Voice-enabled digital assistants have charmed their way into many, many aspects of our daily lives. Our gadgets can now answer quick queries, set up and play a breakfast playlist and help automate home appliances. In fact, it's reckoned that smart device users notch up more than a billion voice searches a month. Optoma has added yet another device to the ever-increasing arsenal of chat-happy gizmos, today releasing the UHD51A 4K projector with Alexa built in.
First shown as a prototype in a private suite at CES 2018 back in January, the UHD51A 4K projector is the first home theater projector of its kind to come with Amazon's Alexa already cooked in. And thanks to a new SmartProjection for Smart Home skill, "she" can set the mood by controlling compatible smart speakers, lighting, screen and so on at the same time as setting off the projector, adjusting its volume and select its input source.
Optoma says that the UHD51A is built around the latest 0.47-inch Texas Instruments 4K UHD DLP chipset and is capable of throwing at least 140 inches of projected visuals rocking 8.3 million distinct pixels (it is actually capable of an image size of more than 300 diagonal inches).
It has a throw ratio of 1.21 to 1.59 , 1.3x optical zoom and 15 percent vertical lens shift. And ambient lighting shouldn't prove too much of an issue with 2,400 ANSI lumens, 500,000:1 contrast and HDR10 with Rec.2020/DCI-P3 color gamut support.
The smart projector also includes a built-in 4K/UHD HDR media player, runs an Android operating system, has two 5 W integrated speakers for standalone audio and sports two HDMI 2.0 inputs with HDCP 2.2 support to ensure compatibility with the latest UHD input sources. There's a USB port for Alexa Wi-Fi adapter, another for media playback and yet another for wireless screen mirroring.
The UHD51A projector is available now for US$1,699, representing "a lot more price-per-inch value than 4K TVs."
Source: Optoma