BIOS: Technology Means Business

If you're looking for a portable projector that will fit into your laptop case, NEC's LT10 ultra-portable DLP projector offers an ideal combination of portability, flexibility, and price. When it comes to performance, the LT10 is a reasonable performer considering its diminutive size: its rated brightness level of 1100 ANSI lumens is fine for most working environments, but colours were washed out and lacked any real conviction. The LT10 does, however, come with Picture-in-Picture (PiP), allowing you to display two images simultaneously - such as a Web browser - while delivering a presentation.

Pros: Small; lightweight; easy to use
Cons: Poor brightness; washed-out colours; no digital inputs

When travelling, you don't want to have to lug around a heavy projector as well as your laptop. Indistinguishable to Acer's PD321, except for the remote control, the LT10 is an ultra-portable single-chip DLP projector that sports a sleek design and is small enough (198x148x57mm, 950g) to slide in your briefcase alongside your laptop.

The LT10 has a decent range of features too, and supports a native resolution of 1024x768 pixels (1280x1024 compressed) and contrast ratio of 2000:1. The only real disappointments are a relatively dull brightness of 1100 ANSI lumens from the 120-Watt lamp, and the lack of digital video inputs or built-in speakers.

Connectivity options are fairly basic and include a single analogue 15-pin VGA port, S-Video port, and component video-in ports. The lack of a digital video input is disappointing, especially as the latest decent desktop replacement laptops include this high-quality connection option, and the lack of built-in Wi-Fi may also deter those looking to hook the projector up to a work or home wireless network. There's also no built-in speakers, so you'll have to run audio via your laptop or external speakers.

Video compatibility is relatively accommodating, including component format for PAL, SECAM, NTSC, and high-definition TV up to 1080i. Both 4:3 and 16:9 widescreen aspect ratios are also supported, so you can use the projector for playing back DVD-Videos. Accessories included with the projector comprise a tethered lens cap, power cord, VGA cable, S-Video cable, composite video cable, user's manual on CD-ROM, black nylon carrying case, matching remote control, and quick start guide.

The projector is equipped with a single tilt foot for adjusting its height. You can also manually adjust the lens zoom ring to zoom in or out. To focus the image, you simply rotate the focus ring until the image is clear. The projector will focus at distances from 1.2 to 10 metres and can produce an image size of between 32.1 to 267in. Digital adjustments can also be made using the remote control to correct keystone image distortion, and the digital zoom function magnifies the fine detail in an image.

When it comes to performance, the LT10 is a reasonable performer considering its diminutive size. Its rated brightness level of 1100 ANSI lumens is fine for most working environments, and helped to make a text-filled screen appear crisp and legible. Business graphics also exhibited strong contrast levels, with fine details in light and shadowed areas. Colours were also washed out and lacked any real conviction, so fine details in light and shadowed areas, such as in complex graphics and movies, are not evident.

You'll also find that light colours won't appear, such as those used as background colours in presentations, making the projector unsuitable if you work with schematics, maps and other detailed documents. The LT10 does, however, come with Picture-in-Picture (PiP), allowing you to display two images simultaneously - such as a Web browser - while delivering a presentation. The projector has an operating noise of around 34dB, which is fine for general use but is a little on the loud side when used in a quiet environment.

The on-screen menu is easy to navigate and there are plenty of controls for fine-tuning the display. For example, you can alter brightness, contrast, white peaking and colour temperature levels, as well as adjust image distortion caused by tilting the projector (keystone), zoom levels, and aspect ratio (4:3 or 16:9). There are also controls for altering clock (data frequency) and phase (signal timing) settings, horizontal and vertical alignments, colour, sharpness and hue (read and green colour balance) levels.

Thankfully, there's an Auto Adjust option in case you get carried away with the 'fine tuning' and need to reset the projector to its factory defaults. Unfortunately, the remote control lacks a mouse control and a laser pointer.

Links:
LT10 Web site

About our tests:
To test imaging devices BIOS uses DisplayMate Technologies' DisplayMate, a software utility for adjusting, setting up, calibrating, tuning, testing, evaluating and improving image and picture quality on displays. It's designed to help us achieve the highest possible image and picture quality on any type of computer monitor, projector, TV or HDTV, with support for analogue and digital CRT, LCD, DLP, LCoS and plasma technologies. BIOS uses the software to check every aspect of a display's performance, including sharpness and contrast, colour and greyscale accuracy, as well as screen geometry. Where possible, we always use a digital connection for image quality purposes.