Dell Advanced Projector: P519HL Laser Projector Review – Summary

Dell Advanced Projector P519HL Laser Projector Review – Summary: Summary, Pros, Cons

The Dell Advanced Projector P519HL is a 1080p (1920 x 1080) resolution projector that claims 4,000 lumens. It didn’t quite hit its claim, coming in at 3,312 lumens when measured in Bright Mode at full wide angle. Oh well – most projectors come up to 25% short of claim. This $2,499 projector comes with an excellent 2-year warranty, with the option to purchase up to five years.

The P519HL is suitable for K-12 classrooms (high school, more likely), higher education classrooms, conference rooms, board rooms, and large venue environments such as lecture halls, museums, auditoriums, houses of worship, and entertainment venues. The Dell can project an impressively large image – up to 300” diagonal!

The Dell P519HL has DLP technology, which means it has a color wheel that produces the full color spectrum. Slower color wheels produce something called “the Rainbow Effect,” where you may see rainbow artifacts across the screen if you are sensitive. I am happy to say that I didn’t see any rainbows, and I am typically sensitive to seeing them.

The Dell has a laser light engine with a lifetime claim of up to 20,000 hours. That claim is for both full power and ECO mode, so no need to lose out on hundreds of lumens in order to conserve the light engine life. By comparison, lamp based projectors generally have claims of 4,000 to 8,000 hours at full power. True, lasers generally have a higher up-front cost, but their low maintenance tends to level out that cost over the course of its lifetime.

The Dell Advanced Projector P519HL has a split screen feature, which is useful for presentations where two documents need to be compared simultaneously, as well as other applications for business and education environments. It also has multiple ways to view content in addition to HDMI.

It has a multimedia viewer (on-board media player) that allows you to project images, video, and play audio files, as well as an Office Viewer for viewing Microsoft Office files like Word Documents, Excel Documents, PDFs, and PowerPoint Presentations. You can also use USB to view and display content, use your local area network to project content, and you even the option of wireless networking, using the not-included wireless dongle (WD518).

The Dell P519HL has a simple inputs panel with a single row of connectors. It has good connectivity: a USB Media port, a wired LAN RJ-45 connector, a Powered USB port, two HDMI 1.4a inputs, an Audio In and an Audio Out, and a Service port. It also has some legacy inputs such as the VGA computer connector, and the obligatory RS232 connector for old-school command and control.

The inputs and connectors panel has all of the connectivity you need for basic business and education applications. Its 10-watt stereo speakers are suitable for medium to large K-12 classrooms, conference rooms, and board rooms.

The color on the Dell P519HL is stellar. All four modes have excellent color, though Bright is definitely at the bottom of that totem pole (to be expected). Its best modes are sRGB Mode (2,116 lumens), closely followed by Movie (2,116) , then Presentation (2,061). All modes are bright enough to combat some ambient light, though I would recommend sRGB for situations where you need the best color in a room with uncontrollable ambient light. If your room is too bright for that, use Bright Mode.

• No buttons to quickly select inputs – have to bring up the Source Menu
• Not backlit – would have been nice, but with a remote control like this, it’s not to be expected