An Affordable Projector For SMBs, from BenQ

The DLP (Digital Light Processing) projector is the new wave to hit the projector market globally. DLPs are becoming increasingly affordable compared to the costlier LCD option, and now you can get one for your office by paying less than half of what you would have paid some months ago! The BenQ range is targeted at offices (such as, say, sales offices or advertising outfits) that see plenty of presentations and meetings, and its latest projector – the MP612C DLP – seems ideal for SMBs. This unit comes with an excellent feature set and offers a lot of flexibility when it comes to setup and picture tuning.

Form Factor

The overall design of the projector is basic, with a mixture of fibre and plastic. Our review unit had a stylish black metallic lustre. Unlike most other DLP projectors, its size of 10.7 x 23.9 x 25.1 inches makes it compact, and the 2.5kg weight means it’s not too heavy to carry either. The top section has all the controls like power, directional buttons, menu, source etc. along with three light indicators for Power, Temperature and Lamp. It also has a heat vent at the right, which is a unique design feature – normally this is located at the rear. BenQ has put all the ports on the rear, which seems appropriate.

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The remote control is simple and well-designed for office environments. It is backlit for use in darkened environments such as a presentation or board room, and has direct access keys for all types of inputs, aspect ratios and picture controls. The menu key and navigation arrows are all located in the center of the unit.

The unit supports a native resolution of 800x600 (SVGA) and a maximum resolution of 1280x1024 (SXGA), which means it’s best for standard definition resolution video formats. It has composite and S-video inputs, so you can directly plug in your DVD player, digital cable TV connection, or computer/laptop.

The ports on the projector included 1 x Audio line-in with a Mini-phone stereo 3.5 mm, 1 x S-video input - 4 pin mini-DIN, 1 x Composite video input - RCA, 2 x RGB input - 15 pin HD D-Sub (HD-15), 1 x RGB output - 15 pin HD D-Sub (HD-15), and finally 1 x Serial RS-232 - 8 pin mini-DIN.

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Features and Performance

The BenQ MP612C had some features we really liked. To start with, it had a pretty impressive startup time of under 30 seconds and an equally good shutdown time of close to 40 seconds. The performance was quite silent, with next to no fan noise, even in a completely quiet environment. The projector is packed with utilities to help set up and fine-tune the picture for optimum performance. A slew of preset picture modes are on board, including Cinema, Home Theater, Family Room, Photo, etc. We chose Home Theater since it provided the closest approximation of a well-calibrated picture.

A component video input and an RGBHV input with BNC connectors, which can also be configured for component video, are the second-best video connections available. Other obligatory analog video inputs include a single S-Video and one composite video input. We selected the VGA input to play movies, and check PowerPoint presentations and Excel pie charts and graphs. This was on purpose, primarily because compared to composite and S-video (other alternatives), the VGA input would give the purest quality.

As expected, the images were really impressive, especially the colour mixture. The black levels were considerably deep, and colours stood out pretty well. However, at certain times we felt that the Excel sheets were not well-defined at the edges. It was difficult to get a vibrant image, even with a high contrast setting. Presentations were good except for the same sharpness glitch, but one can’t fault the performance, which is impressive.

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Conclusion

Though there were some hiccups, we feel that BenQ is capable of making really good DLP projectors – and pricing them competitively. At Rs 39,990, the MP612C is not only affordable but also delivers an impressive 4000 hours of lamp life (on Eco-mode). If you run an SMB and wish to give your office team some pictorial sales targets, or put on the usual office presentations, or perhaps show them a good weekend movie, this is truly the ideal projector in its price range.

Specifications:

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