How to know when buying a projector
Things To Know Before Buying A Projector
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are you looking to buy a projector for
your home or business I'll let you in on
a secret there is no one best projector
only the projectors that are most
suitable for a particular roll
projectors are built for a wide variety
of purposes from tiny portable low
brightness Pico and palmtop models to
big bright models for business at Home
Entertainment let's take a look at some
of the features that make a projector
appealing to different audiences you
might think the brighter of projectors
output the better but that isn't always
the case if you're looking at an LED
based micro projector like the AAA XA P
2 B these models are limited in
brightness usually 1000 lumens or less
but they also tend to be small and
highly portable and many can operate for
a couple of hours at least from built-in
batteries away from AC power home
entertainment projectors such as the Ben
Q th 671 St on the other hand are
destined for living rooms or family
rooms and they need to compete with
ambient lights so they tend to be fairly
bright more than 2000 lumens don't mix
these home entertainment models with
home theater projectors which are meant
to operate in true theater dark
conditions and seldom exceed 2000 lumens
then you have business projectors such
as this 3,300 lumen Epson II X 30 to 60
they tend to be bright and for large
venues and auditoriums
they can be very very bright say 4000 to
6000 lumens the larger business
projectors are less portable and many of
them are best placed on a rolling card
for moving them room to room they might
even be permanently mounted most
projectors use either an LCD or a DLP
light engine DLP projectors are based on
Texas Instruments digital light
projection technology and they do best
as business or data projectors they tend
to project text well but with occasional
iffy color and frequent light rainbow
artifacts
rainbow artifacts our little red green
blue flashes that can be seen against
dark backgrounds and they can be
particularly distracting in video LCD
projectors on the other hand are free of
this rainbow effect and tend to show
better color making them better for home
theater or home entertainment use than
DLP models nearly all projectors will
have an HDMI input
many of them also will have older vga
and composite video ports and some add
USB ports either the kind for connecting
a cable to a computer from which to
display content or ones that fit USB
thumb drives some also add Ethernet
and/or Wi-Fi connectivity it's easy for
a school or business to perform
maintenance on a fleet of networked
projectors and you can display content
over a network connection as well a
growing number of projectors offer what
is called a short or ultra short throw
that means it allows the projector to
project an image onto a large screen
even when it is placed very close to the
screen this eliminates the problem of
shadows from when people move between
the projector and the screen a downside
of short throw projector x' though is
that they tend to be finicky requiring a
very flat screen projectors like this
are often permanently mounted using a
wall or ceiling mounts evaluating the
audio functions is most important for
home entertainment projectors as well as
for large venue data projectors many of
which have powerful speaker systems with
decent sound quality people with a home
theater room generally buy a separate
audio system and many home theater
projectors lack speakers because of this
speakers in Pico and palmtop projectors
tend to be low volume and often barely
audible here we have touched on the
essential features of the various types
of projectors you're likely to encounter
and our reviews we evaluate each
projector based on features performance
intended audience and price be sure to
check out our projector reviews at WWDC
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