There is a UHZ65 in the classifieds at $2,000 or nearest offer. Bought in 2022, roughly 3,000 light-source hours on it, and the seller notes it is rated for up to 20,000, originally sold around $5,000 and still goes for about $4,000 new. On paper that reads as fifteen percent used and a half price entry into a serious projector. The arithmetic deserves a second look before anyone gets the chequebook out.
Laser life ratings are normally quoted to the point where output has dropped by half, not to the point where the thing stops working. So 3,000 hours does not mean 3,000 hours of wear out of a 20,000 hour block sitting untouched. It means the unit is already somewhere down a dimming curve, and you are buying an image that keeps getting quietly darker across the years you own it. Whether that matters comes down entirely to screen size and how much light you had spare to begin with. On a 100 inch matte white in a properly blacked out room, plenty of headroom. Pushing 130 inches onto grey with ambient light in the room, much less comfortable.
The other side is what four years costs you. A 2022 projector is a 2022 feature set, and if you have a console you care about, that is the part to check hard before sending money. What you get back is chassis and optics that nothing new at $2,000 will match, plus no lamp to buy every couple of years, which is the running cost people forget when they compare against a cheaper lamp model.
For anyone who has bought a used laser projector: did you measure it against a fresh one, or just take the hour counter at face value?
Laser life ratings are normally quoted to the point where output has dropped by half, not to the point where the thing stops working. So 3,000 hours does not mean 3,000 hours of wear out of a 20,000 hour block sitting untouched. It means the unit is already somewhere down a dimming curve, and you are buying an image that keeps getting quietly darker across the years you own it. Whether that matters comes down entirely to screen size and how much light you had spare to begin with. On a 100 inch matte white in a properly blacked out room, plenty of headroom. Pushing 130 inches onto grey with ambient light in the room, much less comfortable.
The other side is what four years costs you. A 2022 projector is a 2022 feature set, and if you have a console you care about, that is the part to check hard before sending money. What you get back is chassis and optics that nothing new at $2,000 will match, plus no lamp to buy every couple of years, which is the running cost people forget when they compare against a cheaper lamp model.
For anyone who has bought a used laser projector: did you measure it against a fresh one, or just take the hour counter at face value?
