HD80 Remote Control & Menu System

I liked the remote that came with the Optoma HD80. It was very ergonomic and failed only one of my main criteria – it lacks discrete on-off commands. All I can say about that is “duh”. This should be very very obvious by now as discrete on/off commands make it very easy to program universal remotes which may not have access to the internal IR codes of the unit itself. Apart from that, the backlighting was phenomenal. While others are going for pretty colors and a more elegant look, Optoma chose bright green – the most visible backlight color choice available bar-none. The controller feels good in the hand and your fingers naturally find their way around the buttons. All inputs are found at the bottom and main features like Iris, Brite Mode, Brightness & Contrast, and ImageAI are directly accessible from the top of the remote. I would say, in fact, that Optoma delivered almost all the primary (and even some secondary) functions right on the remote so as to eliminate much of the required use of the traditional menu system for on-the-fly picture adjustments.

The Menu System

The menu system of the HD80 is a slightly tweaked version of what is seen on the HD81 projector. The menu is dressed up slightly and, as with the other Optoma menus, everything is easy to get in and out of. The best part of the menu is that it remembers where you've been, so you don't have to manually start over if you were 3 levels down into the navigation and making, for example, RGB adjustments. In my opinion, this is worth its weight in gold in terms of convenience points. For a more in-depth look at the menu options, please see our breakdown of the HD81 projector – it really is that similar.

Daytime Viewing Experiences

The system was clearly visible during the day when set to its brightest settings (Iris open, Brite Mode on and True Vivid raised up all the way). As you'll note in my calibration section below, the lumens put out at its brightest mode were over twice that of the optimized Cinema mode. This projector can certainly crank it out during the day and allow you to host a party, sporting event or other activity that requires some amount of ambient light compensation.