The Incredible Shrinking Projectors

It seems it was only yesterday that projectors weighing less than 5 pounds were the talk of the town--at least, among on-the-go business travelers who deliver presentations all over the world. But thanks to Texas Instruments and its latest generation of Digital Light Processing microchip technology, manufacturers have broken the 3-pound weight barrier in ultraportable projectors. DLP uses a small-scale reflective system with thousands of tiny mirrors to project the image. The competing data projector technology, LCD, requires larger panels, prisms, and mirrors.

Philips Consumer Electronics and Plus Corporation are the first companies to introduce new projectors that weigh under 3 pounds and use TI's latest DLP subsystem. The two companies codeveloped a series of substantially similar products: The Philips UGO Series offers the UGO X-Lite and the UGO S-Lite, and the identically designed Plus U3 Series consists of the Plus U3-1080 and the Plus U3-880. The UGO X-Lite and Plus U3-1080 offer a native XGA (1024-by-768) resolution, while the UGO S-Lite and Plus U3-880 feature SVGA (800-by-600) resolution.

The Philips and Plus projectors share similar price tags as well. The XGA models are both listed at $6999, with a street price of $5899, and the SVGA models cost about $2000 less. For this review, I tested a shipping version of the Philips UGO X-Lite, and I found it delightful to use. However, aside from its compact design and easy portability, the X-Lite's features are relatively modest, and some mobile presenters may still prefer a more powerful unit as their traveling roadshow companion.