Also this white light can be mixed with the red, blue and green light, that is filtered thru the other segments of the color wheel, to boost the brightness for lighter shades of the non-white colors. However, when any heavily saturated colors need to be displayed they will appear dark, or even very dark, as compared to the whites and lighter shades.
Some industry members created a second measure for brightness called "Color Brightness" where the brightness of fully saturated red, blue and green are measured then their brightness values are added to together. With 3-chip projectors (all 3LCD, LCoS and many high end DLP projectors) the color brightness will equal the white brightness. This is also true for single chip DLP projectors that do not use a clear segment in their color wheel.
The IN126STa uses a clear segment in its color wheel and when operating in its brightest picture mode, called "Bright", I measured the color brightness to be only about 30% as bright as the white brightness value shown in the table above. Thus, while this is a (approx.) 3000 lumen projector when white lumens are used as the basis for the brightness rating, it would be only offer about 1000 lumens when color brightness is used as the basis.
For the Video Picture Quality discussed in the previous section of this review, I used the "User" Picture Mode and among the adjustments made, I reduced the "White Intensity" adjustment to its minimum value as this reduces the level of white light being used to produce the projected image. This, along with a very small reduction in the Contrast setting that was made to prevent clipping of near white levels, reduced the brightness to 820 white lumens for this picture mode.
Note: The InFocus IN126STa has the default setting for White Intensity at the maximum for the brightest preset picture modes, but at a mid-level setting as the default for the best out-of-the-box preset picture modes. With these reduced settings less white light is being used, but further improvements in picture accuracy can be achieved by reducing the White Intensity setting to its minimum value.
Using a clear segment to provide boosted white levels, can be useful for some business or classroom applications where maximum brightness is needed to overcome room lighting while having accurate colors are not essential. The alternative of reducing or eliminating the use of the white light on single chip DLP projectors will produce a more accurate picture, but at the penalty of less brightness for whites and lighter shades.
For more information on the topic see our video on Color Brightness - HERE.
Contrast
As noted in the previous section of this review, the IN126STa has excellent contrast for this class of business/education projector. As with other projectors we have reviewed, the manufacturer's specified contrast ratio frequently has little connection to the real world contrast performance of the projector.
Like many other business/classroom projectors, the IN126STa has a feature that when turned on will dim the lamp when dark or black images are being displayed. However, this dimming does not happen fast enough to be of any real would use when projecting videos and even for presentations/still images it doesn't improve the displayed images. Rather it's more of a power saving feature that perhaps will also extend the life of the lamp.
When this feature is present on a projector the manufacturer will usually calculate the contrast ratio by measuring the maximum brightness for a full white image then measure minimum light output when displaying a full black image with the lamp dimming activated.
For a more real world assessment of the contrast ratio of the IN126STa, I turned off the lamp dimming and measured the contrast ratio in Bright Picture Mode where the result was a very respectable ~ 2500:1. This is 5 to 10 times better than what is typical for 3LCD business/education projectors and even 2 times higher what I recently measured for a LCoS based business projector. Among DLP based business/education projectors, this is a better than average result.
Audible Noise
We do not measure the audible noise levels produced by the projectors being reviewed. The InFocus IN126STa is specified to produce a noise level of 32 dB in high lamp mode and 30 dB in Eco mode. These values are a reasonably low for this class of projector. While the noise level, especially with the lamp operating in high mode, is certainly very audible in a quiet room, but is not loud enough prove distracting when this projector is being used in the intended business or classroom environment. I would note that the high lamp mode produces a noise level comparable to some home theater projectors, when such projectors are operating in their normal/high lamp mode. Changing to the “Eco” mode resulted in a noticeable decrease in noise level, but still audible in a quite room.
