Brightness: LED projectors are ideal for dark rooms, while laser projectors are best for rooms with ambient light.

Lifespan: LED projectors last 20-30k hours, while laser projectors go up to 40k hours, but consider actual usage.

Portability: LED projectors are lighter and more portable, making them better for moving around.

Once you're looking for a truly large format display, say over 80 inches, flat panel technology becomes uneconomical real fast. That's the time to look for projectors, but these days the first major decision you'll have to make is whether you want an LED or laser model. Here's how they compare in the most important ways.

The achilles heel of projection has always been brightness. That's still true for modern projection, but the days of needing a pitch-black room to make out anything in the image are long gone.

Both modern laser and LED projectors are plenty bright, but one of the key selling points of laser projector technology is higher brightness levels. So, if you need to project an image in a room that gets ambient light, then laser projectors are generally the right choice. If you're setting up a home theater in a darkened room or one that can be darkened as needed, then LED projectors offer plenty of vibrance and image quality in their own right. LED projectors with a high enough brightness rating can also be used in rooms with moderate light, of course.