I reiterate: This Viewsonic projector is a "crossover." Think business projector that can double as a nice basic home entertainment projector that can light up a large wall or screen in your home (or backyard at night).
As a business projector it's not endowed with much in the way of advanced features. There's no networking, nor wireless networking, nor the option for either. The interactivity - in the form of basic remote mousing is, just that - basic.
But color is perfectly respectable for a low cost business projector, and shadow detail if needed proved to be excellent.
One issue that did pop up only occurred when interfacing to my MacBook Pro. My Macbook offered a couple of choices for the projector's display resolution over HDMI. The issue was that the top and bottom few percent of the image get chopped off. basically that's the Mac's top menu bar that's gone.
It proved a minor inconvenience when working with the Mac, but it could be an issue for some if they only see the projected image, and not the computer driving it.
3D looks really good. That's in large part due to all the brightness available. 3D, as you probably know gobbles up most of the lumens, so that you lose roughly 2/3 of brightness or more, going to 3D. No problems here. If you are presenting in 3D, a 100" screen would be reasonable!
In the home, the 3D looks darn good. Again, color could be better, but that's almost always the case with 3D.
Warranty is one year, with an express replacement program for the year. Not bad, but not exceptional either.
The Very Bottom Line on the PJD7820HD projector:
A good general rule is: Don't buy low cost DLP projectors if your situation requires color accuracy combined with maximum lumens. (We're talking 3500+ measured lumens.) You'll need something more expensive.
However, if you need a modestly priced projector with acceptable color and huge brightness in a sub-five pound portable package, one that can do rather good color with a still significant 1500 lumens, this Viewsonic may be the right choice for you. As a bonus you'll get bright 3D at no extra charge. OK, that's not quite true: You will have to buy some DLP-Link 3D glasses (there are many brands out there).
From the business and education side, you have to be looking for a projector that isn't "loaded for bear", but you can count on the Viewsonic delivering a solid basic feature set, and it offers an especially good set of inputs and outputs, including a monitor out. I'm saying that this projector has a good basic feature set, with remote mousing as a bonus. There are a variety of small goodies located on the menus, such as the ability to reposition the menus themselves, security features, timers and other "green" features.
Gamers should be impressed with the performance, many may finally give up their big monitors for something "of size."
Sports fans rejoice. This is it! The first 1080p projector under $700! It does a great job on my recorded Gamemix with eight screens going at once. You can see the play in each game. Sweet!
Ultimately, it comes down to the Viewsonic PJD7820HD projector offering a great value proposition. You are getting a typical lightweight projector with a couple of bells and whistles, for a very reasonable price - except you are getting native 1080p resolution, instead of what everyone else is offering for the price!
