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By Adrienne Maxwell and Chris Heinonen stewart acoustically transparent screen
A good projector screen is an essential complement to a home video projector. It provides a smooth, color-neutral surface, and it preserves image brightness—so you can be sure you’re getting the best performance that your projector is capable of.
Though you can easily spend four figures on an extra-large screen for a high-performance home theater, our tests showed that you don’t necessarily have to. If you’re assembling a more modest front-projection system, we have recommendations for good fixed-frame, pull-down, and DIY screens available at a much lower price.
This fixed-frame screen offers performance comparable to that of screens costing seven times as much, plus it’s easy to set up and install.
This pull-down screen has good color accuracy and better build quality than similarly priced competitors. But the material is not as smooth as that of a fixed-frame screen.
This build-it-yourself screen, which you can make as large as 128 inches, delivers a clean, neutral image, but it’s hard to install and nearly impossible to move.
A good screen provides a smooth, color-neutral surface that helps preserve your projector’s brightness and overall image quality.
The larger your screen size, the brighter your projector needs to be to produce a satisfying, well-saturated image.
We looked for 100-inch, 16:9-shaped screens with standard reflectivity, minimal color shift, no noticeable texture, and easy setup.
We used a colorimeter and Calman video-calibration software to assess each screen’s color accuracy and brightness retention.
This fixed-frame screen offers performance comparable to that of screens costing seven times as much, plus it’s easy to set up and install.
You’d have a tough time finding a better fixed-frame screen than the Silver Ticket STR Series without paying a premium. Other screens may be better or cheaper, but none match this Silver Ticket screen in achieving that perfect balance of better and cheaper.
Despite its lower price, this screen performed just as well as much more expensive screens, including our high-end reference model, the Stewart StudioTek 130. It offered sharp image quality with a minimal amount of tint, and we found it easier to assemble than many of the other screens we tested.
The Silver Ticket STR Series is available in a variety of shapes and sizes; in the standard 16:9 shape that’s ideal for HDTV and many movies, you can get it in sizes from 92 to 200 inches (we tested the 100-inch size). Because it’s a fixed-frame design, it requires a large, empty wall to hang on—so it’s best suited for dedicated theater spaces.
This pull-down screen has good color accuracy and better build quality than similarly priced competitors. But the material is not as smooth as that of a fixed-frame screen.
If you prefer a screen that rolls up into a case when you aren’t using it‚ we recommend the Elite Screens Manual Series. In our measurements, this pull-down screen proved to be even more color-neutral than our fixed-frame pick, but because the material hangs down from the case (which you can mount to the wall or ceiling), it isn’t as taut and smooth as what you can get from a fixed-frame design.
The Elite Screens Manual Series is available in assorted shapes and sizes—it ranges from 80 to 150 inches in the 16:9 shape—and you can order the metal casing in black or white to suit your room. It feels sturdier than other inexpensive pull-down screens we tested—though based on feedback we’ve seen and received, quality control can vary from sample to sample, especially on Amazon. Elite does offer a two-year warranty.
This build-it-yourself screen, which you can make as large as 128 inches, delivers a clean, neutral image, but it’s hard to install and nearly impossible to move.
If you’re okay with a do-it-yourself project and don’t plan on moving your screen once you’ve installed it, the Goo Systems GooToob kit is an excellent choice. In fact, according to our measurements, this DIY option offered the best objective performance overall, regardless of price.
The GooToob kit includes a roll of reflective substrate and black border tape, both of which you must cut to match the exact size of your projected video image. Then you stick them on the wall using the supplied adhesive.
The DIY design gives you flexibility to match the screen to your exact needs. However, as with a fixed-frame screen, it requires a large, empty wall space to work with, and it’s even less portable.
Chris Heinonen did the original testing of fixed-frame screens for this guide, and supervising editor Adrienne Maxwell took over in 2023 to test pull-down screens. Both are ISF-certified video testers and calibrators who know how to assess screen performance using video-calibration software, light meters, and test patterns.
If you have a projector, you should get a screen. Most modern home theater projectors are bright enough to throw a decent image on just about any close-to-white surface, but if you’re still using a white-painted wall, you really should upgrade. A screen has less texture and shows more accurate colors, and it adds pop to the image—paint, in contrast, almost always reflects less light than a good screen.
If you ask a home theater expert or aficionado what to choose, more often than not, they’ll recommend something that costs more than the projector itself. Our picks are aimed more at someone looking to put together a casual home theater on a budget or just wanting to upgrade from a living room wall. A good screen should last a long time, so it’s worth investing the money up front on a screen that will help you get the best performance from your projector.
The ideal projector screen would deliver exactly the same image—in color, brightness, and contrast—as what’s coming directly from the projector, on a surface that is perfectly smooth and free from any noticeable defects. That screen doesn’t exist, at least not in the price range we focused on, but that’s the target.
To explain how we picked screens, we must first explain some technical parameters we considered:
For this guide, we chose to focus on 100-inch-diagonal, 16:9-shaped screens that are close to the standard 1.0 gain. We’ve found that 100 inches is an average size that works in a variety of rooms and with a variety of projectors. You can certainly go larger, but the image gets dimmer, by an amount equal to the increase in screen area. Many modern home theater projectors have ample-enough light output to produce a bright image on a 100-inch screen, so we chose to stick close to a 1.0 gain to ensure a wide viewing angle. And finally, since most HDTV content and many movies are in the 16:9 shape, that was our preferred aspect ratio.
Since this guide is intended for people looking to put together a casual home theater on a budget or just wanting to upgrade from a living room wall, we further narrowed our search to more value-oriented 100-inch screens priced under $350.
However, in our original testing of fixed-frame screens, Chris also brought in a high-end Stewart StudioTek 130 screen as a reference for what you get when you pay substantially more. Stewart is one of the big names in custom home theater screens, and the StudioTek 130 is a neutral screen that many video reviewers are likely to recommend if you ask for a single suggestion.
In each round of tests, we set up the screens and made note of any issues we saw in the build or the ease of installation. Then, using a colorimeter along with Portrait Displays’s Calman color-calibration software, we measured the image directly off the lens of our reference projector (an Epson 5020UBe in our first round, a BenQ HT4550i in our second) to get baseline numbers for brightness, contrast, gamma, and color performance.
We then projected the same-size image, with the exact same projector settings, onto each screen and measured the results to see how the screen affected performance. We also watched a variety of content to look for sparkles, hot spots, texture, and other issues.
This fixed-frame screen offers performance comparable to that of screens costing seven times as much, plus it’s easy to set up and install.
The Silver Ticket STR Series is the best fixed-frame screen on a budget because it has good image quality that introduces only a small amount of tint, it’s easy to build, and it just plain looks nice.
This screen performed as well as much pricier options. At the time of our original testing, the Silver Ticket screen was the cheapest fixed-frame screen we called in, yet it wound up performing as well as options that cost seven times as much.
It maintained the contrast ratio of our projector and had good color accuracy. In our measurements, it introduced a bit of blue tint to the image (which can make the picture seem a little brighter to the viewer’s eyes), but less than other budget screens did. To most people, this effect isn’t visible.
While some other fixed-frame screens had better results in our measurements than the Silver Ticket model, they were either many times more expensive (such as our reference Stewart StudioTek 130 screen) or time-intensive do-it-yourself projects (like our DIY pick from Goo Systems), which most people aren’t up for. You can see our original measurement results down in the Competition section.
In real-world use, the Silver Ticket screen just looked good. The screen did a very good job of showing the detail and texture in the image. The material itself exhibited neither sparkles nor hot spots during our viewing, and it had a very wide viewing angle.
While watching Skyfall, Harry Potter, or Star Trek, we never thought that we were missing anything from the picture. The images consistently appeared sharp and showed the texture of a character’s suit or the wrinkles in someone’s skin. Even while sitting at the edge of the screen, we were still able to see a very good picture devoid of any additional color shift.
We calculated a gain for the STR Series of around 0.95, which is all you need for a modern projector. But note that it falls short of its claimed gain of 1.1, which means it is a bit less reflective than Silver Ticket claims it to be.
Assembly is an easy task. A fixed-frame screen generally requires assembly unless you go the custom-installation route. The Silver Ticket STR Series package consists of a stretchable screen material and a sturdy aluminum frame held together with screws.
The top and bottom rails of the frame come in two pieces to make the box size more manageable. Tiny tension rods slide into the screen material’s borders and loop around pegs in the frame to hold the material in place—a design that we found easier and less labor-intensive to put together than screens that snap into place.
Overall, assembling the screen took us about 30 minutes total, one of the quickest times for the screens we tested. Chris didn’t need help from anyone else to build or hang it, proof that it can be done solo. You probably won’t be caught cursing and sweating heavily while building it (something that cannot be said about every screen project).
In comparison, the Elite Screens Sable Frame 2 costs more for the same size and offers similar performance, but Chris ended up with bruised thumbs after spending almost three times as long to build it. The end result was similar, but getting there took more effort and time.
It looks well made. Once we hung the STR Series on the wall, it had no visible flex in the top or bottom rail, thanks in part to the stabilizing bar that runs vertically down the back of the frame. The rod-tension system keeps the screen taut and smooth, and the 2.38-inch-wide, black-velvet-wrapped frame looks classy. The black border also helps to provide a visual break from the surrounding wall and improve perceived contrast.
Considering the price of the Silver Ticket STR Series, which you can assemble yourself and hang in less than an hour, you have little reason to build your own screen instead. Building your own screen with blackout cloth, wood, and felt can easily cost $100—if you already own all the tools you need (staple gun, saw)—and you can’t take that screen apart later or move it easily. The small savings from building your own aren’t worth it, especially when the image quality is likely to be worse overall.
The Silver Ticket STR Series’s color is not perfectly neutral. The Goo Systems GooToob screen measured more neutral, as did our reference Stewart screen. But everything else we tested, including Chris’s personal $2,700 screen, had a color tint equal to or worse than what we saw on the STR Series. The tint this screen introduces is low enough that, with most projectors, it isn’t noticeable to the naked eye.
This pull-down screen has good color accuracy and better build quality than similarly priced competitors. But the material is not as smooth as that of a fixed-frame screen.
A retractable (aka pull-down) screen is a good choice if you’d rather not have a large, white screen hogging space on your wall when you aren’t watching anything—perhaps because you use the projector only on occasion, or you use it in an everyday-living space where the decor matters. All budget pull-down screens come with compromises, but the Elite Screens Manual Series is better than other low-priced models because it’s more color-neutral and has a slightly better build.
Compared with the Silver Ticket screen, this model’s material is even more color-neutral. Even when eyeballing the Manual Series next to our fixed-frame pick, the STR Series, we could see that the material on this screen had a warmer color profile, with less blue tint.
Our measurements confirmed that this ISF-certified screen came closer to our projector’s off-the-lens performance in color temperature, color saturation, and miscellaneous color comparisons than the Silver Ticket STR Series and the other two pull-down models we tested. The differences between the Elite Screens and Silver Ticket models were quite small; the differences between the Elite Screens model and the other pull-down screens were somewhat more pronounced.
All of the pull-down screens we measured performed similarly in preserving our projector’s brightness and contrast. In this respect, the Silver Ticket screen held a slight advantage over all of them—slight enough, however, that you likely couldn’t discern the difference with your eyes.
The Elite Screens Manual Series has a rated gain of 1.1. In our viewing tests, it had a wide viewing angle and did not exhibit any blatant issues with hot spots or sparkles.
This screen feels better-built than other affordable pull-down models. None of the pull-down screens we tested felt as well constructed as our fixed-frame choice. The screen material of such models feels more like thick paper, and based on owner reviews we’ve read, the quality of these screens seems to vary greatly between samples. That’s why we like that Elite Screens offers a two-year warranty and ways to contact the company directly.
Obviously, on a pull-down model you don’t get the nice black-velvet borders found on the Silver Ticket STR Series, which you wouldn’t see when the screen is retracted anyhow. But the Elite Screens Manual Series does have about 1.5 inches of black border on the sides and 2 inches at the bottom. (One of the other pull-down models we tested had no black border around the sides or bottom at all.) This border gives you some leeway in positioning the image and helps improve perceived contrast.
There’s also black backing on the other side of the screen material to minimize light pass-through and help preserve projector brightness. Many super-cheap projector screens lack this extra layer.
We ordered all our test samples from Amazon, and the Manual Series was the only one that arrived with no dents in the metal casing. The metal seemed a bit stronger and heavier.
The screen material has a pretty tight weave. When you view it up close, you can see that it’s more textured than the stretchable material of the Silver Ticket screen. But the weave is smaller than the pixel structure in a 1080p projector, so it doesn’t introduce additional texture. From a standard viewing distance, we did not see distracting imperfections with a 4K projector, either.
The pull-down mechanism has controlled retraction, so when you give the handle a tug, the screen slowly rolls back up into the case—as opposed to some others, which whip back up.
It’s available in a lot of sizes. You can get the Manual Series in sizes from 80 to 150 inches in the 16:9 shape. You can order the metal case in black or white to suit your room, and you can order certain sizes in longer lengths to accommodate higher installations. In contrast, the other budget models we looked at were often limited in size options and came only with white casings.
The installation process was pretty much identical for all of the pull-down screens. All came with the needed wall screws and anchors, but not all of them came with installation instructions. The Elite Screens package was thorough in this respect.
This pull-down screen isn’t as taut as a fixed-frame screen. Because a pull-down screen like the Elite Screens Manual Series hangs freely and has to be flexible enough to roll up into a case—and generally remains rolled up a lot of the time—the material will never be as smooth and taut as that of a good fixed-frame model such as the Silver Ticket STR Series.
If a pull-down screen has major waves, the result will look like it has uneven brightness fluctuations when the projector shoots light at the screen. We saw some waves in all three of the pull-down screens we tested, but the Elite Screens model’s slightly thicker material looked a bit smoother than the others. On our sample, the side edges (which consist of black border) curved in slightly; this actually helped to smooth out the primary viewing area and wasn’t noticeable in a darker room. The waves we saw were not substantial enough to cause brightness fluctuations when we were watching video content. We mostly saw them in a bright room with the projector off—and that’s when the screen is likely to be retracted anyhow.
To get a smoother-looking retractable screen, you’d have to spend a lot more money on a screen with finer material and more advanced bracing techniques.
A pull-down screen is less precise in placement. It’s challenging to hit the exact same mark every time you manually pull down a screen, so you may have to adjust your projector’s image positioning for each viewing session. This can be especially challenging if your projector is wall- or ceiling-mounted and has fewer image-placement tools.
This build-it-yourself screen, which you can make as large as 128 inches, delivers a clean, neutral image, but it’s hard to install and nearly impossible to move.
If you’re okay with a semi-DIY approach, and you’re confident that you won’t need to move the screen, Goo Systems’s GooToob kit delivered the best color accuracy of any screen material we tested.
Setup requires a lot of measuring, cutting, and adhesive. The GooToob package we ordered included a rolled sheet of substrate paper large enough to make a screen as big as 128 inches in a 16:9 format. Each kit also includes black border tape and the necessary adhesive to stick it all up on the wall.
If you want something smaller than 128 inches, or even a different aspect ratio, you can trim the screen material to a more appropriate size. The company recommends that you install your projector first and cast the exact image size and shape you want on the wall, after which you customize the GooToob screen to fit.
It was the most color-neutral screen we measured. The GooToob screen presented an almost flawless image, with practically no color shift, an even gain (0.95 as measured, very close to its 1.0 rating), and a pleasingly clean, smooth surface overall. It delivers performance that even the most critical viewer would be happy with.
The Goo Systems DIY approach isn’t right for everyone. You can’t easily install the screen by yourself, and you must affix it to the wall—so if you move to another house or even change the location of your projector, you have to start over. And transferring it to a new wall is certainly not easy.
If the Silver Ticket STR Series is sold out: The Elite Screens Sable Frame 2 is a suitable fixed-frame replacement. It typically sells for a bit more money, and the assembly is harder, but the performance levels were very close in our measurements. The main difference lies in how the screens attach to the frames. In our experience, the STR Series came together much more easily, and although its material didn’t look as taut as that of the Sable Frame 2 during use, the difference was minor.
For our most recent round of testing, we focused on manual pull-down screens. Elite Screens is the only big-name screen manufacturer offering more-affordable pull-down models through major online channels. The next closest in affordability is Da-Lite with its Model C Series, which is still more than twice the price.
We pitted the Elite Screens Manual Series against two value-oriented 100-inch screens from Jwsit and Khomo. You can find a ton of similar options on Amazon, so we focused on these top-rated screens. The two screen materials delivered similar results in our measurements: They weren’t quite as color-accurate as the Elite Screens model, but the errors weren’t egregious, and they both did a solid job of preserving the projector’s brightness and contrast.
However, their screen material wasn’t as firm as that of the Elite Screens Manual Series, so it didn’t hang as smoothly. Both screens are available in fewer sizes and only with white casings. The casings arrived with multiple dents from shipping; their metal seemed less sturdy.
The Khomo screen emitted a strong chemical odor and had no control mechanism to slow down the screen’s retraction. The Jwsit screen had no black border around the sides and bottom; this hurts perceived contrast and can make setup more challenging because you have to size the image perfectly to the screen.
In our original tests, we focused on fixed-frame screens. Chris’s testing notes are available in this document, and here’s a quick overview of his color measurements:
This article was edited by Grant Clauser.
Adrienne Maxwell is the supervising editor of Wirecutter's audio/video team, covering everything from headphones to TVs. She has been a writer, editor, and reviewer in the consumer electronics industry for 20 years, and previously served as the executive editor of Home Theater Magazine and the managing editor of HomeTheaterReview.com.
Chris Heinonen is a former senior staff writer who covered TVs, projectors, video sources, and audio gear for Wirecutter.
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