Casiris A6 4K laser projector hands-on: Triple laser with great colors and low noise levels ^↺

The power button is on the right side of the front, on top. This would have been much better placed somewhere in the middle of the device. When setting up, you need to move the device depending on the desired image size and alignment; since you grab the rather heavy device on the sides to move it, I accidentally hit the touch-sensitive power switch several times during setup and the projector switched itself off - quite annoying.

On the underside there are threads for attaching to a bracket, which probably wouldn't be used as often with UST projectors like this one. There are two fans on each side.

The window for the laser light source is not in the middle as you might expect, but rather at the front, although it is of course oriented diagonally upwards towards the back. You should not look in here, as this could very seriously damage your eyes.

Most of the connections are on the back of the device. Only the USB-A port 1 can be found on the left side, making it easier to reach as a playback input (for example for a USB stick) since after all you should under no circumstances look into the laser beams, something that could easily happen when handling the back of the projector when it is switched on. 

On the back and next to the power plug are the other connections, which are all quite close together, especially the two HDMI ports. The latter can output 4K at 60 Hz.

Although setup is very simple in theory, problems can arise in practice given that, unlike better non-laser projectors, the A6 does not automatically align via lens shift.

Because UST projectors are only a few centimeters below the screen or wall being projected on, and the projector beam shoots diagonally upwards, even a small increase in the distance to the (screen) wall greatly enlarges the image. At a distance of just 4 cm (~1.6 in) from the screen, we already had a screen size of over 140 cm (55 inches) diagonally.

For the recommended screen size of 100 inches (approx. 2.5 m), the distance between the projector and the screen only needs to be 26 cm (10 inches).

A first basic alignment of the laser projector is done by simply physically moving it (changing the screen size) and adjusting the height of the four corners of the device (trapezoid correction). All four feet can be adjusted in height by screwing or unscrewing them.

In addition, there is the 8-point correction in the projector's menu: Here you can select 3 points on each side and drag them in the desired direction.

In my case, the wall revealed an unsightly dent that could not be compensated for at all. Luckily I also had a screen on hand, where the display immediately looked much smoother and nicer overall, this time with less of a reddish shade.

Unfortunately, the edges of my old canvas are slightly wavy. While that doesn't seem to be a problem at all on the lower edge, there are unsightly peaks in the corners of the upper edge, which is farther from the projector. Even with the 8-point correction, these cannot be completely compensated for. If you raise the center of the upper edge further, there is only a bulge in the middle, and the peaks at the corners cannot be further minimized by the corresponding points.

Much more dramatic, however, is the process of adjusting image sharpness. It's natural that the bottom edge of the image, which is close to the projector, is displayed straight and sharp, while the top edge of the A6's image is both difficult to align and hard to sharpen. The weak sharpness control in the menu contributes to this: I can only see a pre-made image here, but not my display.

The display doesn't serve to evaluate the actual image sharpness very well, so you have to guess, close the menu, judge the sharpness of your own picture, go back into the menu, adjust again, get out again and so on. This is very annoying, when instead it should simply use the current user display to focus.

Ok, enough nagging about the subpar setup process; that's because despite the image sharpening and alignment problems, the subjective image quality is very good. Surprisingly, when watching 4K video material, you hardly notice the blurring at the edges.

Even the Casiris intro when the projector is started up impresses with rich colors and animations that can't really be reproduced in the photos here.

The projector plays 4K material with 2200 ANSI lumens, which makes it a bit darker than the other two projectors in our test, although that should hardly be noticeable in practice. In any case, it's still advisable to darken the room as much as possible. Although the manufacturer claims that a great display quality is possible even in daylight, the daylight images presented on the website make us doubt whether they are real or not. Content can still be recognized well in daylight, but the colors and contrasts are noticeably worse and the image is paler and more washed out.

In a darkened room, the projector shows its strength and lets colors pop and contrasts come into their own. Watching 4K videos is definitely a treat.

The projector can also be used for gaming, but is less suitable for it given the refresh rate of only 60 Hz. More than this isn't really possible for the time being, since the pixel shift process causes the optics to "shake" at 120 or 240 Hz in order to be able to display the various full HD images for 4K resolution one after the other in a shifted manner quickly enough.

The role of the playback device is also extremely important, something that is often forgotten. My laptop was anything but optimal: the color profile preset for the projector produced values in the CalMAN software that were completely wrong. A calibration via i1Profiler, for example, brought the color temperature down from a crazy 15,000 K to the targeted 6,500 K and reduced the DeltaE values considerably. Nevertheless, there is still a lot of leeway for manual calibration directly on the projector.

With a different device such as a Blu-ray player or a USB stick, the calibration should be quite different as well. The screen used also plays a role and can make it necessary to re-calibrate the projector if it is changed.