Judge Posted June 15, 2016 Share Posted June 15, 2016 My wife is a Pilates teacher and presents at conferences and wants to buy a little projector for various kinds of presentations. As I am her hapless slave personal IT manager I have been tasked to find one. So I recognize Epson and Sanyo as being good trustworthy brands but who else is good - and maybe cheaper? No idea about brightness - I guess around 2.5k lumens. I say she has to spend at least £300 and she wants to spend £200She wants to use her Macbook Air as source. Outside of my zone here really so any advice gratefully received,CheersJ A quick peruse of a certain online retailer is giving me a couple of likely options: Optoma S310e 3000 ANSI SVGA Epson EB-S04 3000 Lumens. SVGA She is outputting basic Powerpoint stuff at mo, so I guess SVGA is okay. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
timsabre Posted June 16, 2016 Share Posted June 16, 2016 I really wouldn't get an SVGA projector - lines in diagrams and small text will look awful. Powerpoint will probably handle it but some other software will be flummoxed by such a small resolution. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
boatman Posted June 16, 2016 Share Posted June 16, 2016 I'm not a Mac user but there's a lot of information about Apple's MiniDisplayPort interfaces here. For best results, you should try and get a projector with the same native resolution as the MacBook. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shez Posted June 16, 2016 Share Posted June 16, 2016 XGA really should be a minimum these days, or WXGA if you want widescreen. Loads of other makes are available; you might want to consider a LED / laser light source rather than a traditional lamp - costs for replacement lamps won't be a welcome surprise when it goes. Casio seem to have the market well covered on that front although a few other manufacturers are now playing catch up. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
timsabre Posted June 16, 2016 Share Posted June 16, 2016 XGA really should be a minimum these days, or WXGA if you want widescreen. Loads of other makes are available; you might want to consider a LED / laser light source rather than a traditional lamp - costs for replacement lamps won't be a welcome surprise when it goes. Casio seem to have the market well covered on that front although a few other manufacturers are now playing catch up. When I was looking last year, LED projectors were really expensive compared to a normal projector of similar output level.The really small projectors are where LED is good at the moment. No doubt this will change in the near future as we are seeing with theatrical lights. SVGA is OK if the projector is just for watching DVDs. Otherwise I agree XGA (1024x768) is minimum. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shez Posted June 16, 2016 Share Posted June 16, 2016 You can get a 3500 lumen XGA or WXGA LED for less than £500 now. A little above Judge's budget but once you factor in a spare lamp, the difference is very small. Edit: clarify that was LED. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Judge Posted June 16, 2016 Author Share Posted June 16, 2016 Thanks chaps. Price jacks up quite a lot as res goes up. Doubles really. Mac display res is 1440 x 900 so WXGA looks to be the best bet there. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jevans Posted June 16, 2016 Share Posted June 16, 2016 You don't need the resolution to be the same as the internal screen. Just set the display preferences to extend rather than mirror so it's a separate display, and then you can have both the internal screen and the projector at their native resolution. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Judge Posted June 16, 2016 Author Share Posted June 16, 2016 Believe me, if she has to do anything other than just plug it in, it aint going to happen. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TomHoward Posted June 16, 2016 Share Posted June 16, 2016 You can mirror the internal display to the external display, rather than the external to the internal, and the macbook will scale down & letterbox instead.Generally the settings stay when the external adaptors are plugged in, and defaults back to native resolution locally when it's unplugged. We had a EB-X31 in tonight that I was suitably impressed with for the price (3200lm and XGA for 299quid) lecturer brought their own and it was far better than our BenQ. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stuart91 Posted June 17, 2016 Share Posted June 17, 2016 it was far better than our BenQ. My experience has been that almost anything is better than a BenQ. :** laughs out loud **: We sold some for a while and they achieved a failure rate greater than 100%. (Most of the machines failed, then the swapped out replacements failed) More recently I saw someone trying to get two of their wide angle models to look the same. The machines were literally straight out of the box, but the colour was off. Settings and menu options etc. were identical. I've had very good results from Hitachi machines, both in hire stock and for sales/installation. I'm not too well up on their current offerings though. To the OP - how often is the projector going to be used? Lamp life is not such a big deal if you are only using it for occasional events. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alistermorton Posted June 17, 2016 Share Posted June 17, 2016 Our 4+ yr old BenQ is still going strong, and gets rigged and derigged frequently. Not a recommendation, just an observation. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stuart91 Posted June 17, 2016 Share Posted June 17, 2016 To be fair, I can't imagine that they'd still be in business if they hadn't improved their reliability from those early models. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alistermorton Posted June 17, 2016 Share Posted June 17, 2016 I remember BenQ in the 90s - cheap as ... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Judge Posted June 17, 2016 Author Share Posted June 17, 2016 That Epson EB-X31 looks like a good deal. If it were for me I would spring an extra £50 or so for the WXGA version, but its not me. It will probably only be used a couple of times a month. I did find a bunch of No-Known-Name LED projectors on Amz that got some decent reviews, but it was generally said that they are not nearly as bright as the lumen count suggested, and also they were okay for DVDs and much less okay for presentation work. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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