Planning a movie night in your backyard? Invite some friends, grab the popcorn, and fire up your favorite flick with one of these top-pick projectors. Here’s how to choose the right one.
Yearn to watch movies in the backyard—whether bundled up with the patio heater turned on, or enjoying balmy evening temps in spring or summer? It’s easier than you might think. Virtually any projector on the planet can turn an outside wall into a cinema, but it wasn’t long ago that almost none had all the right features to make it easy. Today, a growing number do.
We’ll take you through our favorite tested picks for outdoor projectors, followed by a detailed buying guide to what to look for. Most of these models fall in a category we call „room-to-room portables.“ But what moves conveniently to another room also moves conveniently to the backyard. In addition to being light enough to carry over short distances, room-to-room portables include robust audio designed to offer both high enough volume and quality so you won’t have to lug a separate sound system outside, too. They also typically have features like auto-focus to help you set up quickly, and most offer streaming, so you can skip attaching a video source, as long as you keep close enough to your house so you can connect to your network by Wi-Fi. There are even some designed particularly for outdoor use, complete with some level of water and drop resistance.
We’ve also thrown in a portable mini projector or two—defined in part by a smaller size and a more limited audio system. But keep in mind that you still have the option of using virtually any projector you like outdoors. Note also that the price range for these models runs starts at $299 list at this writing, but given the current inflationary pressures of our post-pandemic era, the entry cost could rise. If even $300 is more than you want to invest in a projector, take a look at our related story with tips for putting on a backyard movie night without breaking the bank.What Are the Kinds of Outdoor Projector?
First, a word about categories of projectors for outdoor use: A few of the models here are specifically „outdoorsy“, with some combination of water resistance, drop-proofing, and battery power. Others have none of those features. Most of the models in the second category are what we call „room-to-room portables.“ But what moves conveniently to another room also moves conveniently to the backyard. In addition to being light enough to carry over short distances, room-to-room portables feature robust audio designed to offer both high volume and quality, eliminating the need for a separate sound system. Most also have features like auto-focus to help you set up quickly, and they offer streaming, so you can skip the step of attaching a video source, as long as you stay close enough to your house to connect to your network via Wi-Fi.
We’ve also included portable mini projectors—defined in part by their smaller sizes and more limited audio systems compared with room-to-room portables. But keep in mind that you still have the option of using virtually any projector you like outdoors, as long as you can run a power cable to it. Note also that the street prices for these models (with widely available discounts) start at around $300 at the time of writing, but street pricing changes frequently as discounts and sale events (and tariffs) come and go. If even that is more than you want to invest in a projector, check out our related story for tips on hosting a backyard movie night without breaking the bank.Outdoor Projectors: Are You Planning a Permanent or Temporary Setup?
Now that you’ve seen our favorite tested picks above, you might have gathered from our assessments of each that paying attention to the nuances when shopping for a projector can mean the difference between an A-list experience and a B-movie one.
Rule one is that every projector choice you make stems from a single decision: Do you want a permanent installation, or an ad hoc setup? At one extreme, you can install all your projection equipment outdoors, fixed in place and weatherproofed: projector, video source, ancillary sound system, and screen. At the other, you can lug everything out to set up only when needed. In between, you might install, say, an outdoor screen and speakers, and carry the rest of the gear out and back as needed.
For permanent setups, only the projector, the video source, and additional audio components need to be protected from the weather. That can be easy if you have, say, an enclosed Florida room with a sliding door to the outside. With everything set up, you can simply open the door to let the projector illuminate the screen. For anything short of a permanent setup, room-to-room portables let you minimize how much you need to carry back and forth before and after every movie night. But note that you might want to store even outdoor screens inside for winter or before a storm. (They make terrific sails.)
If you’re looking at a true, permanent outdoor installation of all the bits, we’d leave that approach to a local pro A/V installer, who can consult on your property’s specific needs for optimization and ensure all the proper wiring, for both power and data connections, is appropriately hidden and implemented safely. We’ll concentrate here on the DIY approach, in which you set up and break down all or most of your setup as needed.How Big Can Your Projected Image Be? Brightness Matters
Brightness requirements for a given projector follow the same rules outdoors as indoors. It’s all about ambient light and the target image size (which we’ll get to shortly).
The ambient-light level outdoors after dark will likely be in the range between a dark room—if you’re way out in the country, far from light pollution, and it’s a moonless night—and a family room at night with dim lighting. But don’t just assume that. Check your backyard at night, including on nights with a full moon, as well as when your closest neighbors have their backyard lights blazing. Then pick a projector that’s bright enough to stand up to the brightest light level you’ll use it under at the image size you want—an issue we discuss in our reviews.
You can watch a movie outdoors at night even with a pocket projector that puts out 100 lumens or less, but you’ll have to huddle around a small image to do so. For a true movie-watching experience, consider a screen size of at least 80 inches, preferably larger.
For a comfortably watchable image at that size in dim lighting, you need a projector that produces about 800 lumens—a level of brightness that rules out most small projectors, from pocket-size models to lightweight portable projectors.
Keep in mind, also, that the highest brightness most projectors can deliver comes at the cost of image quality. Put another way: The best-quality picture mode for any given projector is generally the dimmest.
