Plus V-339

The Plus V-339 is an XGA DLP projector with an unusual trick up its sleeve. Where other DLP projectors have a single colour wheel and video modes such as presentation, movie and sRGB to change the colour balance, the V-339 has two colour wheel configurations.

One wheel has four segments (red, green, blue and white) for presentations. Press a button on the remote and you can select the six-segment wheel, which has dual red, green and blue segments. This reduces brightness but offers better colour saturation.

The two wheels give very different results. With the four-segment dynamic mode, there was the familiar lack of difference between green and blue Windows icons, and yellow folder icons looked mustard. Photo reproduction was generally disappointing, with white areas too bright and our photomontage suffering from dull red and yellow through lack of saturation.

Switch to the vivid six-segment mode and you'll see improved skin tones and stronger reds. Still, photos look subdued, something not helped by the low 1,300 lumens brightness. This also meant dark movie scenes lacked detail, but colour saturation was better than others. Also, we found the DLP rainbow effect was greatly reduced and focus was sharp over the whole screen.

We like the built-in lens cap, the superb speaker and a compact remote control that still has useful buttons, including aspect ratio and eco mode. But the latter highlights one of the projector's flaws: it's noisy. Eco mode only reduces the standard 48dBA by 2dBA, and the fans make an irritating whine. The other problem is running costs. With lamps lasting only 1,500 hours, the Plus costs 18p per hour to run.

A three-year collect-and-return warranty (with a temporary replacement) is great, but noisy operation, expensive running and reduced brightness take the shine off the Plus.

Author: Roger Kirkwood