Philips GamePix 900 review

For a first debut into a hotly contested arena, Philips is really going in strong with its GamePix 900 gaming projector. This 4K, 60 fps behemoth boasts some top-tier specs and hardware for an outstanding price, at least if you pre-order the thing.

That is certainly the biggest draw to it right now. If you're in the US, you can pick one of these up for about $600 if you buy before the product launches in April 2025, and that's only applicable to the first 1000 orders (there's a handy ticker on the pre-order page that tells you exactly how many are left). Still, that's a special introductory price, which is, at least on the surface, a very wild way of entering a market segment, but an effective one nonetheless. I can guarantee you, they're not going to make a profit on those first thousand units, that's for sure.

Outside of the pre-purchase window, the standard retail price slides in at around $999 US, or £819 in the UK. That's not bad, but not exactly revolutionary.

Given the hardware it has to hand, it puts it in line with projectors like Acer's Predator GM712, which similarly features the same Texas Instruments DLP display tech to achieve those resolutions and latencies and equally comes in at about the same cost. It is worth mentioning, however, that the GM712 has been out now for several years.

If you're aware of the projector marketplace right now, then 4K units like this and their equivalent specs are pretty much a dime a dozen. If they can do 4K at 60 Hz, they can do 1080p at 240 Hz, with reduced latency as they do it. The higher the res, the greater the technical latency. This isn't like MPRT or grey-to-grey; however, it's a lot smoother than that, so do bear it in mind. Philips won't advertise its 4K latency because of that, but if you decide to opt for the 4K mode, you're looking at an input lag of around 12 ms or higher, at 120 Hz that drops to 8 ms, and at 240 Hz (at 1080p), you nail down that 6 ms response which it is advertising.

As for other key specs, Philips has it rated at about 1,000 lumens (ANSI) or so; if we compare that to the GM712, it's not quite as bright. The GM712 clocks in at its standard mode at around 4,000 lumens (around 1,667 ANSI). Fortunately, lower brightness does give you a far longer-lasting bulb, and the GamePix is earmarked for a life-span of around 30,000 hours or so (about 3.4 years if you used it for 24-hours a day, every day for that duration). In my own time testing it, I never felt it was too dim at all, certainly at night in my office, and I even tested it against a dark gray wall, with little change in that experience.

Outside of those basic stats, however, the GamePix is incredibly barebones by comparison to some of those other units. There's no wireless connectivity, no Bluetooth, no Google Casting, AirPlay, Android TV, or anything of the sort. I/O is also incredibly limited, with only a single HDMI port, a USB Type-A power out, a headphone jack, and that's about it.

There's also no automated feature here either. No auto-keystone, no auto-focus—it all has to be dialed in by hand. That's not the end of the world, and the reality is if you're setting this up in a mancave or gaming den, you're probably going to do it once and then never move it again, but still, it'd have been a nice inclusion here for sure.

Build quality is generally quite average as well, sadly. The housing is just a cheap fingerprint-absorbing black plastic with a slight red accent around the lens, and that's it. There's some good ventilation on the sides, and slick fans that are quiet enough, and it does come with an adjustable front foot, along with a pretty barebones remote, but there's really not a lot to talk about from a pure design perspective. It's certainly nowhere near the caliber of the likes of BenQ's X series units, although those projectors are considerably pricier in contrast. There's no glitz or glam here; still, that could be a good thing. After all, you should be focused on the image, not the device.

And the GamePix 900 delivers on exactly that. Oh boy, image quality—what a treat this thing is to use. It might be barebones, might be quite simple, but the clarity and color is outstanding. 4K absolutely delivers on that premise, with crystal clear definition and beautifully punchy colors, with impressive dark tones, no matter the content you drive through it. Latency, even at 4K, even above that 8 ms mark, is barely noticeable at all. Particularly when configured in its game modes.

Settings are again quite basic. There's little to write home about here. There's a plethora of color profiles, some of them a little odd; "Brightest," for instance, seems to turn the entire image green; standard's a little dim, and movie chucks it into a warmer tone mode, but there's a ton of calibration in here to really dial in contrast, and color tones exactly how you want them.

The speakers are, probably what you'd expect at this price, just average. No treble or top-end, overly bassy, very loud, but they'll do in a pinch, until you get a better solution hooked up.

The GamePix 900 is ultimately a fairly barebones unit. It delivers on the core ethos of what a projector should, and that is exceptional image quality with impressive color accuracy, all while slamming it up onto a seriously large display (120 inches at its max throw). It does that while delivering some impressive latency and a fantastically enjoyable experience as a result. Still, it just lacks that refinement, the feature set, and the build quality that others at its retail price have, and that really does hurt it at its full price.

If you can grab this with that pre-order discount, what you're looking at is one of the best value 4K projection purchases you can make this year. But, and more importantly, if it's at retail, if this is post-April, or if Philips hasn't continued that discount on after the fact, you'd be better served looking elsewhere.