Product Reviews

Imagine the situation: you arrive at an office armed with your notebook and PowerPoint, ready to give a crucial sales presentation. But there are no spare monitors available and you end up with half a dozen executives craning their necks round your notebook. It doesn't look good. Enter the LitePro 420 (LP420), a digital projector that weighs little more than your average executive notebook and is small enough to fit in the same shoulderbag.

The InFocus LP420 is even more portable than its cousin, the LP720 (reviewed issue 35, p164), thanks in the main to the latest in projection technology. It weighs 3.1kg and measures just 240 « 302 « 103mm. At its heart sits a 1.3in Texas Instruments DLP (digital light processing) panel. Rather than pass light through LCD panels, this relatively new technology uses thousands of microscopic hinged mirrors to reflect light through a rotating colour wheel instead.

One of the major advantages offered by DLP technology over transmissive LCDs is that it takes up less space - a fact that the LP420 demonstrates to dramatic effect. DLP projectors are simpler and require fewer components, so eventually they should also be cheaper than their transmissive LCD counterparts, especially those that use the three-panel, split-light path approach such as the LP720 and NEC's MultiSync MT810 (reviewed issue 39, p191).

At £4,820, the LP420 is slightly cheaper than the likes of the LP725 (the replacement for the LP720) and other less portable units. There isn't a huge difference in the level of performance and functionality either. The LP420 clearly isn't best suited to larger meeting or conference rooms, as the maximum screen diagonal is just 4.7m, but in smaller rooms it's sufficiently bright to project a readable image even when the lights are turned on. The colours aren't quite as forthright as those achieved by an LCD split-path projector, but it's a big improvement

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over the only other DLP projector we've seen, the Davis Powerbeam V (reviewed issue 39, p193). The LP420's colours are brighter and sharper with none of the flicker shown by the Davis.

Setting up the projector is a simple process. Once you've plugged it in, the LP420's Auto Setup function detects the type of source and adjusts the picture for you. If it isn't quite to your liking, the on-screen menu can be used to access the more advanced functions. Using the backlit buttons on top of the projector to navigate through a multitabbed dialog box, vertical/horizontal position and tuning controls enable you to get the picture just right. You can also adjust brightness and contrast, colour tint, volume, treble and bass -æand you can even reverse the picture for rear projection.

In addition to straightforward computer input, the LP420 features composite and S-Video inputs for connecting to a video source; PAL, SECAM and NTSC formats are all supported. Audio inputs come in the form of a 3.5mm or pair of phono sockets - although you'll have to use the rather insubstantial internal 1W speaker.

Where the LP420 falls down is in the lack of remote control which seriously affects its ease of use. Despite having a built-in infrared receiver, if you want the convenience of not having to walk over to the projector every time you need to change something, you'll have to fork out a hefty £60 extra. It rather seems to defeat the object of having a GUI menu interface, as using the keys on the top of the projector to navigate takes some getting used to, and it certainly isn't intuitive.

Although the LP420 will compress 1,024 x 768 resolution and expand from 640 x 480, it doesn't do it very well. Small text is rendered almost illegible, so if you want to project something like a spreadsheet or Word document you'd be better off sticking with the projector's native 800 « 600 resolution. In this respect, the NEC MultiSync 810 is still the best I've seen.

Running costs shouldn't be underestimated. Replacements for the 270W metal halide bulb will cost you £365 and last around 1,000 hours each. That's 36.5p per hour, which is considerably more than the NEC, for example, which at the time of writing cost 13p per hour.

In the Infocus LP420, Texas Instruments' DLP technology has come of age. Running costs aside, the LP420 is fairly realistically priced and is the first truly portable digital presentation system we've seen. And you don't have to sacrifice price or quality to get it.