Product Reviews

The main advantage of DLP is that projectors using the technology require relatively small chips manufactured by Texas Instruments. It's the optics and bulb that govern the size and brightness.

Toshiba's TDP-P8 projector, which has a native resolution of 1,024x768, uses a 0.7" chip. The small chip size means the TDP-P8 can be squeezed into a tiny chassis. It's one of a new range of 'pocket' projectors such as HP's MP2220, which we reviewed in What's New, Shopper February 2006.

The TDP-P8 comes with its own case, which is no bigger than a handbag. The projector weighs just 1kg, so you can easily move it from meeting to meeting or take it on the road. It's hard to conceive that such a small package houses a projector.

It's great on the inside, too. It has S-video, composite and D-sub inputs, so it's definitely one for business, but it also has an impressive range of specifications. It's rated at 1,500 ANSI lumens so it's bright enough to use in a meeting room lit with florescent lighting, and its native resolution of 1,024x768 is more than enough for PowerPoint presentations. The DLP chip gives an impressive 2,100:1 contrast ratio (slightly higher than DLP's usual 2,000:1). There's also automatic keystone correction, so placing the projector on a desk is all the setting up you need to do.

The choice of inputs includes D-sub, S-video and composite. Given the projector's target audience, it's most likely that the D-sub input will be used when attached to a notebook in order to give presentations.

In tests it proved a fantastic

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projector. Our greyscale test, which is usually very difficult for projectors to deal with, was excellent. The gradation was smooth from a dark, rich black to a bright white. A lot of projectors and displays exhibit banding on this pattern, but the TDP-P8 had none.

Its colour wheel test results were very good, too. There were marginal problems with the yellow portion of the test, which DLP projectors seem to struggle with, but the result was much better than with other projectors we've seen. The rest of the colour spectrum came out very well.

The rainbow effect can often be a problem, but the TDP-P8 behaved well. On a high-contrast screen, viewing our test pattern with a block of black surrounded by a white border, it was noticeable. When we switched to more realistic screens, though, the problems disappeared.

Running high-definition movies through the projector was no problem. The projector coped admirably, displaying a strong vibrant picture, and there was no evidence of the rainbow effect even with fast-moving scenes.

The TDP-P8 connects to your PC via USB, so the remote control can operate as a mouse. It's comfortable to use and is held with a trigger-operated left-click, making it a good choice for presentations. You can also right-click and move the cursor, although it's fiddly to do the latter. For fine Windows control you'll still be better off plugging in a dedicated mouse.

The lamp life of 2,000 hours isn't the best we've seen, but the small case tends to cut down on lamp life due to the extra heat. You can boost this to 3,000 hours by switching the projector to ECO mode. This reduces brightness, but it's fine for a moderately light meeting room. Heat is a big problem in tiny projectors and the TDP-P8 gets very hot, though not as hot as HP's MP2220. Fortunately, it manages to keep quiet whenever it's turned on.

This projector's small size and excellent image quality are appealing factors for anyone who has to travel and do lots of presentations, and it's also handy to take home for weekends. Having said that, better-value, better-quality projectors are available if size isn't an issue.