CVIA lumens and ANSI lumens are the two most mainstream brightness measurement standards for projectors at present. Many users cannot distinguish the difference between the two, resulting in confusion in parameter comparison when purchasing products. ANSI lumen is an American industry standard with a long history, while CVIA lumen is a new national standard specially formulated for Chinese household projector use scenarios, which is more in line with the actual use environment of domestic users. There are obvious differences in test standards, environmental adaptation and data authenticity between the two.

In terms of test standards and methods, ANSI lumens adopt the traditional 9-point sampling test in a standard dark room environment. The test environment is completely dark, with no ambient light interference, and the tested brightness data is the pure theoretical effective brightness. CVIA lumens adopt a new domestic standard test method, which simulates the real household light environment, adds soft ambient light interference in the test process, and conducts multi-point sampling and averaging. The test conditions are closer to the daily living room and bedroom use environment, and the data is more practical.

In terms of data performance and environmental adaptability, the same projector’s CVIA lumen value is slightly lower than the ANSI lumen value, but more authentic. The ANSI standard dark room test environment is too ideal. In actual household use, there is always ambient light such as natural light and indoor light, resulting in the actual brightness effect of the projector lower than the ANSI nominal value. CVIA lumens take ambient light interference into account in advance, and the nominal brightness is highly consistent with the actual daytime and indoor use effect, which can truly reflect the projector’s bright light resistance ability.

In terms of application scenarios, ANSI lumens are mostly used in early foreign projector products and engineering projectors, while CVIA lumens are the unified mandatory standard for domestic household projectors, with higher authority and reference value. For household users, CVIA lumen parameters can more accurately judge the daytime viewing effect of the projector, while ANSI lumens are easy to have data virtual high problem. To sum up, CVIA lumens are more suitable for domestic household scenarios with higher authenticity, and ANSI lumens are suitable for professional dark room and engineering projection scenarios.

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