Classroom Projector Report: Best School Projectors for Education - Image Quality-2

Posted on November 12, 2013 by Art Feierman

Finally, in the image below, that's the Epson again, in its Movie mode.That the yellow is still better, and the pure red the brighter, and the pure blue, more correctly. Also the blue purple next to the pure blue, looks about right on the Epson, but is still well too blue on the Dell S300W.

In a typical K12 classroom environment, few situations require the most accurate color, but, anytime the projector is used for video or photography, or anything with a lot of photos in it, the LCD projectors should have the advantage.

In our image below, this is the 3LCD Sony VPL-EX175 projector, in Dynamic mode (with the Sony, Dynamic has better color than Presentation).. Below it, the DLP Sharp PG-D45X3D, probably the DLP projector of this 2011-2012 report, with the best overall color.

My point is would be that if color is imporntant and you need the lumens as well, LCD is probably the logical way to go, all else being equal (it never is). If, when you need really good color on occasion, if you don't mind sacrificing more brightness when you demand it), then most of the DLP's can do a perfectly respectable job, and many of these projectors are, for perhaps 98% of users, provide color more than sufficient for the task at hand.

Below, some "real world content" samples (and not color charts): In order: Epson Powerlite 96W, Acer X1261P, Casio XJ-A250V, and Sharp PG-D45X3D (exposures vary).

School Projectors: Sharpness

Discussion: Mostly we tend to quibble over sharpness in the different projectors' native modes, but all should appear nice and sharp, when handling source material that matches their true resolution. All of the projectors considered can "compress" higher resolution signals, and this will affect apparent sharpness when compressing the data to fit. Some manufacturers simply have better algorithms for compressing higher resolutions.

Having superior compression abilities is still important to many, but is less critical today, than in the past. Today, more and more, computers and projectors are designed so that you can have one resolution running on your computer screen, and a different one feeding the projector its native resolution should they not be the same to begin with. That really applies more to laptops, as desktops don't have their own "native resolution", but are dependent on graphics card and monitor. Still today's graphics cards are often also capable of outputing two resolutions - one to a monitor, one to a projector.

This year most of the projectors could handle UXGA - 1600x1200 resolution without difficulty. That's two steps up, from XGA, all the XGA and the WXGA 1280x800 widescreens were up to the task, though some looked better than others, all locked on to at least one of the UXGA modes on my MacBook Pro, or on Mike or Tony's PCs. Also of note, for the widescreen models, many support up to 1080i or 1080p.