NEC NP-PA521U Projector Review - Summary

Posted on February 18, 2015 by Art Feierman

NEC NP-PA521 PROJECTOR: Summary The NEC NP-PA521U is a very capable business/installation projector that covers all of the bases with a bright image, good out-of-the-box picture quality (and very good with calibration), great networking support with computer-based control and presentation capabilities, highly flexible mounting options, great support for multi-projector installations, interchangeable lenses for maximum flexibility, and many other features. The sections below summarize some of the capabilities of this projector.

Picture Quality

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The NP-PA521U offers a native 1920 x 1200 resolution and it shows when projecting text or presentations where the text is very clear the finest details visible. For still viewing photos or video this NEC model does a very good job with good out-of-the-box color accuracy that can be further improved with a professional calibration or even making just a few user adjustments.

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Video and Audio Performance

The NP-PA521U puts out a very bright image easily meeting its published 5200 lumen specification in the brightest mode. If offers excellent image sharpness thru the combination of a high native resolution and a quality lens. Brightness and color uniformity were both good and the best out-of-the-box picture modes offered good color accuracy, which can be further improved with calibration. Contrast and black level performance was typical for 3LCD business projector, which is to say not as good as with DLP and LCoS based models, but still perfectly acceptable for the vast majority of business/commercial applications.

The NP-PA521U's built-in 10-watt speaker is adequate for use in a small to moderate size conference room. However, using higher quality external speakers would be appropriate for larger venues and/or where higher fidelity audio is desired, especially for music reproduction.

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Multimedia Capabilities

The NP-PA521U has a lot of capabilities for multimedia presentations including the ability to display split screens, picture-in-picture, support for multi-projector installations with support for edge blending, color and brightness matching, and geometric corrections. It can also projector onto non-flat and/or non rectangular surface for digital signage or other specialized commercial applications. It offers highly flexible mounting options, including being mounted at a 90 deg. angle for projecting images in portrait mode and at virtually any angle for digital signage or multi-projector installations. Extensive network support allows multiple sources/users to participate in multimedia presentations. The bottom line is this model has excellent multimedia capabilities.

Connectivity

The NP-PA521U offers great direct source connectivity with digital inputs (HDMI and DisplayPort) and analog inputs (RGB and component) with up to 1920 x 1200 resolution. Also, presentations can be made from USB drives and from network computers. Control and monitoring of the projector can be performed via a wired or wireless network. Multiple NEC projectors can be linked together for large scale multimedia applications. The bottom is this projector has great connectivity.