The second-best-selling projector on Amazon this week cannot play Netflix, YouTube or anything else on its own. The HAPPRUN H1 has no operating system, no Wi-Fi and no app store, and its listing tells buyers to plug in a streaming stick. It sold for $84.92 on October 1, a price it has held to within a cent since the start of August. Seventeen places lower, at $53.99, the Thunrlge HY300 Pro runs Android 11, connects over Wi-Fi 6, and says in its bullet text that Netflix is built in.
On the surface that is an easy call: the cheaper machine does more. Read both listings properly and it turns around. The two are separated by $30.93, a ratio of about 1.6 to 1, and almost everything that matters about the extra money is in the parts of the page most shoppers skip.
The H1 uses a single LCD panel with a native resolution of 1920 x 1080. The Thunrlge’s structured specification table lists a native 1280 x 720, also on an LCD panel. Both accept 1080p and 4K sources, and both say so loudly, but the Thunrlge scales whatever it is sent down to 720 lines. On a 100-inch image that is the difference between text in a streaming menu that is crisp and text that has visibly soft edges.
Amazon’s own summary of the Thunrlge’s reviews says buyers are impressed with its “1080P Full HD picture quality.” That is what the box art tells them, and it is a useful reminder that review summaries describe what owners believe they bought. The H1’s summary also leads with picture quality, calling it clear and sharp, and in its case the panel backs that up.
Brightness is harder to compare because only one of them publishes a figure. The H1 quotes 300 ANSI lumens in its specification table and on its main image. The Thunrlge gives a contrast ratio of 1,500:1 and an image size of 40 to 130 inches but no lumen rating in the table at all. Its listing also puts “130 x 40 x 1 inches” in the field for the product’s physical dimensions, which is the image-size range typed into the wrong box. Neither listing is a model of care. The H1’s lists a 70-watt power draw in one field and a 200-watt “lamp” in another, on an LED machine.
This is where the cheaper machine’s advantage starts to look thinner. Most projectors at this price ship without Netflix, because the service only supports its app on hardware it has certified, and we noted last week that two of the Thunrlge’s best-selling neighbours do not list it. The Thunrlge does, but the same bullet carries a note that reads like a troubleshooting tip: if scrolling or clicking inside Netflix gives trouble, switch the remote into mouse mode.
A TV app built for a remote does not need a mouse pointer. A phone or tablet build of an app, installed on an Android box, often does. We cannot confirm which version ships on the Thunrlge, and buyers should ask the seller before relying on it, but a listing that has to explain how to drive Netflix with a cursor is telling you something about the experience. The app screenshot in the Thunrlge’s gallery is also worth a second look: alongside Netflix and Spotify it shows France.tv, Molotov and Eurosport Player, French services that are of no use to a buyer in the United States. That image was clearly made for a different market and reused here.
The H1 sidesteps the question by not trying. Plug in a Fire TV Stick 4K Plus, which Amazon was selling for $37.99 on October 1, and it gets every major streaming service in certified form, with a remote designed for a television interface. The total is $122.91. HAPPRUN also sells the same H1 with an officially licensed Google TV system built in, as a separate variant on the same listing, for $269.93.
That last number is the interesting one, because it puts a price on certification. The licensed version of the H1 costs $185 more than the plain one, and more than the whole Thunrlge five times over. It also costs more than a machine designed around licensed apps from the start. Dangbei’s N2 mini was back in stock on October 1 at $199. It runs Netflix, YouTube and Prime Video under licence on its own Linux system, has a native 1080p panel like the H1, and handles focus and keystone automatically, which neither of the two machines here does fully. For a buyer whose real requirement is “Netflix without a stick,” it is the cheaper way to get there than paying HAPPRUN for its Google TV edition.
The H1 has 13,853 ratings at 4.3 stars, the Thunrlge 2,267 at 4.4. Amazon’s AI summaries of the written reviews are more revealing than the stars. For the H1, buyers praise the picture, the easy setup and the value, but reliability is described as mixed, with a share of owners saying their unit stopped working entirely; Bluetooth pairing, the built-in speaker and brightness all draw split opinions. For the Thunrlge, owners say it connects to Wi-Fi and Bluetooth soundbars easily and works well for family movie nights, and the one consistent complaint is that the speaker does not go loud enough.
Neither summary should be over-read. The H1’s sample is six times larger and has had far longer to collect failures, which flatters the newer listing on reliability. The Thunrlge’s comments are also the kind a 720p projector earns in a dark bedroom, where resolution and lumens matter least.
The physical designs point at different rooms anyway. The Thunrlge is the familiar white cylinder on a round base that rotates through 180 degrees, made to tilt up and throw a picture onto a ceiling, with automatic vertical keystone. The H1 is a conventional box that sits on a table, a tripod or a ceiling mount, with Bluetooth that sends audio out to headphones or a speaker but does not accept video. HAPPRUN backs it with a 24-month warranty.
Put plainly, the Thunrlge is the better buy only for someone who wants a projector for watching in bed, will use it a few nights a month, and cares more about not owning a second remote than about picture quality. For that buyer, $53.99 for a self-contained box is fair, as long as the Netflix question is settled with the seller first.
Everyone else should start from the H1. Native 1080p is the single biggest picture-quality difference available under $100, and the stick route gets certified apps for a combined price that is still well under the cost of the cheapest machines with licensed software inside. That is not much of a recommendation for a projector with no apps of its own, but it is the honest one, and it explains why a box that cannot stream on its own has sat near the top of Amazon’s chart since at least the start of August. Our full side-by-side is on the HAPPRUN H1 vs Thunrlge HY300 Pro comparison page, and the wider field is in our best projectors under $100 for 2026.