NEC NP-P474U Business and Education Projector Review

After reviewing a slew of beastly business and education projectors, the NEC NP-P474U looks positively tiny. I would call it medium-small, measuring 16.5” wide, 13” deep, and 5.6” tall, but don’t let its size fool you. This LCD, WUXGA (1920 x 1200) projector packs a serious punch with a wall-melting 4,700 lumens. Geared toward the corporate and higher education environments, the NP-P474U is ideal for applications where a bright, sharp image is a must. With all those lumens, the NEC NP-PA474U will be able to combat the uncontrollable ambient light that is the norm for board rooms, conference rooms, and classrooms. Speaking of classrooms – NEC has a great education program offers a great discount on this projector.

We wish to thank Epson America for sponsoring this year’s Best Classroom Projectors Report. 

The NEC NP-PA474U is an $1,849, 4,700 lumen projector with WUXGA (1920 x 1200) resolution, which is the business and education world’s 1080p. NEC designed the NP-PA474U with installation challenges in mind, providing advanced installation features to make sure the projector can work in multiple environments with less-than-ideal installation conditions. It has horizontal and vertical lens shift, several geometric correction choices, and HDBaseT to make things even easier. That HDBaseT is a major plus for higher education where classroom sizes can be rather large – this allows for signal to be run across a much longer distance than with projectors that lack this feature, but more on that on the Special Features Page.

It has a lamp life of up to 8,000 hours in Eco, 6,000 in Normal Eco, and 4,000 at full power. This is getting to be typical of lamp based projectors, which generally run around 3,500 hours to 8,000 hours in their claims. If you were to have the projector running for 20 hours a week all year long at full power, the lamp would last you just under 4 years before needing to be replaced. Alternatively, if running the projector in Eco for the same amount of time, you’d be extending the lamp life to just over 7.5 years, though you’d be sacrificing some lumens – not a good idea if you’ve got big glass windows with no shades, as is the case in some conference rooms and board rooms. Whatever the case may be, hopefully these numbers give you a rough idea of how long the lamp will last for your applications.

NEC sent me their Multi-Presenter Stick, which is totally awesome as many manufacturers who offer these optional multi-presenter sticks do not send them with the projectors, so we don’t get to review them. In fact, because of this, I thought the second box they sent was for an interchangeable lens, and was surprised to see the dongle. So, that answers the question – can multiple presenters be hooked up to the NP-P474U simultaneously and easily switch between devices? Absolutely. We’ll get more into the features of that Multi-Presenter Stick on the Special Features Page as well.

The NEC NP-P474U has one of the best warranties around – a 3-year parts and labor including InstaCare next day exchange, with 1 year on the lamp. I’m a big fan of warranties. My Epson Home Cinema 5040UB had a problem with the power receptacle – I called them up, told them the issue, and I had a new unit out to me within two days (I called on a holiday). For three whole years, you can have the same peace of mind that your NEC NP-P474U will be replaced quickly, with not much downtime at all. I’ll discuss the warranty further in a moment – in the interest of not giving away the whole show on the first page, let’s move on to that Special Features Page I keep talking about.