LG HS102G LED projector

LG has their Scarlet TVs, and their Cookie phones. But today we are looking at none of that, rather, the spotlight is on a tiny little projector called the LG HS102G that LG has introduced fresh in our market. It’s small and fits in the palm of one’s hand. Wasting no time, we unbox and begin to explore the little thing.

Design and Features
While this is not the smallest, or most compact form factor around, we still like the small size. It’s a perfect rectangular chassis, finished in gloss black all around. The top panel has a platform containing touch sensitive buttons arranged horizontally. The side panels have some ugly looking grilles, but these are important for air flow and heat dissipation.

In the package we have a VGA cable, a VGA to component adapter, AV cable, brown and orange colored carry case, a black remote control, and power cords. Connectivity wise we do not have much, just a VGA in, headphone and Composite video input. But there is some candy in this model: a USB slot that can read MP3s, DivX and JPEGs. This makes very good sense in a portable projector like this, as the business guys can carry pics and videos in pen drives and display away, without the need of a laptop. Besides, there is a one watt speaker and Kensington lock.

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This projector uses an LED lamp, and regular DLP display technology.  This generally consumes less power than other cathode based lamps, and also has a life of 30,000 hours, which is quite juicy.  The max res is 1280 x 1024, while native is 800 x 600. The brightness is 160 ANSI lumens, and native contrast seems healthy at 2000:1. The aspect ratio is 4:3, but also is capable of handling widescreen video. There is a manual focus dial on top of the lens, but sadly no zoom at all, nor do we have a lens shift option.

Performance
We first plugged the HS102G into an Asus notebook loaded with MS office files, few DVD rips and Displaymate software. Physically, setup was not that hard, just a little vertical keystone was required for our table top mount; finally yielding us a 60-inch diagonal image, from a distance of 5 feet.

First things: the projector is not so bright, and there should minimal or zero ambient light in the room. Once in a dark room, things get better, as the contrast within the image is not so bad. Low black levels do have detail in them, and stuff like wordfiles and presentation are clear. Even the detail in this projector is not bad, and at our image size we did not get smearing and blurring of text on screen.

DLP projectors have good colors. This one too had deep saturations in all channels, but never excess. We switched on Kung Fu Panda, and the clarity and colors were impressive. It’s just that on an overall scale it’s not that bright. Since this is a portable model we cannot expect Home theater quality, but the image does not gleam and shine as a result of its less Lumens brightness. I would like a little more snazz in the image. The USB model works just fine.

Conclusion
At an MRP of Rs 59,900 this one is not cheap. It does have a very nice feature of USB playback and of course, the ultra portability. Brightness could have been more, but it does deliver with clarity and accurate colors. So this projector has more good things than bad, thus a demo is recommended for someone travelling on work a lot.