The Valerion VisionMaster Max is a super-premium 4K home theater projector that manages to get extremely close to the professional-grade experience for less than half the cost.
For anyone constructing their own home theater, the choice between a projector and a television is frequently determined by budget. A massive TV provides most of the benefits and few of the drawbacks, but you just don't get the same sort of experience as you would when using a projector.
However, there are other factors that weigh into the home projector experience, not the least of which is managing the light in your theater space to get the ideal image. Your choice of projector also makes a massive difference to what you can eventually see on your wall or projector screen.
Valerion as a company has a main goal of bringing the full theater experience to the home with the most fidelity that it can manage. The new VisionMaster Max continues that goal, and is extremely premium in the market segment.
AppleInsider has already looked at Valerion's VisionMaster Pro 2 and found it to be a decent purchase. I'll level with you — I've used a lot of projectors over the years, and I loved it.
Now, with the Valerion VisionMaster Max, the company's aiming to provide an even better experience for home users.
Buying a high-grade projector can cost in the region of $10,000 for a close to cinematic experience. At $3,999 retail, the Valerion VisionMaster Max is certainly not cheap, but it's a lot less than an equivalent experience, if you can even find one.
Valerion VisionMaster Max review - Out of the box
If you're paying a lot for a piece of hardware, you expect a decent experience taking it out of the box. This is an area in which Valerion excels.
The projector is encased inside a reusable styrofoam container, which also has latches and a handle. This is very useful, since it becomes a protective case for the unit when it's not in use, or in transit.
Valerion VisionMaster Max review: The ribs are a key design point for this projector
Within the container, you have the projector itself, a power adapter, a remote control, batteries, a cleaning cloth, and a hefty paper manual that you probably won't read beyond any initial setup instructions.
This is the kind of experience and usefulness that other manufacturers should consider offering their customers with packaging. It's not a massively expensive addition to make, but it certainly enhances the overall package.
Valerion VisionMaster Max review - Physical specifications
At first glance, the VisionMaster Max isn't that different from the VisionMaster Pro 2. Both are glass, metal, and plastic slabs, engineered with a ribbed block with electroplated metal strips and glass surfaces.
You certainly won't be getting a bunch of molded plastic in this price range.
At 7.5 kilos (16.5 pounds), it's luggable, but not really portable. Its dimensions at 10.2 inches by 7.3 inches by 9.2 inches make it a little bit longer than the Pro 2, but not by much.
Valerion VisionMaster Max review: The feet are small, but they help a bit
At the front is a small flip-down kickstand to raise the angle of the projector upwards. It's sturdy enough for temporary setups, but there is a mounting point in the base for more permanent installations, which we recommend.
Around the back, a flip-down flap hides the selection of ports and the power button. This is a neat way to protect the ports when not in use or when traveling, but it may have been better for the power to be on the outside so it could be run with the flap closed.
The port selection includes two HDMI 2.1 ports and one HDMI 2.0 with eARC. There's also a USB 3.0 and USB 2.0 port, an S/PDIF optical audio output, and a headphone jack.
Valerion VisionMaster Max review: the port selection
One big upgrade from the Pro 2 is the network connectivity, which now works over Gigabit Ethernet as well as Wi-FI 6e and Bluetooth 5.2. With owners more likely to take advantage of the high-quality 4K streaming options available to them, having this much network bandwidth available is extremely useful.
Around the front, the lens has been given a an upgrade, and not fixed. Instead, it's an external lens system that can be swapped out and changed with others that VisionMaster provides.
This is a distinct change, as it allows perfectionists the chance to further tweak the image for their particular home cinema needs. We were not able to test this on our own, but we did venture to an AV retailer to see it in action. Pretty slick.
Valerion VisionMaster Max review - Image matters
Valerion is sticking to its use of an RGB triple laser projection system here, shooting an image at a fairly typical 3,840 by 2,160 4K UHD resolution at 60Hz. If you're playing content in lower resolutions, it has an AI Super Resolution system to upscale the footage.
Super Resolution works for the most part. We've seen more impressive upscaling on transcoders, but that requires pre-processing. This will work as-is.
That footage includes aspect ratio support of 4:3, 16:9, 21:9, and 32:9, as well as 110% coverage of the REC 2020 color gamut. It's ISF-certified and can easily handle HDR formats in HDR10+, HDR 10, HLG, and Dolby Vision, as well as IMAX Enhanced and Filmmaker Mode, complete with 24FPS and 48FPS options.
Its brightness at 3,500 lumens at its peak is brighter than its stablemate. It also bumps the native contrast to 5,000:1 and the viewing contrast to an extremely impressive 50,000:1.
Valerion VisionMaster Max review: The lens at the front of the projector
To help the brightness and to maintain the contrast level, there's a 6-level IRIS with a new black coating on the blades and inner barrel to absorb excess light. There's also IRIS adjustment to adapt the image to the viewing environment.
There are also other technological improvements, such as Enhanced Black Level algorithms and Dynamic Tone Mapping to help adjust brightness and contrast levels in real time. A "world-first" anti-rainbow effect and "speckle reduction technology" are said to reduce the effects of each on the final picture.
Let's talk about rainbow effect. Rainbow effect is a visual aberration. Some users, including two of five of our audience, can see this on other projectors as flashes of red, blue, and green color during high-contrast scenes, or action shots. In short, it's a slight strobing around movement.
There's not a lot of documentation about this, so I talked to the same AV specialist about it. They believe that the Valerion software looks for where this might happen, and very slightly alters the projection to stop it.
We watched a bunch of action movies, as they seem to show off and challenge projectors the most. With some other lower-end projectors, our testers saw the rainbow effect in a Star Wars fighter battle, and so forth.
They didn't see it on the Valerion VisionMaster Max. Good enough.
That final picture that the projector can shoot can be big. The company says that a 300-inch wide image can be projected at maximum under ideal conditions. For the previous review, the company provided a 300-inch wide screen, which we tried to hit that maximum.
Indoors, the image started getting fuzzy at about 280 inches, with outdoors it hitting some distortion at 266. Pretty good.
And all of this is with a 0.9 to 2.0:1 throw ratio and a 105% vertical optical lens shift option too. That gives a lot of flexibility in where you can place the projector relative to the screen.
On the audio side, the VisionMaster Max packs a pair of 12-watt DTS Virtual:X speakers, with support for Dolby Audio. This is enough to use, but you're probably going to pair it with a proper home theater speaker system at this price point anyway.
Valerion VisionMaster Max review - Viewing content
Processing duties are handled by the AI-SoC MT9618 from MediaTek, which has a quad-core Cortex-A73 CPU and a G52MC1 GPU, the same as the Pro 2. Its use of 4GB of memory and 128GB of storage is also identical.
The onboard operating system is Google TV, so if you don't hook up anything externally, you still have access to many different streaming apps. The usual suspects are available, including Netflix, YouTube, Disney+, and Apple TV.
There's also wireless content support from other devices, handled using AirPlay 2, Miracast, and Chromecast. If you want to display stuff from your iPhone or other modern devices, you'll find a way to do it.
That all said, we do prefer the use of the Apple TV hardware being hooked up directly, and using the apps within that. The onboard software works well enough, but an Apple TV is a relatively inexpensive way to elevate that experience.
Smart home support is also present, with it working across HomeKit, Google Home, and Alexa. That means you can tell it what to do via Siri. But, expect to have to do this from an external device like HomePods or your iPhone.
Valerion VisionMaster Max review - Excellent, but spendy
As far as home projectors go, the Valerion VisionMaster Max is expensive, but worth it. You're paying a few thousand dollars for a premium projector option in a market that is flooded with much cheaper models.
And, those are far more portable options at that.
That said, while it has a high price tag, there are higher options out there. Even more expensive alternatives that make similar boasts about picture quality and the overall experience.
Valerion VisionMaster Max review: The ribs are a pleasing design choice.
Another reason why I connected with my AV expert is to see how the other half lives. In their testing environment, we looked at about 10 other projectors, with all kinds of content.
I'd put this up against a $10,000 and sometimes $20,000 projection system any day.
The Valerion VisionMaster Max is an excellent projector overall. But there's no getting away from it having a price tag to match.
Sometimes, $4000 is a steal, though.
Valerion VisionMaster Max review Pros
- Image quality and HDR
- 3,500 lumens and high contrast at 4K 60Hz
- Solid construction
Valerion VisionMaster Max review Cons
- Portability
- Onboard software is lacking
- Still expensive for home users — but for what you get, it's a pretty good deal
Rating: 4.5 out of 5
Very rarely, we get to do extended reviews, and this is one case. We'll update you all in a few months as we keep using the projector.
Where to buy the Valerion VisionMaster Max
The Valerion VisionMaster Max is available from the company's online store, priced at $3,999. It's also available from Amazon, also
