Philips NeoPix 750 Smart projector review

The Philips NeoPix 750 Smart is an entertainment projector designed to be used at home to project films and TV onto a large screen. Everything about the projector has been designed for home entertainment, and as such, it has a large, bright lens that has been designed to project a clean, bright, and vibrant image onto a surface. When it comes to the more advanced features that we’ve seen on many other projectors, such as auto-correction features for colour and focus, all of these are completely manual within the menu system. This simplicity is, of course, reflected in the price.

What you get with the NeoPix 750 Smart is a decent HD video projector that easily connects to a host of different sources. It also features its own smart OS that enables you to watch all the usual smart TV apps, such as Apple TV, Disney+, and Amazon Prime Video.

It also enables you to connect through HDMI to external sources such as a mini PC, laptop, or other multimedia device so that you can stream video easily. In this test, I even tried it by connecting it to the Holland Pyro S so that I could use the projector to show students the camera view of a studio portrait session. It did the job for this type of use surprisingly well.

Ultimately, the NeoPix 750 Smart has been designed for home entertainment rather than for professional use. As such, the video quality is ideal for watching films and TV but less suited for projecting screens and presentations.

The NeoPix 750 Smart has been designed for home use, but that doesn’t mean the build quality has been in any way compromised. Coming from Philips, it is still of exceptionally high quality, with a full plastic build that feels good and solid and should last for years. The front of the machine is dominated by the large lens, which is surrounded by the focus ring.

Unfortunately, this projector does not have an auto-focus function. Once you position the projector and prop it up to adjust the throw, you can then rotate the focus ring to focus the image onto the screen.

As Philips has designed this at the entry level, many of the features that come as standard with higher-end models are missing. When it comes to the setup, you essentially position it on a table in front of the surface you want to project, and then you prop up the front with books to adjust the vertical height. Once that’s done, you can use the focus ring to pull everything into focus.

A nice touch here is that it does have an auto keystone, which does an excellent job of straightening out the corners. If there are any issues with the image looking a bit wonky, then you have a four-corner keystone correction as well as a vertical correction so that you can achieve a nice square image rather than something resembling a trapezoid.

Another nice feature for positioning is the digital zoom. If you only have a relatively small space in which to project, you can use digital zoom to reduce the projection size from 100% down.

As this is a smart projector, it can project video from sources connected through HDMI and USB, as well as AirPlay and Chrome Cast. The main method of streaming for standard TV services is through LuminOS, which features all the most common apps, such as Netflix, Amazon Prime, Apple TV, and plenty more. This is great if you want to use the projector primarily for entertainment.

As you get into the Philips NeoPix 750 Smart, you realise that this is very much a home entertainment projector and doesn’t adapt well to other uses. While you could use it for presentations, that’s not where its strengths lie. It is simply an entry-level home cinema projection system, for which it is absolutely exceptional for the price.

Taking a quick run through the functions and features of the NeoPix 750 Smart once again reinforces the market that this projector is aimed at. First and foremost, the projection size goes up to 120 inches, and that’s in true HD. It also features a really powerful sound system. Whilst it might not have any accreditation with Dolby or similar, it still sounds exceptionally good with excellent depth. While the sound system itself might not have any big brand names attached to it, if you want bigger sound, there’s a 3.5 mm jack at the back, which you can connect to some larger speakers or even a pair of headphones.

Another feature that is really nice to see on an entry-level projector is that it features multiple image corrections, including auto keystone correction, which is quite unusual for this level of projector. However, focus is completely manual, and the focus ring can be a little bit stiff when you first use it.

The projection system utilises an LCD unit with an LED light source. It can produce a brightness of up to 700 lumens and a contrast ratio of 3000:1. The projection’s throw is at the standard 16:9 aspect ratio, which is what you expect from an HD projector.

One of the features that I really liked as I started to use the projector was the fact that it was so quiet. One of the issues I have had with many other projectors is that the fans kick in after about 20 minutes of use and, in some cases, can become really distracting. Here, Philips has really worked on the engineering, and although there is a fan system inside, it is so quiet that you hardly ever hear it kick in. So, if you are sitting watching a movie, at least you don’t get distracted by the noise of the fans in the background.

Philips really knows how to create high-end projection systems, and what’s really nice to see here is that some of the features you usually expect from higher-end projectors have filtered down to this entry model. Alongside the custom LuminOS that includes all your usual apps and features, there’s also Wi-Fi screen mirroring. So, if you want to screencast or AirPlay from your mobile phone or tablet, this is really straightforward to do. With a few clicks, you can instantly stream directly from your mobile device.

When it comes to the features and running through what this projector is actually capable of, it just reinforces that this is a home entertainment projector. Whilst it can be used for presentations—and through the course of this review, I used it in live demonstrations within the studio as well as for a workshop presentation sharing screens from Photoshop—it became very apparent that this resolution and screen brightness aren’t quite up to professional use. However, back home and watching a film, it very quickly proved to be a great choice.

From the outset, I had to lower my expectations for what this projector is actually capable of. It is a 1080p HD projector with a brightness of 700 lm. It’s been designed for home entertainment and not for professional use, so when it comes to watching films or TV, it’s perfect and relatively cheap for the price. However, if you take that forward to professional use and try to use it to run presentations or as a projection screen in a workshop, then it is a little bit lacklustre.

So, removing it completely from that professional environment, its use as a home entertainment projector is exceptionally good, with it easily connecting to a mini PC, laptop, and other multimedia devices, and being able to project the content with absolute ease. There are other things I really liked about the projector when it came to connectivity options, especially the fact that I could easily connect it to my Apple iPhone 15 Pro and use AirPlay to cast YouTube and Apple TV directly from my smartphone without needing to connect anything to the projector at all other than power.

When it comes to the setup of the projector, it is a little bit traditional. You place the projector a good distance from the wall, position it by adding a book underneath the front to raise the level of the lens, and then go through the keystone and vertical correction (if the projector itself hasn’t managed to do that for you). You can then adjust the focus using the large ring around the lens. I did find this ring was slightly stiff, so initially, trying to get good focus was a bit difficult, but over time, that ring did loosen up slightly, enabling finer control over the focusing.

Likewise, brightness control was easily adjusted, and although this projector is only 700 lm, that’s bright enough when the curtains are closed. You get a good, bright, and vibrant image with very smooth motion, which is ideal for watching movies. As I’ve been using a lot of 4K projectors recently, the drop back down to 1080p did show a lack of clarity compared to the detail you get with higher resolution. Still, once you start watching a film, that reduction in detail becomes less noticeable, and having a screen of that size in your living room makes it far more immersive than watching something on TV.

On the subject of immersion, the speaker system built into the projector is impressive. Whilst this isn’t a big-name audio system, the depth and clarity of the audio are exceptionally good—ideal for watching movies. What I did like was the fact that, if you wanted to take the level of the audio up a notch, there is a 3.5 mm jack on the back that enables you to plug it into your audio system.

So overall, if you’re looking for a projector to use within workshops or presentations, then the Philips NeoPix 750 Smart isn’t going to be the projector for you. It might be okay for the odd presentation in the evenings, but on a day-to-day basis, it just doesn’t have the feature set that you need. However, if you’re just looking for a really cheap projector to watch films at home in a budget home cinema setup, then this is one of the best projectors out there and perfectly hits the market it’s been designed for.

When you look at the specifications of the NeoPix 750 Smart, it looks like an absolutely ideal option as a budget projector that you can use for all sorts of purposes. But in reality, this is a home cinema projector at the entry-level, and while people wanting to watch films and TV will be more than happy with the visual and audio quality when it comes to professional use, it doesn’t quite cut it.

However, there are still many things to really like about this projector if you take it away from that professional environment. First and foremost, the projection is bright and clear, and even though it’s only 1080p, the image shows exceptional clarity and detail. What I also really like about this projector is the fact that it runs so quietly. Although you can sometimes hear a little bit of noise from the system keeping cool, on the whole, it runs pretty much silently, which is something that not many other projectors can claim.

I also really like LuminOS, and although it is a little bit limited with some apps not being available, it’s extremely easy to use. I found that, even though it’s a proprietary OS, most of the major streaming services had an app available, and they ran well on the system and seemed to be nice and stable. Whilst the LuminOS is good, what I really liked about the NeoPix 750 Smart was the fact that it has so many connection options. Even if you don’t use the LuminOS at all, you can still connect via HDMI and USB as the source for projection, and this gives you plenty of options. Then, you can also use Chromecast or AirPlay directly from your mobile phone. Again, this just adds to its ease of use and functionality.

So, while this isn’t an ideal solution for professional use in photo or video studios or for running workshops, it doesn’t even try to be. This is a very decent budget home cinema projector. For anyone who wants to watch films on the big screen at home but doesn’t want to spend a fortune, this is a great entry-level option.