Acer S1386WHN Short Throw Projector Review – Hardware 2

Acer S1386WHN Short Throw Projector Review – Hardware 2: Control Panel, Remote Control, The Menus

The Acer SW1386WHN sports an extremely simple control panel and three indicator lights.  The indicator lights appear in a single row just above the control panel, and are for Power, Lamp and Temp.  The control panel itself is a simple arrowed keypad with corner buttons and an enter button in the center.  Start at the top left and going row-by-row, here’s what we have:

The top row consists of an On/Off button, followed by an up arrow that doubles as a vertical keystone correction button, followed by Source, which opens the source selection menu.  The second row consists of a left arrow that doubles as a Volume Down button, Enter in the center, and a right arrow that doubles as a Volume Up button on the right.  The third and final row consists of Back, followed by a down arrow doubling as vertical keystone correction, followed by the Menu button, which accesses the main menu.

Yet another remote without a backlight: it’s annoying, but we’ll move past that.  The remote is pretty decent, and includes a built-in laser pointer.  The remote operates off of two AAA batteries which are included, and fits comfortably in the hand.  The remote is laid out in three distinct sections.  We’ll start at the top and go from left to right.  In the top row, left corner is an On/Off button; press once to turn on, twice to turn off.  In the middle of the top row is the 3D button, which toggles 3D mode, followed by Source.

The next row consists of Ratio, which allows quick toggling between Auto, 16:9, 4:3, and Letterbox aspect ratios.  Next is a red button with what almost appears to be a black tree – this is the laser pointer button; hold to emit a red laser dot for ease of pointing to different areas of the projector screen.  Next is Mode, which toggles between color modes.

The next section is another directional keypad.  As is typical, the up and down arrows double as vertical keystone correction and the left and right arrows double as volume controls.  The center button is Enter, but doubles as a Play/Pause button for the onboard media player.  Below the directional keypad, is a Back button and a Menu button.

The next section consists of a 12 button keypad, and every button has a dual purpose.  The first row is: 1/Free; 2/VGA; 3/HDMI-MHL; 0/Hide.  The Second row is: 4/Page Up; 5/Component; 6/Video; Zoom In.  The last row is made up of: 7/Page Down; 8/Media; 9/LAN-WiFi; Zoom Out.

That does it for our tour of the Acer S1386WHN's hardware! Next up is our discussion of the projector's picture and sound quality.