Is this the start of an LED projector revolution?
LED projectors have a tendency to be disappointingly dim and unusable outside a very dark room. The ASUS P1 is a different breed, with a brightness of 200 lumens.
Ten times brighter than most LED projectors we've tested.
While that’s 10 times dimmer than your average home cinema projector, it’s also 10 times brighter than most LED projectors we’ve tested in the past. It also has a 1,280 x 800 resolution and uses red, green and blue LEDs coupled with a 0.45in DLP setup. It can display 16.7 million colours and has a 2,000:1 contrast ratio. It’s also got a 30,000-hour lamp life, which while non-replaceable, equates to eight hours of use every single day for the next 10 years.
In testing, we found the P1 surprisingly bright and it could easily project a 1.5m screen with the lights on. With a dimmer room, a 2m screen is usable, but you only get focus control, not zoom. It has automatic keystone adjustment, which makes setup easy. While the P1 is aimed at business use, the image quality is good enough for movies and handled fast scenes without a problem. Unfortunately, it produced a muffled whine in use. It even has a tripod socket on the bottom and takes power from a standard 19V laptop mini-brick.
The P1’s most annoying shortcoming is that it only has a VGA input via its own special cable. We think not including an HDMI port is a big mistake, as newer equipment has largely ditched VGA. There’s also no card reader or USB ports, so you can’t play media files or a slideshow directly.
Special features :
- 1280 x 800 resolution
- 30,000 hour lamp life
- Auto keystone adjustment.
Pros : Long-life LED lamp, DLP chip, comparatively bright.
Cons : VGA input only, no zoom, mildly noisy.
Verdict : 7 out of 10.
Available from ASUS, retailing for $599.
