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We’ve updated this buying guide with all of our latest picks. Church Led Display
Whether you’re planning to build a dedicated theater room or just thinking of upgrading your living-room system to create a more immersive, theater-like experience, we have video and audio recommendations covering every space and budget.
Our AV team spends thousands of hours each year seeking the best-looking and best-sounding home theater equipment. We discuss almost all of the recommendations below (and more) in our home theater, TV, and projector categories, but we understand that it isn’t always clear how everything fits together. This buying guide compiles everything you need in one place.
The size of your theater room greatly influences the projector and screen you choose. Most projectors, including our recommendations, come with a chart to help you determine throw distance (the distance required between the screen and the front of the lens), and you should confirm what your room can accommodate before you buy any gear.
A basement rec room measuring about 300 square feet (20 by 15) is large enough to easily fit a 100- to 120-inch screen and a standard, long-throw projector, but you can use an online calculator to figure out what’s right for your room.
This laser 4K projector delivers a big, bright, beautiful image and has almost all the features you need—except 3D support.
The Epson Home Cinema LS11000 is our favorite 4K projector because it offers a combination of high-end performance and features that you won’t see in any other 4K projector priced lower than $5,000. It delivers a theater-worthy image with great contrast, detail, and color—yet it’s also bright enough for more casual, everyday TV watching. Plus, its laser light source should last through the next decade or longer, with no need for you to pay for replacement bulbs. It’s easy to set up, too, thanks to its motorized focus, zoom, and lens adjustments.
The LS11000 is also a great 4K gaming projector. It produces low input lag and is one of only a few 120-hertz projectors that have high-bandwidth HDMI 2.1 inputs to work with the most advanced 4K gaming consoles and any future 8K sources that might emerge. The only thing missing is support for 3D video.
This projector produces a bright, rich-looking image with more accurate color than most competitors can offer. It’s easy to set up and quiet in operation, but it lacks features like Wi-Fi and Bluetooth support.
We tested a number of projectors around $1,000 or less and found that the BenQ HT2060 had the best picture quality and the easiest setup. Though you have a lot of budget 1080p projectors to choose from, the HT2060 boasts the best combination of black level, brightness, and color accuracy, so it produces a great-looking big-screen movie image. It has a long-lasting LED light source and supports 3D playback and the input of a 4K HDR video signal.
Many budget projectors rely on digital keystoning and zoom to position the image on the screen, which hurts image resolution. The HT2060 offers physical adjustments (1.3x zoom, vertical lens shifting, and adjustable feet) to preserve picture quality. It’s pretty quiet in operation, and its backlit IR remote is easy to use in a darkened room.
Some people may notice the rainbow effect in this DLP projector’s images, and it has no built-in streaming apps. However, a streaming stick connected to one of its HDMI 2.0 inputs solves the latter problem.
This screen is comparable in performance to those costing seven times as much, plus it’s easy to set up and install. It’s a huge bargain for what it offers.
A good home theater screen should be neutral in color and evenly reflect the appropriate amount of the projector’s light back at you while preserving black level. In our tests, we found that the bargain-priced 100-inch Silver Ticket STR Series screen (in a 16:9 aspect ratio, the shape of an HDTV) was nearly as good as the very expensive Stewart Filmscreen StudioTek 130, a go-to screen for a lot of professional home theater designers.
In comparison with some more expensive screens, the Silver Ticket model’s frame and tautness are not quite as fine, but you probably won’t mind, considering that the $2,000-plus savings you get with the Silver Ticket screen can pay for your projector and more.
The AV receiver is the hardest-working component in a home theater. A receiver is both the amplifier and signal processor for your theater. All of the audio and video input signals, and even networking connections, route through the receiver, which processes them and passes them on to your projector and speakers.
Look for a receiver that offers enough inputs for all of your sources—which could include a Blu-ray player, a game console, a media streamer, and more—as well as sufficient power to drive all of your speakers, a good room-calibration system that tailors the system’s performance to your space, and the most up-to-date HDMI connections for your audio and video gear.
This is a great-sounding, easy-to-use, 7.1-channel receiver that has all the necessary features to satisfy movie fans, music lovers, and gamers alike.
The Denon AVR-X1700H is a great-sounding receiver that holds your hand through the setup process and is loaded with features. It has seven amplifier channels that can power a surround-sound speaker system or a Dolby Atmos or DTS:X home theater setup with two overhead speakers.
It can also wirelessly stream music via Bluetooth, Apple AirPlay 2, and the Heos wireless streaming platform. Three of its six HDMI inputs are HDMI 2.1 compatible, so it’s great for gaming on more advanced systems such as the Sony PlayStation 5 and the Microsoft Xbox Series X.
The only negatives we experienced in our testing: The remote’s infrared signal proved to be spotty at times, and the AVR-X1700H can run warm at higher volumes.
The ES15 bookshelf speaker pair sounds great, looks cool, and is surprisingly affordable.
The small ES10 is easy to fit or install just about anywhere, so it’s ideal as a surround speaker.
The ES30 is a good, affordable center-channel match for the ES15 and ES10 speakers in a surround-sound system.
The Polk Signature Elite Series is the best deal we’ve found in a surround-sound speaker system. The Signature Elite line includes a variety of options, but we recommend the ES15 for the front left and right channels, the ES10 as surround speakers, and the ES30 center speaker.
We found that these speakers sounded better than many more-expensive systems we tested. In our tests, the combination of the ES15, ES10, and ES30 delivered a robust, full sound with both stereo and surround sources. And the Signature Elite Series’s design is far more stylish than we expect to see in such an affordable speaker line.
This 10-inch subwoofer offers an ideal blend of bass power and finesse in a compact package, but you can buy it only directly from the manufacturer.
If you think subwoofers are nothing but big, ugly boom machines, the Rogersound Labs Speedwoofer 10S MKII is likely to be a refreshing surprise. It has practically everything one could want in a midpriced subwoofer, offering the power necessary for action-movie soundtracks and the subtlety and precision required for great sound on music recordings.
It incorporates a 10-inch woofer in a ported enclosure, driven by a 400-watt internal amplifier, and it has the necessary connections for you to add it to most any audio setup. Plus, it measures a relatively compact 16 by 15 by 16.75 inches (HWD). But it is sold only through the Rogersound Labs website.
Among those we’ve used, this model comes the closest to being the perfect projector mount.
May be out of stock
The Peerless-AV PRGS-UNV universal projector mount is one of our favorites due to how flexible it is and how easy it is to set up correctly. The mounting arms are highly adjustable and removable, so it can accommodate anything from a tiny DLP projector to a gigantic 4K laser projector. The dials let you make small adjustments to the projector to get it level with the screen and produce the best image without much work.
Don’t have a basement or a spare room to dedicate to your personal cinema? You can still put together a great home theater system—but you may have to make a few compromises.
The main challenge in a living room is accommodating the room’s space, shape, and light. Living rooms aren’t always nice rectangles suitable for a theater orientation, and they often open up to dining rooms, foyers, and kitchens. They may be L-shaped or have stairs, doors, and windows in all the wrong places. Seating may include a sofa and mismatched chairs scattered around the room. They’re also not caves, so light from windows, lamps, or nearby rooms is likely to be leaking (or pouring) in.
We don’t recommend that most people use a projector as their main display in a living room. The location usually has too much ambient light (fixable, but the options are expensive), and a ceiling-hung projector paired with a fixed screen isn’t the look that most families want for their main meet-and-greet space. Ultra-short-throw projection systems are often marketed as TV replacements, but we don’t think they’re the right fit for most people.
Flat-screen TVs, especially large models, are the ideal display for a living-room theater. Because a TV is brighter than a projector-and-screen setup, you can watch with the lights on or the blinds open. And today’s ultra-large flat panels are generally light enough to fit in most TV wall mounts, so you can keep them secure and save space.
This TV delivers stunning picture quality and great features for a relatively reasonable price. But it does not support Dolby Vision HDR.
For the absolute best home theater experience in a living room, we recommend the Samsung S90C Series, our pick for the best OLED TV. Combining an OLED panel with quantum-dot color technology, the S90C delivers stunning 4K HDR imagery for both movies and gaming, and it’s available in sizes from 55 to 83 inches. The Smart Hub smart-TV platform is easy to use, highly responsive, and compatible with all major video and audio streaming services. Plus, OLED TVs have wide viewing angles, so the picture looks great no matter where you’re sitting.
The drawbacks: Samsung TVs don’t support the Dolby Vision HDR format, and OLED TVs carry higher price tags than LCD TVs do, especially at larger screen sizes.
Capable of dazzling brightness and vibrant colors, this TV is a standout performer amongst LCD/LED TVs, but it’s available only in larger screen sizes.
If you’re looking for great performance at a lower price, the TCL QM8 Series is the way to go. Thanks to its mini-LED backlighting and quantum-dot color technology, this 4K LED/LCD TV offers excellent brightness, contrast, and color vibrancy. Despite being one of the brightest TVs we’ve tested, the QM8 still delivers dark black levels with great shadow detail, though it can’t rival OLED in that respect. It also has a 120 Hz refresh rate to produce cleaner, smoother motion.
Like other LCD TVs, the QM8 loses image saturation if you aren’t sitting front and center, but it’s better than many competitors in this regard. It also doesn’t come in a 55-inch or smaller screen size.
This Roku-based TV delivers a satisfying picture for the price, and it supports the latest gaming features. But it can’t get as bright as higher-end LCD TVs, and it has only a 60 Hz refresh rate.
Not all 4K TVs have to be pricey, and TCL continues its streak of creating high-quality TVs under $500 with the TCL 5-Series Roku TV (S555). Our pick for the best 4K TV on a budget, the S555 doesn’t have the same brightness capabilities as a premium LCD TV, but it boasts plenty of advanced technologies to deliver a good-looking image, such as full-array local dimming and quantum-dot color.
It supports all major streaming services via the built-in Roku platform and has four HDMI inputs. Though the 5-Series has some features that are attractive to gamers, its refresh rate caps out at 60 Hz, so the motion isn’t quite as smooth as what you can find on pricier, 120 Hz TVs.
Despite being simple, small, and affordable, this soundbar outperforms many larger, more complicated competitors.
The Polk MagniFi Mini AX proves that you can’t judge a book by its cover. Our pick for the best soundbar packs a lot of punch in a discreet design. Tested against larger soundbars with more features and higher price tags, the MagniFi Mini AX came out on top with our listening panel. Its five-speaker array and SDA technology produce surprisingly spacious sound for movies and TV shows, and it can stream audio over Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and Apple AirPlay 2.
Thanks to its 14.5-inch width, it can fit almost anywhere, and it offers an HDMI eARC connection, as well as optical digital-audio and analog-audio inputs. The soundbar also supports Alexa voice control. Optional surround speakers are available for purchase separately.
If immersive surround sound is your top priority, we also have more-expensive recommendations in our guide to the best soundbars.
Flat-panel TVs look their best when they’re hanging from the wall like a theater screen. Mounting your TV gives your room a cleaner, more professional look and frees up floor space that would be better used by a lounging pet. Plus, it’s more secure.
Be sure to confirm that the TV wall mount you buy will support your TV’s weight and its specific VESA bolt-hole pattern. The ability to adjust the TV in the mount is also critical, lest you end up with a crooked TV that you need to remount.
A sturdy build and helpful post-installation adjustments make this model our favorite tilting TV wall mount.
After all of our research and testing, we concluded that the best tilting TV mount is the Sanus VMPL50A-B1. This UL-approved mount is designed for TVs ranging in size from 32 to 85 inches and can hold up to 150 pounds. It is compatible with 22 VESA patterns, and ours came with 10 bolt sizes, the largest selection of any mount we tested.
This Sanus model has one of the thinnest profiles of the mounts we tested, holding the back of the TV about 1.8 inches off the wall—yet when tilted, it still gives you room to get a hand behind the TV for wiring purposes. In our tests, installation was quick and easy, and after the TV is in place, the mount remains fully adjustable, both side to side (in case your studs aren’t in exactly the right place) and for level correction.
This model offers a long extension, easy adjustments, and smooth motion. Its long mounting bars provide a lot of flexibility for you to center the TV on a wall.
If you prefer a full-motion mount that lets you point the TV at different parts of the room, the UL-approved Sanus VLF728-B2 (also sold as the Sanus BLF328-B1) works with TVs ranging from 42 to 90 inches. It can extend a TV up to 28 inches off the wall—farther than most—which also gives it a wide range of side-to-side pivot. To stabilize the weight of the TV, the arms are large, but when you press the mount back against the wall, it has a thin profile of just over 2 inches.
The mount’s smooth extension and pivoting motion give it a high-quality feel, and the adjustments, from the tilt lock to the screen leveling, are easy to use. This Sanus mount is large, but its 32-inch-wide mounting bars allow for greater flexibility with placement. It is compatible with 16 VESA patterns.
Some of our home theater recommendations aren’t specific to the type of room you’re setting up (dedicated theater or living room). Here you’ll find the devices and components necessary to complete any home theater setup.
This player provides the best image quality with 4K Ultra HD discs, thanks to custom tone mapping that optimizes HDR video for your display.
If you want the highest quality from your Ultra HD Blu-ray discs, the Panasonic DP-UB420 is the best player we have tested under $300. While 4K content looked essentially identical through the other players, this model’s optional HDR Optimizer feature improved the image on most HDR displays.
The DP-UB420 also offers superior upscaling of Blu-ray and DVD discs, so it can make your entire disc collection look better. It supports the HDR10, HDR10+, and HLG high dynamic range formats—but not Dolby Vision.
This player supports all the major HDR formats, including Dolby Vision.
The Panasonic DP-UB820 performs very similarly to the DP-UB420 but adds support for the Dolby Vision HDR standard, which offers even better picture quality with Dolby Vision–compatible discs and TVs.
In addition, this model provides more audio-connection options, has a front-panel display, and is faster in use than the DP-UB420, but it costs significantly more.
The Chromecast player offers an intuitive interface, intelligent search, a useful remote, and support for 4K HDR video, including Dolby Vision.
Even though Blu-ray discs provide a better picture and better audio quality than streaming services, we know that most people depend on streaming services for most of their movie watching. While most Blu-ray players, TVs, and other video sources have a few streaming services built in, a dedicated media streamer offers the most robust way to get your online media.
After researching and testing every major streaming media player, we’ve determined that the Google Chromecast with Google TV is the one you should buy. The menu system does the best job of finding and organizing content in comparison with other media streaming devices. Instead of presenting a home screen with a bunch of separate streaming services (such as Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime Video), Google TV groups all your recently watched shows and movies together along with your watchlist of preferred content—making it easier and faster for you to find what you want to watch.
The player has a compact size and comes with a useful remote that supports voice search through Google Assistant.
This remote can control 15 AV components, including Bluetooth-based devices, and the button layout is intuitive. But it lacks backlighting and activity buttons, and programming advanced tasks can be challenging.
The remotes that come with your AV devices do a good to fair job of operating the device they were each designed to operate—but if you’ve ever done the remote shuffle just to watch a movie, you can understand the appeal of having one remote to control everything in your home theater.
There’s very little competition in the do-it-yourself universal remote control market these days, especially after Logitech’s discontinuation of its popular Harmony remote line. If you have a complex home theater system and you want to integrate control of lighting and other smart-home equipment, your best bet is to turn to a local specialty AV retailer that can create a more-personalized control system from a company like Crestron or Control4. It’s a more expensive option, but if done properly, it will result in a much more satisfying experience.
If you just need to control your AV gear and want a do-it-yourself setup, the Sofabaton U2 Universal Remote Control is a well-designed universal remote that offers a lot more features than you might expect for around $50. It can control up to 15 devices, including both infrared- and Bluetooth-based AV devices. It has an intuitive button layout that provides most of the control options you need, and its OLED screen lets you easily switch between the different AV devices you want to control. You can program the U2 using a convenient setup app for iOS and Android, and the app provides a lot of customization options to reassign what the remote’s buttons can do.
The downsides: The U2 lacks backlighting, and it has no dedicated activity buttons for grouping devices together to perform tasks such as “Watch TV” or “Watch a Movie.” You can still create activities and assign them to whatever buttons you choose, but you have to figure out all the programming yourself—and the learning curve may be too difficult for someone who has never programmed a universal remote.
Of all the antennas we tested, this passive, non-amplified antenna gave us the best results on average, and it’s affordable and easy to install.
This amplified antenna incorporates a signal-level meter that lets you quickly find the best antenna position, but it’s a bit lacking in installation flexibility.
If you’ve cut the cord but still want the live-TV experience—be it for sports, news, special events, or local foreign-language broadcasts—an inexpensive TV antenna could be the best way to go. We recommend starting with the Best Buy Essentials Thin Indoor HDTV Antenna because, no matter where we hung this antenna, it was always one of the best in pulling in the most TV channels. The antenna has a 10-foot cable; its flat design makes it easy to hang on a wall, and it’s reversible, with black and white sides. This antenna is passive, so it doesn’t need to connect to an AC outlet—all you have to do is plug it into your TV.
However, if you live in a remote area where pulling over-the-air (OTA) TV channels is difficult, the amplified RCA ANT3ME1 may be a better option. Its built-in LED signal-level meter makes positioning easier, so you can get as many channels as possible without having to readjust it constantly. The meter itself is user-friendly and easy to read, and with careful tuning this RCA model occasionally offered better results than the Best Buy Essentials antenna.
The RCA antenna is also reversible, with black and white sides, and its total cable length of 12 feet makes it easier to hide. That said, it isn’t a passive model—you need to plug the amplifier into an AC power outlet, rather than straight into the TV.
This inexpensive but well-built HDMI cable is available in many lengths, and in our tests it handled 4K HDR video with no issues.
You’ll need a few HDMI cables for your home theater—just don’t pay too much for them. The Monoprice 4K Certified Premium High Speed HDMI Cable is a great choice because it can transmit any current video standard up to 4K video at 60 Hz, it has Ethernet data and Audio Return Channel capabilities, and it comes with a lifetime warranty.
If you’re a gamer who needs to pass higher-bandwidth 4K 120 Hz signals, consider the Monoprice 8K Ultra High Speed HDMI Cable instead.
HDMI cables send data digitally, so despite what some manufacturers claim, you’ll find no video- or audio-quality difference among HDMI cables. Basically, all you need is for the picture and sound to make it from the source to the display; a more expensive cable won’t do it better or improve the picture or sound. The only difference is that some older cables can’t send 4K HDR—but our pick can. We have details on how HDMI cables work, as well as a discussion of our evaluation methods, in our full guide to HDMI cables.
This speaker wire impressed all of our audiophile ears.
Don’t believe the hyperbole from high-end speaker-wire manufacturers. Yes, you need good speaker wire for your home theater system, but you don’t need to spend a ton of money for it. We evaluated a wide assortment of speaker wires, assembling a panel of experienced audio reviewers for brand-concealed listening tests. Our testing showed that the best speaker wire for the money is the 12-gauge Monoprice Speaker Wire 2747, which produced even better sound than wire from a high-end brand costing 100 times more.
This article was edited by Adrienne Maxwell and Grant Clauser.
Grant Clauser is the senior editor for the smart-home and audio/video categories. He has been reporting on technology since 1999 and has been an invited speaker at events including CES and CEDIA. He has completed certification classes from THX, ISF, and Control4. He also teaches poetry classes. Really.
Kathryn Rath is an updates writer covering audio, video, and smart home at Wirecutter. She previously reported on movies and television shows for Screen Rant. In her free time, she enjoys reading, creative writing, and making music.
by Geoffrey Morrison and Adrienne Maxwell
Skip the cinema this summer and enjoy a movie night in your backyard.
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Wedding Led Display Wirecutter is the product recommendation service from The New York Times. Our journalists combine independent research with (occasionally) over-the-top testing so you can make quick and confident buying decisions. Whether it’s finding great products or discovering helpful advice, we’ll help you get it right (the first time).