speakers to stream sound from the projector wirelessly.
Pros
- Ultra Short Throw Projection
- Big Vivid Picture
- LED Illumination
- Easy Setup
- Perfect Image Alignment
- Wireless and HDMI Connectivity
- Bluetooth Sound Out
Cons
- No dust cover for the lens
Our Verdict
Beware! If you buy this, the wow factor is real. Playing golf projected on the width of your entire wall is awe-inspiring and will impress everyone who is a golf enthusiast. You friends would love to ask you for one on one.
Yes, this thing is enormous, and the footprint is tiny. It looks smaller than the cable box, and the white color would do nicely mounted on a wall. The picture has different modes: sports, cinema, etcetera, and the Wii-like remote is incredible.
With BenQ TH671ST, you get an immersive gaming experience with a larger-than-life screen. In short, a home entertainment projector designed to fill your vision for video games.
The TH671ST expands your gaming world to make you feel like you’re really at the golf course. With its high resolution, LumiExpert brightness, low input lag, powerful 5W stereo speaker, and above all, an easy setup, it is a treat to the senses.
The projectors provide heart-pounding game action to your living room with microsecond DMD response time and 16.67ms low input lag for ultra-smooth gaming experiences without unwanted motion blur and image lag.
BenQ LumiExpert automatically adjusts balanced visual brightness by actively detecting ambient light conditions in your viewing environment and for maximum comfort. The TH671ST provides total video enjoyment with epic sound quality. Improved with custom music, Sports, Cinema, and Game modes, its built-in powerful 5W speaker provides exquisitely immersive AV experiences.
It is the perfect projector for your living room, allowing you to play games and watch sports and movies with the family. Three thousand lumens of high brightness let you watch in relatively bright settings or even with lights on. The TH671ST requires as little as 1.5m to project stunning 100″ pictures, which maximizes thrills in minimal space.
Keystone correction makes it easier to project ideally aligned images from a variety of locations, which counters the trapezoid effect when the projector must be placed off-center. The Vertical keystone is especially handy in adjusting the image to deliver a professionally squared picture.
Pros
- Ultra-Fast Response for Smooth Gaming
- Brilliant Audiovisual Quality
- Ambient Lighting
- Spectacular Full HD 1080p Visual Performance
- Superior Short Throw for Any Space
- Vertical Keystone Correction
- One-Stop Wireless Home Entertainment
- Hassle-free installation
Cons
- The Colour temperature is hot.
Our Verdict
We have selected this projector after researching various perspectives. This projector produces a beautiful image with great colors. The focus ring is a little finicky; lettering will be ideally in focus. The simulated 3-D environment will definitely enrich your golfing experience.
The Epson EX3260 portable projector lets you play all the golf you want with ease and confidence. The projector has more accurate, vivid colors, even in well-lit rooms 3,300 lumens of equal colors and white brightness adjusts vertically and horizontally to achieve a perfectly rectangular image quickly.
It comes with SVGA resolution, which is ideal for projecting everyday presentations and graphics suitably. Fast and easy setup with Epson enables it to be up and operating in no time with easy image adjustments and convenient controls.
With a High Color Brightness and wide range of Color Gamut, it works with the latest laptops and media players. The EX3260 supports HDMI, the standard in connectivity, includes all-digital, HDMI audio, and video connection for HD quality with just one cable perfect for your gaming consoles and golf simulator.
It also provides you with the portability you need for changing spots to play in different areas in your home included. Additionally, its USB Plug ‘n Play USB feature enables you to tether the project content from a PC or Mac instantly.
They even provide convenient and reasonable recycling options available on their official site. The product is part of SmartWay, an innovative partnership of the US Environmental Protection Agency that improves fuel efficiency, reduces greenhouse gas and other air pollutants.
Pros
- Bright and Colorful
- Manual Keystone Correction
- HDMI Connectivity
- Remarkable color accuracy
- RoHS compliant
- Eco Features
Cons
- Onboard speakers aren’t loud enough.
Our Verdict
This very reasonably priced projector is terrific! Good quality projection and beautiful and bright excellent picture quality. Even the cooling fan isn’t too loud. It has an onboard speaker, but it’s hardly powerful enough to use for a party. We strongly recommend possessing better speakers for a better simulator experience.
With the advent of the Optoma GT1080HDR High Definition gaming projector in the market, you can experience games and movies in an unforeseen manner. This projector is competent in reproducing the international HDTV standard (Rec.709 gamut) to guarantee accurate reproduction of cinematic color exactly as of your eyes.
The Optoma GT1080HDR comes with stunning color accuracy and a 50,000:1 contrast ratio for maximum image detail and improved visibility, which delivers super-fast bright 3800-lumen HD games to the screen.
The dark picture remains detailed with deep blacks, and exceptional light and shade detail and bright scenes appear crisp and clear due to the Dynamic Black Technology feature. It provides more depth to your image by smoothly adjusting the lamp output to create a stunning high contrast ratio.
This projector is designed for golf enthusiasts like you, allowing you to acquire and assess information quickly and more accurately to defeat your opponents by formulating faster.
It is equipped with all-digital connectivity you need for today’s gaming gear; the Optoma GT1080 keeps you on top with two HDMI ports.
The MHL connectivity transforms your projector into a smart display by connecting your smartphone or tablet. With its razor-sharp short-throw lens, it delivers larger-than-life images even in space-constrained environments. Furthermore, a VGA 3D sync port, powerful 10-Watt audio, 12V output, whisper-quiet operation, and up to 15000-hour long lamp life make sure that you experience worry-free gaming.
Pros
- 4K UHD and HDR
- Dynamic Black Technology
- Long Lamp Life
- Integrated Speaker
- Enhanced Gaming Mode
Cons
- The focal distance of the lens is permanent.
Our Verdict
Bright! Sharp! SUPER short-throw! Great price for a high-quality piece of equipment. We did a lot of looking around and comparing for specifications before deciding on this projector.
With 16ms of latency, this isn’t as fast as a gaming monitor but one of the fastest projectors/tv setups for gaming. Color and brightness are not compromised, ensuring a rapid response mode for the projector.
The ViewSonic PX706HD offers you with a theater-like experience with supersized movies and immersive gaming experience in full HD on a 300-inch screen. It is equipped with cinematic colors that depict subtle in-game details for easily distinguishing different in-game elements on your screen.
The exclusive color technology offers a wide color gamut for beautiful image production in nearly any environment.
The PX706HD projector can be placed a few inches away from a wall or screen to give you a large image with a short-throw lens. Using the projector in smaller spaces while projecting 100-inch pictures at a distance of merely 1.5 meters is made possible by the projector’s short-throw projection lens.
At the same time, the Zoom feature allows you to adjust images for larger spaces. Also, 3X Faster Input allows the in-game commands to immediately flash on-screen, giving you a competitive edge when gaming and taking the entire experience higher.
Finally, an audio mode explicitly fine-tuned for simulators and 3D gaming. SonicMode allows you to access enticing audio for gaming, which helps with picking up directional sounds in the distance and hearing in-game dialogue.
The 240W lamp Long has a long lifespan as the eco mode enables the light to shine bright for up to straight 15,000 hours. When it does not detect a signal, the projector automatically turns off to conserve energy and lamp life.
Its Flexible connectivity supports most media players, gaming consoles, PCs, Macs, and mobile devices with input options such as HDMI, USB Type-C, and more. You can connect your PS4, Xbox, or PC to PX706HD via one of the dual HDMI inputs for a big-screen gaming experience.
PX706HD can project 3D content directly from 3D Blu-ray players and HDMI-enabled devices such as laptops, tablets, and media players via HDMI connection. Using ViewSonic projection distance calculator, it automatically finds the best projector installation distance for your environment.
Pros
- Immersive 3D Viewing
- Extended Lifespan
- Reduced Energy Consumption
- Projection Distance Calculator
- Eco and Super Eco mode
Cons
- It only supports USB Type-C connectivity.
Our Verdict
The ViewSonic PX706HD is designed with more focus on video gaming first than home theater. The most apparent gaming-related feature is the 16.4 ms input lag, which is as fast as it gets on projectors and is ideal for serious gamers. It also has much better than typical onboard audio, which makes it particularly suitable as a portable gaming projector.
Buying guide: Best Projector for Golf Simulator
Apart from the regular necessities like quick response time and a high-quality picture, the perfect simulator projector has a few additional criteria to fill. For a brilliant gaming experience, here are a few pointers to check beforehand.
1. Lumens
You cannot play in the dark (for obvious reasons). But you can also not play properly if the lighting of your house makes the projector images go dull. This problem can be solved by getting a projector that has a higher lumens aspect. A simple rule you can go by is to choose 1000-1500 lumens for dark rooms, and 3000+ for bright ones.
2. Resolution
Resolution is among the first things you ask about in a projector. Now, most golf simulators support 1080p resolution, and it is the standard requirement for excellent golfing. So if it is 1080, you’re good to go.
3. Aspect Ratio
Aspect ratio is to resolution what Torrey Pines golf course is to Tiger Woods. Simply put, aspect ratio is the ratio between the height and width of the projection on the screen. Resolution is the number of pixels within an image. So, the higher the pixel count, the better the picture quality.
4. Throw Distance
Throw distance refers to the gap between the projector and the wall/screen where the picture forms. And while long throw projectors are fine for large rooms, you would do best with a short-throw projector for golfing. After all, you won’t like to see your own shadow swinging around in the picture, would you?
5. Throw Ratio
Throw ratio refers to the distance between the projector, the screen, and the actual width of the screen. For example, if your screen is 20 feet wide, and the projector is 10 feet away from your screen, the most favorable throw ratio would be 0.5:1.
6. HDMI Connectivity
HDMI Connectivity is a must-have for any golf simulator, so please bear that in mind as well.
Conclusion
We’re not in the mood to pick a winner today. But if we had to, it would be the ViewSonic PX706HD, for its overall gaming experience.
But mind you, both the BenQ TH671ST and Epson VS350 were close runners up.
Having a golf simulator projector at home is a great way to relax and work on your golfing technique. This is especially so when you find yourself unable to hit the greens. But you cannot pick up any projector and get on with it. So, we hope our list made it easier for you. Go hit the greens, Virtually!