Happrun H1 Review

Like other ultra-low-budget projectors, the Happrun H1 falls short in most aspects. However, it can be viable under specific conditions, though its capabilities are limited. We appreciate its stylish looks and portable form factor, and it might be worthwhile if your budget is limited and your expectations for a projector at this price are realistic.

Performance Comparison

Entertainment

As an entertainment-oriented projector meant to excel at projecting pleasing color-accurate movie scenes and photo slideshows in a home theater setting, the Happrun H1 underwhelmed our testers. It's entirely too dim for an enjoyable experience, even in a dark room, but if your budget and your expectations are both super low, then you can snag this unit for a fraction of the cost of a traditional home theater projector and technically watch movies with it.

As we mentioned, the Happrun H1's picture is very dim and dark, and the colors are inaccurate, but it has decent clarity compared to all other units with similar prices. Just know that the larger you try to project the image on the screen, the less focused your picture will be with this or any of the sub-$100 models. Lastly, and unsurprisingly for the price, the H1 has no smart features to stream movies or mirror content from your mobile devices, so it didn't pick up any points there.

Business

In the exact same ways that the Happrun H1 struggles in the entertainment category, it fails as a serious business projector. Sure, it will technically transpose an image from your laptop onto a screen, but unless you're doing business in pitch darkness, it's unlikely that your audience will be able to read anything onscreen.

To make matters worse, edge-to-edge screen clarity on the H1 is abysmal, particularly in spreadsheets. Nevertheless, the Happrun H1 is somewhat bright compared to the other ultra-cheap projectors. We still don't recommend this or any of those projectors for business use.

Although it has a poor selection of ports (1x HMDI,2x USB, 1 video, audio in/out), the H1 comes with a remote control and onboard function buttons, zoom, and a focus ring accessible from the top of the projector. We appreciate that convenience and redundancy in a business projector.

Contrast

Happrun specifies a 10,000:1 contrast ratio for the H1, but we measured a 43:5 ratio in our ANSI contrast test with a light meter.

Once again, this projector is better than the others in its super-low price zone, but it pails in comparison to more traditional options. Expect washed-out images with little distinction between whites, blacks, and midtones.

Brightness

As we've established by this point in the review, the Happrun H1 is a very dim projector. It just cannot stand with more serious projectors outside of the crazy cheap segment, but amongst those lowly few, it is the brightest. We mean that figuratively and literally.

The H1 claims 400 lumens but averaged 249 lumens in our ANSI lumens test. Believe it or not, that's double the output of some of the other super-cheap projectors, but over ten times dimmer than some of the brightest units we tested.

Setup & Use

The Happrun H1 is slightly below average in setup and use. It doesn't come with any fancy or innovative features to speak of. It only has manual zoom, one manually adjustable front leg for leveling, and an integrated place to mount it to a tripod or ceiling. The machine can only correct with verticle keystoning, solving those pesky trapezoids you might come across when installing your device. Unfortunately, it does not solve other scenarios, say you cannot line up your projector right in front of the screen due to an obstacle because it lacks horizontal keystoning.

The H1 comes with a basic remote control, and it is one of the only units in the review to feature two speakers instead of one. However, there is no specified power rating for them, and they aren't too impressive in volume or sound quality.

Input Lag

The only area where the most basic projectors tend to outdo the premium projectors is in low input lag, and the Happrun H1 is more proof of that. Input lag may not be crucial if you're not planning to use a projector for gaming where milliseconds matter, but if you do fall into that particular use case scenario, look for a more basic projector or a projector with a dedicated gaming mode.

When taken to task with our video input lag test device, the H1 averaged a speedy 46 millisecond response time across the top, middle, and bottom of the screen. That's nearly the best response time we've ever recorded from a projector. It's too bad that video quality and brightness aren't on par, or this could be a cost-effective way to play video games on the big screen.

Should You Buy the Happrun H1?

If you're only interested in ultra-cheap projectors and can live with their many downsides, this is the one to get. It's sleek-looking and portable, and it will reliably transpose an image onto a screen in a dark room. If you have even remotely high standards for picture quality and screen legibility, skip this class of projector entirely.

What Other Projector Should You Consider?