Since the spring of 2022, in the smart projection new product market, careful consumers may have found a new feature: whether it is led light sources or laser light sources, this year has not continued to emphasize the breakthrough of "top brightness". That is, the "flagship brightness" of 2000+ to 3000+ that has been achieved in 2021 has still been maintained!
Is this because the brightness of the smart projector cannot be "increased again"? The answer, of course, is no! In the business education and engineering market, the brightness of the new light source projector can be described as "unlimited". So the home smart projection market, why are merchants not pursuing "brighter"? The author believes that this means that the "smart projection competition", especially the second half of the flagship battle, has arrived!
From stronger functions and parameters to "more quality" competition
Since 2015, the brightness of the flagship smart projector, from less than 500 lumens, has risen to 2000+ to 3000 + lumens, over the years can be described as "great progress"!
At the same time, the application of the product has also developed from a simple "introduction of the large-screen shock effect of traditional professional projection" to "highly diversified and home appliance". In particular, the development of technologies such as autofocus, intelligent voice, automatic keystone correction, and automatic screen alignment has turned "traditional professional products" into "home appliances" products that "do not require professional debugging, plug and play, and use immediately".
These changes have made today's smart projectors "very powerful" in terms of "functions and parameters"! However, this is by no means the end of the progress of intelligent projection technology, but a new starting point:
For example, in the spring of 2022, nut launched a new generation of flagship model J10S, the first Leica color science standard, emphasizing the core data in the color architecture at D65 color temperature, with two modes of standard color and bright color, providing consumption with "color capability-based", rather than a "product connotation experience" of pure "brightness" performance, so that the brightness of 2400 ANSI lumens truly becomes "visible good vision".
"Bright enough doesn't mean the color is good enough!" Industry experts pointed out that when the technological progress of intelligent projection and the high score of each "skill point" on the "parameter tree", the core of its innovation will naturally shift more to "how to use these high parameters". This is precisely the next stage, the focus of competition for smart projection products, and will also become the "preferred" standard for consumers to buy flagship and high-end smart projectors.
Brightness is not the only color standard "towards" the foreground
"Buying projection is buying brightness, a brightness and a price..." This is of course the technical law of the projection industry, but in the context of "equal brightness", which product is better is also an unavoidable problem in the projection industry!
In fact, in the past seven or eight years, consumers have paid the "most" attention to the brightness of smart projection. The fundamental reason is that the brightness of smart projectors has been "insufficient" for a long time - consumers will be equal to the quality of the smart projection display effect and the brightness level. However, as the brightness of intelligent projection exceeds the bottleneck of 2000+, the lack of brightness factor in its display effect gradually recedes to the secondary position.
At the same time, the factors that lead consumers to pay attention to the high-end brightness also include "misunderstanding in the application": for example, consumers encounter the "light color of the picture" in the daytime and under light. This phenomenon is also understood by many consumers as "projector brightness" is not enough, but its essence is "insufficient picture contrast": the way to improve is to "use a light-resistant curtain". For models such as the Nut J10S, which emphasize color, it has internal optimization of the medium and telephoto anti-light curtain, including optimization of imaging, color and autofocus, which is also a common feature of high-end models today.
From the perspective of projector design, high brightness cannot be directly equated with "high quality". For example, the exact same light source, light valve, lens and other systems, when using different "color wheels", the brightness difference of the DLP projector can be very large - that is, the three primary color balance color wheel, compared with the color wheel that has additional color segments in addition to the three primary colors, especially the products with yellow segment color wheels, its brightness performance is naturally inferior. Using a large section of yellow color wheel, you can even increase the measurement of white light brightness by 2-30%! This product can significantly improve the brightness of the picture for commercial, educational, and PPT models that mainly play text and PPT. However, for video application scenarios such as film and television appreciation, the additional brightness generated by the imbalanced part of the primary color is either completely lost or becomes an "inferior interference" in visual effects.
Based on the above three levels of factors, it can be seen that "when the new light source projection solves the brightness bottleneck", brighter should not become the pursuit of purchase, and will no longer be the focus of manufacturer competition. On the contrary, on top of a reasonable brightness of household products, how to convert the brightness into better picture quality, color, and cooperate with anti-light curtains to achieve a real high-quality experience for consumers is where the industry will compete in the future. ——This is also the reason why the Nut J10S introduced the "Lycra Color" standard and the concept of primary color charm.
"More mature consumers" need real "connotation products"
In 2021, the domestic intelligent projection market will sell nearly 5 million units. As the largest segment of the projection circle and the demand market, the position of smart home investment is more consolidated. This also means that this product has formed a group of "loyal and mature" consumer groups under the "continuous support of the scale market", and the product culture and consumption habits have begun to develop from "start-up categories" to "mature categories".
Industry insiders pointed out that "how more mature consumers need to 'feed'" is a problem for industry enterprises, especially head brands. In particular, the first batch of first- and second-tier market players to purchase smart projections are gradually entering the "upgrade and replacement" stage. These users, the understanding of the product, the grasp of the application needs, is undoubtedly more experienced, and will be more critical of the "next" product.
From this point of view, the intelligent projection market faces two levels of problems: first, after years of development, the industry's basic technology is basically mature, the product base, the common performance and function are basically perfect, and the product is facing a certain "homogenization" pressure; the second is that "many consumers' demand for products, from early adopters to practical and applicable upgrades", requiring the perfection and pertinence of product functions and performance, to be more "different".
That is, it may have been "products with individual parameters, especially brightness parameters 'prominent' are more likely to become popular", and later it is "difficult to simply create miracles in parameter indicators, and consumers need more humanized products with 'no obvious deficiencies' and 'details and delicate functions'". At the same time, according to different segmentation scenarios, manufacturers increasingly need to provide "more and more segmented supply" to provide accurate services for "mature and rational" consumption in the market.
In summary, in the spring of 2022, the new intelligent projection products will no longer "simply chase higher brightness", representing that industry competition is entering a new "historical stage". The intelligent projection industry has gone through the "parameter linear growth dividend period" brought about by technological upgrading, and the future will be more around the certainty of "easy to use" to compete. How to develop and design products that have differentiated performance and value performance in different scenarios has become a top priority.
In this regard, it includes more diversified product line levels, such as products with different focal lengths, ultra-short throw products, etc.; more emphasis on connotative performance, such as color expression, color gamut coverage, low noise, etc.; more suitable for different scene styles, such as various embedded designs, multi-angle projection design, modeling design upgrades and compatibility with other smart devices; more to meet different consumer classes, such as high-end flagships, co-brand customization, etc. The competitive points of intelligent projection will be more "delicate and rich". This feature will also be the core of the "smart projection second half" competition.