Product Reviews

While no amount of high-tech gadgetry can solve the problem of poor content in a business presentation, there's simply no excuse for not taking advantage of a nifty audiovisual device to spice it up. Being suitably kitted out these days generally means using a projector of some kind and, with the current prices, a close look at your requirements is in order.

NEC's MultiSync MT830+ represents the entry level of the company's medium-sized portable MT range, and is pitched at the sales, marketing, training and education sectors. Projectors in the MT series employ three polysilicon TFT LCD panels, as opposed to the Texas Instruments single DMD chips in the ultra-portable LT range.

Along with the MT830+, NEC launched their higher resolution MT1030+ to replace the dimmer MT830 and MT1030 models, with estimated street prices of £3,000 and £4,000 respectively.

If you're in the market for an LCD projector, there are four specifications you should be considering: resolution, brightness, weight and price. The last two are easy to figure out but you'll need to match resolution and brightness to your application.

LCD projectors employ small panels that, like the screens in notebooks or TFT monitors, are designed to operate at only one resolution. Of course, there are a variety of tricks you can employ to stretch and scale the pixels if you want to go lower, or enhancement techniques if you want a higher resolution, but if you want the best in clarity then you'll only get it at the panel's native resolution. Consequently, you should figure out what resolution you require and then buy a projector to match.

Very high resolutions are available to those with lots of money to spend, otherwise LCD projectors are available in three more modest resolutions: 640 x 480 (VGA), 800 x 600 (SVGA) and 1,024 x 768 (XGA). VGA is fine for basic PowerPoint presentations but begins to lack the ability to resolve detail when projecting finer graphics. SVGA solves most of those problems but, if you want to display intricate and detailed diagrams or spreadsheets with many cells and tiny fonts, you should really be splashing out on an XGA model. The MT830+ is an SVGA projector, perfectly suitable for all but the most specialist presentations. The more expensive MT1030+ covers these bases by boasting XGA resolution in an otherwise identical package; both have contrast ratios of 300:1.

High brightness

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is essential if you want to project a large image, especially as many meeting rooms aren't designed with projection in mind and suffer from a high level of ambient light. However, to combat this problem, NEC has increased the 1,000 ANSI Lumens brightness of the previous MT830 model to 1,250 ANSI Lumens on the MT830+. To put that into perspective, the average £2,500 to £3,000 SVGA LCD projector generally musters between 650 and 1,000 ANSI Lumens. NEC claims its 150W lamps are good for 2,000 hours of use and, if you do reach the end of their lifetime, replacements will cost £360 each. The resulting 18p per hour running cost is extremely competitive

The 52-68mm motorised zoom lens throws an image with a diagonal of between 20 and 300in, and operates at a distance of one to 12.2m. This means that for a 100in diagonal image, you'll need to set the projector about 5m away.

So, on paper the MT830+ looks good, but what's it like in real life? The large curving handle makes it easy to carry around, although its 7.3kg weight means you wouldn't want to take it far by hand - road warriors should be looking for a sub-5kg ultra-portable. Like most LCD projectors, you're up and running in seconds - simply point the device at a screen or handy white wall, power up and focus the image. The MT830+ is also refreshingly quiet thanks to an unobtrusive cooling fan.

There are two VGA input sockets, and one output for an additional monitor. PAL and NTSC video are handled by a choice of S-Video or composite video sockets, along with stereo inputs for the 2W built-in speakers - they aren't hi-fi quality, but they save you the bother of carrying more boxes.

NEC has fitted infrared receivers to all four sides of the projector, so the supplied remote control should work wherever you point it. If you connect the projector's serial port to your PC, the remote can take control of the cursor too. As an optional extra you can get a £350 board, which accepts PC Cards and automatically displays any stored JPEG or BMP image files as a presentation.

In use, the four main menus were easy to navigate. The digital keystone correction was particularly effective at straightening the edges of the image, and rescaling it when the projector was pointed up or down at an angle to the screen. The image is very bright and watchable under reasonable lighting conditions. Video signals looked okay, but the MT830+ is most comfortable with an RGB PC signal. NEC's AccuBlend technology may allow the MT830+ to support non-native modes of up to 1,024 x 768, but not surprisingly it looked best of all running at it's native resolution of 800 x 600 pixels. Here the image was bright, crisp and vibrant, and likely to capture and retain the attention of anyone watching it. Consistency of colour across the screen is also solid.

The MT830+ might not be an ideal portable solution, but it's still manageable enough to be carried from room to room. For image quality alone it deserves a place on your shortlist.