NEC's Portable LCD Projector

An Average Performer

While we really liked the aforementioned features, we found the LT155's performance to be a decidedly mixed bag. NEC rates the LT155 at 1200 ANSI lumens, which is brighter than average for projectors in this size/weight class. However, at that brightness level the lamp life is rated at a mediocre 1000 hours, while the norm is 2000 hours. By switching to "Eco-mode", you double lamp life to an acceptable 2000 hours, but the brightness goes down to just under 1000 ANSI lumens, a difference that we definitely noticed. While we found this lower brightness level acceptable, and in fact comparable to many other projectors in this class, brighter is always better--something that was especially evident when we turned on all the lights in the room.

Picture quality was also mixed: While text looked fine, we were disappointed with the the way the projector handled video imagery, especially composite video. Like a good CRT monitor, a good projector should be able to support a wide spectrum of resolution settings, because you never know what kind of signal you may have to pump through it. We used a 600-MHz AMD Athlon-powered Compaq Presario 5868 desktop system with a DVD-ROM drive and a 3dfx Voodoo3 1000 graphics board to see how well the LT155 handled different resolution settings from the PC (displaying a variety of text, spreadsheet, graphics, MPEG files, and JPEG files). For non-PC sources, we used a Pioneer DVL 919 DVD/LaserDisc player for an S-Video signal and an RCA DTC-100 DirecTV/HDTV set-top box for composite video and HDTV.

Although the LT155 has a native XGA (1024 by 768) resolution, its scaling technology (which enables the projector to display resolutions both below and above its native setting) also supports resolution up to 1600 by 1200 via image compression, one notch higher than the 1280 by 1024 resolution that most projectors in this class can support. While text looked surprisingly clear at the 1280 by 1024 resolution, it got seriously distorted at the maximum 1600 by 1200 resolution. PowerPoint slides and image files such as JPEGs showed up acceptably well, though. In fact, we'd have to rate the LT155's overall scaling capabilities as better than average.

Unfortunately, video images, especially composite video, appeared slightly blurry. We were able to partially correct that by adjusting the sharpness setting in the LT155's menu system, but we've seen better video reproduction from many projectors in this class. Typically, LCD-based projectors like the LT155 produce a softer video image than comparably priced DLP-based projectors, and we found that this rule was certainly true in this case. Both S-Video and HDTV reproduction were acceptable, but again not as good as other projectors we've tested in this class. The unit includes a mono speaker, which provided average sound quality.

The bottom line: In spite of both mediocre lamp life and merely adequate video performance, the LT155 offers solid bang for the buck, thanks to some very nifty features, a compact and lightweight form factor, and better-than-average resolution scaling.