Projectors offer a cinema-theatre wide screen for your home entertainment needs. Here's the one worth buying, if you're thinking of splurging on one this festive season.
The EH-TW5200 home entertainment projector from Epson is a sub-1 lakh rupee device that's nice and portable, sporting a compact form factor, and comes with all the bells and whistles expected off a self-respecting multimedia entertainment projector, including 3D support.
On the rear panel of the Epson EH-TW5200 projector we have two HDMI and one VGA port for you to connect laptops or other displays (if required). There are a host of other connectivity options as well, as can be seen from the image alongside.
Performance is the name of the game on the TW8200, as it’s easily one of the brightest projectors we’ve encountered. It offers a range of viewing modes (and customizations) for getting the best output, no matter what the scenario – gaming, Full HD movie playback, stills, or text. Forget ghosting or lag, this projector has close to exceptional colour range, as per DisplayMate’s test results. It’s 3D ready and the accompanying glasses make for a nice 3D viewing experience. That’s not all, as the Epson EH-TW8200 has an abundance of features hidden in its menu, which goes on and on.
The LG PF80G LED projector’s performance is one of the best we’ve seen -- it’s easily one of the sharpest projector’s we’ve come across, projecting a nice, bright and crisp image, one packed with plenty of colour and vividness. It handles fast-paced visuals and text equally well, but its onboard speakers could’ve been better.
The LG PF80G's shell doesn’t heat up all that much, and neither does it produce any noise -- which is a good combination for home entertainment enthusiasts. But it offers HDMI-in ports for connecting a laptop, PC or media player. The other option is to connect a USB drive with stored content.
The Benq W750 is 720p entertainment-tuned projector with an ideal throw distance between 1 and 2 metres from the screen. It does a very good job of projecting a crisp, clear and bright image on the projector screen.
As far as connectivity options are concerned, the Benq W750 projector comes with two HDMI ports, Component and VGA connection. Other I/O ports are available to connect the projector to legacy hardware.
Along with the Benq W750 and W680, this is another projector worth considering for purchase – the W1080ST. It supports 1920x1080p native resolution, and is a short throw projector. It is 3D ready and comes with a 10W built-in speaker.
For connectivity ports, the Benq W1080ST's rear panel has two HDMI ports and a VGA port – good enough to connect any laptop these days. There are an assortment of component and composite ports, should you ever feel their need, on a rainy day – the W1080ST has you covered.
This is one huge projector! But despite that, the Panasonic PT-AR100 is easy to setup and comes with an exhaustive set of OSD, allowing you to tweak and customize every minute setting as per your wish. Its massive zoom and focus ring let you tweak the image on screen. The projector gives you enough manoeuvrability to have the projected image exactly the way you want it to be. It’s as sharp as the LG projector we saw earlier, if not even sharper, and it’s colour consistency and vividness is breathtaking. Absolutely no complains from this projector in terms of its performance.
The Panasonic PT-AR100 can be easily ceiling-mounted and used upside down. It has menu buttons on its side and the lens ring to adjust every optical and feature-related aspect of the projected image on the screen, and it does that very well.
This is a Full HD 1080p DLP projector from ViewSonic aimed primarily at small and medium offices. But it also supports 120Hz 3D visuals and HDMI input, making it ideal for home entertainment use as well.
On its rear, the Viewsonic PJD7820HD projector has HDMI, VGA ports to let you connect video sources. And the projector is perfectly capable of throwing a projected image of 300-inches from just over 20 feet away, giving you a taste of mini-theatre like experience right in your living room.