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What Should I Look for In a Power Point Projector?

July 21, 2009

For someone who is not tech minded, purchasing a power point projector can be overwhelming with all the current choices. That’s why this article was created to give you the simple, basic understanding you need. If you go looking on your own, the first thing that the salesman will tell you is about resolution and brightness and will use other accepted industry buzzwords, but now you’ll know what they are talking about.

 

Pixels make up both the image you see on your computer screen and that of any image projected by a digital projector. Your video source, in this case your laptop, determines the initial resolution. Ideally, your projector should operate natively at this same resolution.

 

Resolutions generally come in 3 basic flavors, going from past to present they include VGA (640×480), SVGA (800×600) and XGA (1,024×768). XGA is currently very prominent with new projectors, however with presentation graphics an SVGA resolution may suffice. You may even hear about SXGA (1,280×1, 024) that will give you even greater resolution, but tends to run on the expensive side.  Some projectors support a number of different resolutions, but the “default” is usually referred to as its native resolution.

 

Measured in Lumens, brightness is a very important specification to consider in your projector search, especially when looking for a portable projector to make presentations on the go in often less than ideal locations.  The brightness of a projector in lumens is a very important specification to consider when doing power point presentations on the go or even in a conference room with the lights on. Huge venues or brightly lit rooms that remain so during a screening require projectors that are capable of a great amount of lumens, possibly 5000 or more.  Less lumens would be needed for a small audience, with a smaller screen in a well darkened room. In this case 1000 lumens could work fine. The term ANSI lumens refers to a uniform standard of measuring lumens.

 

“Throw distance” is another term of interest, it refers to the distance you can have the projector from the screen with a focused picture.  If you will be relatively further than 15 feet, you’ll have to ask for a “large throw” lens. Short throw power point projectors can be great when doing presentations as you can place them close to the screen and enjoy a shadow free presentation. The speaker or presenter also doesn’t have to contend with distracting, bright projector lights beaming in her eyes while the short throw projector is actually in front of her.

 

Compatibility between your projector and laptop is also very important for smooth on the go presentations. You should obtain your computers native resolution and write this down, note if it’s SVGA or XGA, also you’ll need to know the connection standard by which you can connect computer and projector, many projectors have a computer in port and  with the common standards in place, this isn’t much of a worry. In any case, still check to make sure you have the proper ports and cables at your disposal to connect your devices. Again, it’s exceedingly important that everything is compatible with your laptop.

 

When you look at a variety of projectors with your needs in mind, you can make an informed decision. Ebay believe it or not is one of the best places to find both new and used power point projectors. Good luck in finding presentation projector that meets your needs. With just some basic knowledge, you’ll find that it’s not as difficult as you imagined.

 

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