NEC NP-ME331W Portable Projector Review - Performance

Posted on March 24, 2017 by Art Feierman

NEC NP-ME331W Projector Review – Performance: Brightness, Custom Picture Settings, Noise

Brightness

Header Content
Picture Mode	Brightness (Lumens)	Avg. Color Temp.
High-Bright	3346	6338
Presentation	2897	7415
Video	2288	7749
Movie	2468	6673
Graphic	2306	7732
sRGB	2483	6665
DICOM Sim.	2331	6456

All brightness measurements (i.e, taken at the center screen position) were made with the projector’s zoom lens at it mid-point and with the projector's lamp operating in normal (high) mode. The color brightness is the same as the white brightness, as is typical for projectors using 3LCD technology.

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With the fairly wide zoom range of this projector’s lens, the brightness as compared to using a mid-zoom setting increased by 5% at maximum zoom and decreased by approx. 13% at minimum zoom.

Brightness measurements reported in the above table were with the projector operating in normal (i.e., high) lamp mode. Setting the lamp to the middle lamp mode reduced the brightness by approx. 30% and the Eco mode reduced the measured brightness by approx. 50%.

Brightness uniformity was fairly good for this class of projector with a measured approx. 27% drop in brightness from the center of the image to the dimmest corner (i.e., top-right) of the image with the lens set for maximum zoom (typically the worst case setting).

Color uniformity appeared fairly good when projecting a full screen white test image with a just a little visible color shift near the right edge of the image.

Custom Picture Settings

While the Movie factory preset picture mode offered a good picture, I decided to use the user adjustments to improved upon the Movie picture mode for my viewing of movies and TV with this projector. First I found the default gamma setting produced some lost of image contrast and image depth, as compared to using a more ideal gamma curve. I change the "gamma correction" setting to "natural" and this corrected the gamma to a near 2.1 value across the grey scale.

Next I went into the projector's settings for "White Balance" and adjusted the values as shown in the photo below.

With these adjustment I check the color balance and found that it tracked very well across the grey scale, as shown in the photo below.

This projector, as with most projectors of this class, does not have a color management system (CMS) so the primary and secondary color points cannot be calibrated. Even without have a CMS availabe to fine tune the colors, I found the colors to have good-to-very good accuracy for a business/education projector, as indicted in the following diagram.

The squares on the above figure are the ideal color points and the circles are the measured values.

Overall, I would rate the while balance and color accuracy to be very good for this class of projector.

Noise

The projector’s noise (mainly fan noise) is spec’ed at 36 dB in normal (high lamp) mode, which is typical for a business/classroom projector rated at around 3000 lumens brightness. The noise level in Eco mode is specified at 29 dB and this mode does decrease fan noise noticeably as compared to normal lamp mode. The bottom line is this projector should be quiet enough for use in just about any conference room or classroom environment.