BIOS: Technology Means Business

The VPL-CX20 is a highly portable and lightweight (210x273x52mm, 1.9kg) projector designed for today’s business executive. Robust enough to travel with you from meeting to meeting, the VPL-CX20 offers very good image quality, user-friendly functions and stylish design. Its auto setup capabilities also allows for quick and easy setup and shutdown procedures, helping to save you valuable time.

The projector comes with ‘Advanced Intelligent Auto-Setup’ functions that enable you to setup the projector by simply pressing the power button to automatically recall the previous settings in its memory. The Auto Focus, Power Tilt Adjuster and Keystone Correction settings also allow for the concise adjustment of picture geometry, by up to 15 degrees, giving an accurate representation of images even in cramped environments.

The VPL-CX20 (Best Current Price: £1037) is outfitted with the innovative 3LCD panel system, projector technology that reproduces a wide gamut of colours. The projector uses dichroic mirrors to break the white light from the lamp into its red, green and blue components. Each of the three colours of light is then passed through its own LCD panel and then recombined by a prism before being projected onto the screen to produce clear, detailed images, which are gentle on the human eyes. Thus, you should not encounter colour breaking or the rainbow effect, a result of colour sequential technology, which can be distracting.

The projector comes with a 125-Watt lamp that offers up to 2000 ANSI Lumens (300:1 contrast ratio) and lasts up to 3000 hours. It projects clear and vivid images even when the room lights are left on. Its low wattage lamp also means lower power consumption. The downside is that it only offers an XGA resolution of just 1024x768 pixels. If you don’t need an XGA resolution, Sony’s VPL-CS20 comes with a native resolution of 800x600 pixels and costs £815/$1217.

Encased in a sleek, durable aluminium exterior and stylish curves that create a minimalist and professional look for corporate meetings and presentations, the VPL-CX20 has an ‘Off & Go’ function that allows the projector to be unplugged and kept away without waiting for the lamp to cool down, while an average fan noise of 32dB means less distraction during meetings. Another really neat feature is a short focal-length lens of 2.3m, which makes it possible to project a full-size 80-inch image in small meeting rooms.

The multi-scan converter capability allows the projection of images from multiple interfaces including video (component, composite, S-video and RGB) and digital computer (VGA up to SVGA+) signals. Other features include a password-authentication system, control panel key lock, security cable lock, image freeze function and a 4x digital zoom function.

Connectivity options are basic and comprise single VGA, RGB, DVI, HDMI, component, S-Video, and composite video ports (most require the bundled adapter). Unfortunately, there’s no monitor out port or 10/100Base-TX NIC. Bluetooth or Wi-Fi aren’t supported, either, and it’s not HD ready. Power users will also miss the choice of a variety of installation options (can’t ceiling or floor-mount) and the option to install interchangeable lenses.

The performance of the VPL-CX20 was good in our tests, with a relatively bright image and rich colours. Images looked impressive in a room with low ambient lighting, but contrast was fairly poor at only 300:1 - this isn't a projector for fast-moving movies or videogames! Still, for most on-the-road presenters who need a projector, the VPL-CX20’s excellent combination of portability and style make it a great travelling companion – as long as you don’t need network flexibility. [7]

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