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GCN LAB REVIEW: The $1,399 price tag might seem a little steep, but this is a case of getting what you pay for, and the NP62 is the best projector of the bunch.
The NEC NP62 is a true friend of the road warrior. It can do just about everything for a user but write the presentation. That means more time presenting, and almost no time worrying about how the projector works.
GCN LAB TEST
NEC NP62
Pros: Auto focus, auto keystone, auto power-up, portable, great image quality.
Cons: Nothing major.
Portability: A
Features: A+
Color accuracy: A+
Brightness: A
Value: A-
Price: $1,399
The 3-pound, 12-ounce unit is 10.5 inches across and 7.75 inches long, so it’s pretty portable. It also has a ton of ease-of-use features. For example, it can be set to automatically power up as soon as an input is detected, and it will automatically set the keystone for you, even on the fly. Beyond just formatting the screen orientation, it also will auto focus, a process that only takes a couple of seconds. It will also refocus and reset the keystone if you make your screen bigger or the projector gets bumped out of place during the presentation, so nothing is left to chance. And instead of a simple counter showing lamp hours used — which it also has — users are directed to a percentage score showing how much life is left in the bulb, so you won’t be caught off guard.
Once powered up, the NP62 is even more impressive. It produced near-perfect reds, blues and greens, with extremely sharp lines down to single pixels. Text was readable at 10 points.
Its video display also was king of the hill, getting nearly perfect scores in color-registration testing, meaning that even fine lines on moving images are accurately rendered. That’s great for showing a detailed PowerPoint slide or rendering explosions during your favorite Smokey and the Bandit movie.
The NP62 also was one of the only projectors tested that could render very dim images on a black background and show very light images on a white background without changing any settings. Most projectors default to one extreme or the other; the NP62 rides the middle well.
The NP62 was able to put 950 lumens in the center of a test screen at 10 feet. So as long as you can at least turn off the overhead lights, its images will look good. Even with the lights on, the images will be readable. The corners of the image were recorded at 860 lumens, within acceptable levels.
The NP62 is a perfect example of a portable projector. The $1,399 price tag might seem a little steep, but this is a case of getting what you pay for, and the NP62 is the best of the bunch. It earns the Reviewer’s Choice designation for this review.
NEC Display Solutions, 866-632-6673, www.necdisplay.com