As the name suggests, CineBeam 4K UHD is powered by a laser light engine. This one uses two lasers, one red and one blue. If they operate conventionally, they would excite phosphor to produce white light. The main advantage of this kind of engine is the super long life: 20,000 hours is the rating for this one. That's four hours a day, every day for thirteen years. LG says that the full on/off contrast ratio is 1 million to 1 and the brightness is 2,700 ANSI Lumens.

The picture is formed with DLP technology and offers a resolution of 3,840 by 2,160 pixels. Most likely it uses one of Texas Instruments' four-way pixel-shifting 0.47-inch digital micromirror devices. These are quite effective at delivering UltraHD resolution. The projector also supports HDR10, HLG and Dynamic Tone Mapping.

We've seen a lot of short-throw projectors appearing lately, but this is not one of them. It sits back in the room, some metres from the screen. That allows some installation flexibility since it includes a 1.6x zoom lens and both horizontal and vertical lens shift (these move the image side to side and up and down without distortion).

Where this projector gets unusual are the built-in smart TV features. There's no TV tuner, but there is a smart TV engine, employing LG's excellent webOS 5.0 operating system. Of course, this can dial into bring up all manner of streaming services such as Netflix and ABC iView, along with other smart features. LG doesn't say, but it's highly likely that the projector incorporates Wi-Fi, avoiding the need for an additional cable.

The LG CineBeam 4K UHD has two built-in speakers and is apparently Dolby ATMOS compatible, but we don't expect anyone will ever use this. A large high resolution projected image (LG says up to 300 inches!) simply must be accompanied by quality sound of matching scale. 

The projector has only just been launched in Korea, so there's no word yet on pricing or availability in Australia. Rest assured, StereoNET already has its name down for a review sample.