If you hear "throw" and the first thing you think of is a ballplayer, you probably don't spend a lot of time with projectors. A projector's throw—the distance between it and the screen—is one of its key features and an important way to categorize it. Throws, and the lenses that determine the throw, are classified as long, standard, short, or ultra short.
Differences in throw can give otherwise identical projectors very different capabilities. You want a big image in small room, but can't position the projector you have far enough back to get one? Well, you need a projector with a shorter throw. You want to replace your TV with a projector, but don't want to run cables through walls and ceilings to hide them? No problem. Get one with an ultra short throw, put it on top of the entertainment center where your TV's sitting now, and mount the screen on the wall just above it.
In this guide, we'll suggest our favorite short throw and ultra short throw (UST) picks for specific applications, choosing among models we've tested. Then, we'll cover the key differences between these two categories, along with the factors you need to consider when choosing a short throw or UST projector.
If you're considering buying a projector with a shorter-than-standard throw distance, it helps to understand the categories of short throw and UST in the context of all four throw ranges on the market.
What's deemed a standard throw is what you'll find on most projectors. Long throw lenses and short throw lenses are harder to manufacture well enough to project a high-quality image, which makes them, and the projectors that use them, more expensive. But if you have to put the projector far away from the screen—as in, say, a movie theater—you need a long throw lens to get a small enough image to fit the screen. And if you want a large image in a small room, you need a short throw lens to make the image big enough.
Ultra short throw (UST) lensing systems (which usually mix a mirror in with the optical elements) are even more expensive than short throw lenses. But if you want a projector to use as a 100-inch-or-larger TV at home, and you don't want to deal with mounting it on the ceiling or running cables through walls, a UST is what you want.
(Credit: Epson)Note that UST models can also be useful in business and education. Mount a UST projector just above a screen, and you can get close enough to the image to point to text or graphics you want to draw attention to without casting a shadow, much as you would with a whiteboard. There are even interactive UST projectors that add sensors, so you can draw on the image and give commands the same way TV networks use displays on election nights to show information. (None of these business and education models is included in this roundup, however.)
How Do I Choose Between a Short Throw and an Ultra Short Throw?
Both short throws and USTs are good choices for a room that's too small to let you put a standard throw projector far enough away from the screen to give you the size of image you want. Either can help avoid the problem of people standing up and casting shadows on the screen in situations where a standard throw projector can't be positioned to avoid that—a common issue, for example, in rooms with low ceilings or for ad hoc setups for gaming. But to choose between them, it helps to know a little about their different designs.
It's hard to tell a short throw model from a standard throw model without seeing the lens (or even with seeing the lens, if you don't what a short throw lens looks like). In fact, some standard throw and short throw models from the same manufacturer are literally the same projector with different lenses. You can usually spot these near-twins, because they typically have almost the same model name—except that one includes "ST" in the name and the other doesn't. The only other difference is that the short throw version will cost more, because of the more expensive lens.
(Credit: Hisense)In contrast, most UST models are easy to spot. The vast majority are designed with the lensing system at what you would probably think of as the back of the projector, meaning the side facing away from the screen, but which manufacturers insist on calling the front. (That's because projector makers define the front by where the lens is.) In most designs, the optics are fully contained inside the box, and there's a depressed area on the top surface near that side containing a glass window that the image shines through to go directly to the screen. Other designs have a raised lens on that side pointing to the screen, or a mirror, so the image will bounce off the mirror before going to the screen.
Some projectors, with lenses on the side facing the screen, are listed by their manufacturers as UST models, but are—at best—on the borderline between short throw and UST. (We'll come back to this issue in the next section.) However, those projectors give up one of the big advantages of putting the lens on the other side, namely: If the image emerges from the side farthest from the screen, the projector itself is closer to the screen, with nearly the entire depth of the projector sitting between the lens and the screen. So while a UST lens lets the projector sit closer to the screen than a short throw lens, the most common UST designs put it closer still. And the less distance you want between the projector and the screen—whether simply to save space or to avoid the need for running cables over or through walls, ceilings, and floors—the more likely you want a UST model with the more UST-typical lens placement.
How Do I Tell What a Projector's Actual Throw Is?
Unfortunately, the projector industry posits no firm definitions for each level of throw—or at least no universally accepted ones—which means manufacturers' marketing departments are free to draw the line between categories wherever they like. But there is a standard spec, called throw ratio, that can help, and some rules of thumb for which throw ratios fall in which category.
Throw ratio is the ratio between the distance to the screen and the width of the image. So, for example, if the lens needs to be 100 inches from the screen for a 100-inch-wide image (the approximate width of a 115-inch-diagonal 16:9 screen), the throw ratio would be 1.0. (That might shown as "1.0:1" in some spec sheets, or just "1.0" in others.) Similarly, if the distance were 200 inches, the throw ratio would be 2.0 (200/100), and for a 50-inch distance, it would be 0.50 (50/100).
(Credit: Epson)The range from 1.0 to (but not including) 2.0 is a standard throw, by anyone's definition. But while some peg a long throw at 2.0 and above, others draw the line at a higher number. Similarly, many manufacturers call anything below 1.0 a short throw, and anything below roughly 0.4 a UST, while others call anything below 0.5 a UST. Most of the current UST models we've tested—and all of the UST models mentioned here—offer throw ratios of 0.28 or less. Specs for the short throw models included here range from 0.49 to 0.7, but again, some manufacturers would call a projector with a 0.49 throw ratio a UST model.
Zoom lenses add a twist to all this. Because an optical zoom changes image size, projectors equipped with zoom lenses have a range of throw ratios. One projector we've tested (but not included here) has a range of 0.9 to 1.08, for example, barely qualifying as short throw at the low end of its range. However, the manufacturer calls it a short throw projector. Some manufacturers also list a range of throw ratios for digital zooms, but keep in mind that digital zooms that affect image size should be ignored, if at all possible. They can only shrink the image from the full size the lens allows, and they do so by using less of the imaging chip, which also lowers brightness and can add artifacts.
The moral here? You can use manufacturer claims for the throw category as a starting point, but you should also look at some numbers. At the very least, comparing the throw-ratio specs for two projectors will tell you which one has the shorter throw, which will let you put it closer to the screen for a given size image. Often, the manufacturer will have a chart in its marketing material showing the distance for common screen sizes, particularly for UST models. If not, the information should be in a user setup guide available for downloading from the company's website.
If you can't find the information, you can easily calculate how far the projector will be from the screen for a given image width if you know the throw ratio for the projector (Distance = Throw Ratio times Width). For UST projectors, keep in mind that you are calculating the distance to the lens, not to the projector body itself. To find the distance to the projector, you'll also need to know the distance from the lens to the side of the projector closest to the screen.
What Are the Advantages of Short Throw Projectors Over Ultra Short Throw Projectors?
Short throw projectors are less expensive than equivalent UST projectors, which means that unless you have a compelling reason to pick a UST model instead, a short throw is usually the obvious choice. You can also find types of short throw projectors that are either not available in UST models yet (as with gaming projectors), or probably never will be, as with compact short throw projectors for road warriors. (See our separate guide to portable projectors.)
Still other types of projector are available in UST form but are rare—for example, portable projectors that are larger than mini projectors but small and light enough to bring with you if you need to, or at least carry easily from room to room or to the backyard for a movie night. Because short throw projectors sit farther from the screen than UST models, they're also easier to position and focus, an important consideration for any application that requires repeated setup, even if you're just moving the projector from a shelf to a conference room table.
What Are the Advantages of Ultra Short Throw Projectors Over Short Throw Projectors?
The two key advantages for UST models are both already mentioned above. They let you position the projector much closer to the image than short throw models can without casting shadows, and when used as TV replacements, they don't demand any more effort to hide power and data cables than any other TV does.
Both of these characteristics are essential to the relatively new category of UST projectors that are specifically designed to replace TVs. Most of these models use lasers as their light source and include fully integrated smart TV features. Some include TV tuners, as well, and some manufacturers even tout them as "laser TVs" rather than projectors. All of the UST models included here are TV replacements.
Other Projector Specs: What Else to Pay Attention to With Short Throw and UST?
One spec, in addition to throw ratio, that you should check for short throw and UST models is the supported image size for the lens. All lenses have a maximum size image they can throw without distortion or other image-quality issues, and both the maximum and minimum are usually listed on the projector's spec sheet.
With standard throw lenses, the maximum image size is typically larger you'd consider using with most of the projectors that we cover, given their brightness. But the shorter the throw, the less likely that is to be true. Projectors at the lower end of the short throw range, as well as ones in the UST range, can easily be bright enough to throw a bigger usable image than the lens can handle well, especially in a dark room. Manufacturers tend to be conservative on this front, so you can often get away with slightly larger images than the spec says, or see only a hint of a problem if you opt for a somewhat larger size. But don't count on it.
(Credit: Epson)Almost all other issues about the projectors themselves—from contrast and brightness, to imaging technology, to connection options, and more—are the same for short throw and UST models as for standard throw projectors. For much more detail on those aspects, check out our roundup of top projector picks.
The one other issue you'll want to consider is the screen to pair the projector with. In particular, for UST projectors that you plan to use in rooms with ambient light, you'll want an ambient light rejection (ALR) screen, and you'll need one that's designed for UST models, as discussed in our guide How to Choose the Right Screen for Your Projector.
So, What Is the Best Short Throw or Ultra Short Throw Projector to Buy?
The list of projectors we started with, and the spec breakout for them below, cover our picks for some of the best short throw and UST projectors available for some of the most common usage cases. For more tips about features to consider before buying, and also some additional top-pick projectors we've tested, see our screen and general-projector guides mentioned above, as well as our roundup of best home projectors, which includes some additional UST models.
