Nothingprojector “Black Series”Screen – Small sample

Sample review:
For a product whose sole intent is to sell me on the full-size screen w/ frame, NP did little to help sell it.
- No instructions included to help set up the sample for viewing test.
- Sample comes with an acrylic protective backing that peels off, but it peels off the back/black side of the screen, not the front/grey side of the screen, so not really sure of its purpose. Might as well leave it on for further reinforcement of the screen sample’s shape/flatness, since you’re unlikely to stretch such a small sample properly for flat viewing.
- Sample also doesn’t have an arrow to indicate which direction is “UP” for the ALR sawtooth pattern. After spinning the sample several times with a flashlight casting light from above, I found the correct landscape orientation. But interestingly, one of the portrait orientations seemed to be as effective (though neither were very effective) against moderate ambient light (probably because I have more ambient light coming from the right side due to window location). The other two orientations definitely killed basically all visual information from the projector getting back to viewer.

Screen review:
TLDR: screen boosts performance in extremely low-light conditions, but is ineffective in low to moderate ambient light conditions.
- The sawtooth effect of the screen is obvious when emitting harsh light from above (see photo where flashlight from above washes out image on wall heavily and washes out image onscreen far less).
- As is well publicized, these sawtooth screens don’t do a lot against strong horizontal light (see photo with flashlight from side) - the image onscreen washes out similarly to how it does on a white wall. Seems a more expensive lenticular screen is the only solution for this.
- My interest in an ALR screen is mostly for moderate, multidirectional ambient light (and in particular, for low contrast and dark projected images, TV/film scenes). I have a 3000 ansi lumens UST projector, and it performs well at night even with low levels of artificial lighting. But I want my projector to perform well during the day. I don’t mind closing the shades, but even with shades down, ambient light can be relatively strong, and thus my white walls don’t allow for strong blacks, and they generally flatten contrast way down.
- I found the screen sample did little to improve legibility under both moderate lighting conditions I tested: multidirectional daytime ambient lighting (shades down, but ambient light still heaviest from the right) and moderate nighttime artificial lighting (heaviest from above, but strong enough to illuminate the room fairly well). Whites that were bright white (on white wall) became dull whites/light greys (on screen), blacks that appeared as dull, washed out blacks (on white wall) became darker blacks (on screen). The contrast maybe improved a bit, but more than anything the range of visible colors just shifted darker. Better blacks, worse whites. I found that dark TV scenes remained difficult to see. Darker grays, darker blacks, similar contrast. (see image from a dark scene in Lioness; the background black gets darker, but the white highlights of Zoe’s face also get darker/more grey, and the browns of her face get darker too and less vibrant)
- The only use case that the screen seemed to work well for was extremely low ambient light conditions (for instance, when a light is on in other room but has no direct cast onto the projection wall/screen, or very low artificial lighting from above). I guess this is the target user: those with dark home theaters who just want an even better image. In this case, I could see that definition in the blacks got better, colors sometimes popped even more, whites still seemed fairly bright. (You’ll see this in the lights-off photo of the same scene from Lioness and a later scene)