Beam Parlor started in a cramped one-bedroom apartment in Austin, Texas, in 2019, when our founder, Mark Delacroix, spent three straight weekends trying to find a projector for a backyard movie night that wouldn't wash out under string lights and a stray porch bulb. What he found instead was a swamp of recycled spec sheets, affiliate-driven "best of" lists that never mentioned brightness testing conditions, and forum threads full of conflicting advice. He bought four projectors, returned three, and decided the review process itself was broken. Beam Parlor was built to fix that.
Who We Are
We're a small, obsessive team of home theater enthusiasts, a former AV installer, and one recovering film school student who now spends most evenings measuring lumens instead of watching movies for fun. Mark leads testing and product selection, drawing on nearly a decade of experience calibrating displays for local cinemas and home installations before turning his attention to writing full time. Our contributing writer, Priya Anand, handles the technical breakdowns — she has a background in electrical engineering and an unreasonable love of contrast ratio charts. Rounding out the team is our video producer, Josh Whitfield, who films every unboxing and setup so readers can see exactly what we saw, not just read about it.
None of us came from traditional tech journalism. We came from actually using this gear — in living rooms, garages, backyards, and one memorable rooftop screening that got rained out twice before the projector finally proved itself waterproof-adjacent under an emergency tarp.
How We Review Projectors
Every projector featured on Beam Parlor goes through the same core process, whether it's a $300 budget pico projector or a $4,000 4K laser model:
- We buy or borrow, never accept pay-for-placement. Most units are purchased with our own money. When manufacturers loan us review units, we say so clearly, and it never affects the final verdict.
- Real-room testing. Each projector is tested in at least two environments: a fully darkened home theater room and a living room with ambient light, because that's where most people actually watch.
- Measured brightness and color. We use a lux meter and colorimeter to check advertised ANSI lumens and color accuracy against manufacturer claims, rather than taking marketing numbers at face value.
- Throw distance and setup testing. We physically test placement flexibility, keystone correction, and lens shift, because a projector that looks great on paper can be a nightmare to actually mount.
- Audio and smart features. Built-in speakers, streaming apps, and remote usability are all evaluated hands-on, not copied from a spec sheet.
- Longevity check-ins. Where possible, we revisit units after 30 and 90 days of use to catch issues that don't show up in a first-week impression, like fan noise increasing over time or lamp dimming.
We score every projector across five categories — image quality, brightness, connectivity, ease of setup, and value — and we publish the good, the mediocre, and the outright disappointing. If a well-known brand releases a dud, we'll tell you.
What Makes Us Trustworthy
We know projector reviews are an easy space to fake. Specs can be copy-pasted, sample photos can be staged, and affiliate incentives can quietly shape a "top pick" list. We try to counter that with transparency: every review discloses whether the unit was purchased or provided, our testing methodology is the same across every product, and we update older reviews when firmware updates or price changes affect our recommendations. We don't accept payment for favorable rankings, and any affiliate links on our site earn us a small commission only if you buy something we've genuinely tested and recommend — it never determines placement.
We also read every comment and email we get from readers who bought something based on our advice. When patterns emerge — a recurring fan noise complaint, a firmware bug, a bulb that dies early — we go back and update the review. Beam Parlor isn't meant to be a static buying guide; it's meant to be a living resource that gets more accurate the longer we use this gear ourselves.
Our Promise
We're not trying to be the biggest projector site on the internet. We're trying to be the one you trust enough to actually make a decision, so your next movie night doesn't end with a return box and a refund request. That's the whole point of Beam Parlor: fewer guesses, better screens, more nights that go exactly as planned.