Viewsonic PLED W500 portable projector

Some pieces of kit take a long time to review. Particularly if they're very nice pieces of kit that you're reluctant to return to the PR agency. The Viewsonic PLED-W500 is just such a piece of kit. Viewsonic PLED W500 portable projector Take away display: Viewsonic PLED W500 portable projector I've always liked projectors …

[.stu]

"costing around half-a-ton" - amazing what you can get for £50 these days.

[Matt_payne666]

I got to that part of the review and stopped reading, I was sold!

How does it compare to the casio LED projectors? granted another £200, but it has a proper Light output with ultra slimness.

Just goes to show, if its too good to be true, it usually is!

[Chris Bidmead]

Yes, sorry. Idiotic mistakes like this are supposed to be caught by the sub-editors. But they're all young and metric-trained and don't understand old money.

Of course I meant a monkey, and I apologies wholeheartedly to all of you who dashed out to the shops only to meet with disappointment.

--

Chris

[Neoc]

Re: Half a ton.

It's amazing the people who don't know their weights: a ton is 2,000 pounds or roughly 907kg (as opposed to a tonne, which is exactly 1,000kg)

So "roughly half a ton" is ~453. Not quite the price of the unit, but close enough.

[mccp]

"costing half a ton"

I always thought a ton was £100. That's inflation for you.

Maybe you meant "costing a monkey".

Mine's the one with a pony in the pocket.

[jungle_jim]

cool

i like the fact that the LED's are starting to improve, but they have a LONG way to go before they can kick out as much light as a mercury lamp (which most projector lamps are).....

Projector lamps last 2000 - 4000 hours on average.... 2.7 hours a day over 2 years and how often do you want to be watching 100" at home?

as a business tool though it must be pretty lush. id like to see a battery operated one of them.

[Ian Ferguson]

Mercury lamp?

Bah. Bring back arc lighting!

[Just_this_guy]

The article states prominently that the LED lamp in this projector lasts for 20,000 hours, not "2000-4000". At 4 hours use per day, that's about 15 years. As for how often you might want 100" - why not all the time? Great for gaming!

[jungle_jim]

you still gonna be using it in 15 years time?

will it kick out a lot of light for those 20000 hours? i have seen lots of LED car lights and traffic lights that are meant to last forever, and i see lots of the individual LED's have failed.

why not use them all the time? because you have to sit in a darkened room to get the most of it, even with a 'normal' projector lamp you would want to dim the ambient light.

[Just_this_guy]

First it doesn't last long enough, and now it lasts too long? My, you're a hard one to please!

[Jamie Kitson]

2000-4000

And he clearly stated he was talking about lamps.

[FunkyEric]

mmmmmmm Christmas Present......

MIght have to re-arrange my flat a little though :-)

[Gordon Stewart]

"costing half a ton"

I think you mean a "monkey" or "half a bag of sand" :)

[Anonymous Coward]

At last

I have an old Plus projector. About the size of an A5 page and 1.5 in think. Does 1024x768 but is pretty noisy despite regular fan cleaning.

For far too long, this class of projectors has been ignored.

Maybe this is my Christmas pressie to myself?

[Robert E A Harvey]

Very tempting.

I might just wait until next year, for the 2nd gen. The Feminus Domesticorum likes the Olympics, this could be the right solution for watching them!

[exexpat]

No Lens shift

either vertically or horizontally so no flexibility with the install...

[Chris Bidmead]

Yes, I did miss the zoom and the lens shift features. I think these are pretty well essential on larger projectors. But the PLED-W500 is so small and light it's much easier to put it where it'll give you the screen position you want.

--

Chris

[Jamie Kitson]

Audio Out?

Does it have an audio-out port? A shame if not.

[Jamie Kitson]

Apparently it does: Audio (input/output) 3.5mm mini jack /3.5mm mini jack

http://www.viewsonic.com/products/pled-w500.htm

[Jamie Kitson]

Although not according to the expertreviews review :-/

[Chris Bidmead]

Yes, you're right, that's what it says in the specs. Alas I think this is a mistake. There's only one 3.5mm port on the projector, labelled "AV IN". I've tested it by plugging in headphones: this doesn't cut out the internal speaker or extract any audio.

So for watching movies played directly from a USB stick you'll have to make do with the built in mono speaker. Better to use an external player like the VMP74. You'll need this anyway for MKV movies, as the projector doesn't have a built-in MKV codec.

--

Chris

[David Gosnell]

Seems so

"... can hook the PLED-W500 to a sound system to substitute for the good-enough-for-presentation built in 2W speaker"

Though the specs say only a mono 3.5mm jack (presumably for output as described). Can't remember when I last saw one of them?!

[Chris Bidmead]

The 3.5mm jack is input only, and it's stereo.

--

Chris

[jungle_jim]

Furthermore, when i said 'projector lamps' i meant the mercury lamps. i thought that was pretty obvious as they are still the norm.

[Leona A]

and I was just thinking the other day that isn't it about time they started making LED projectors and hey presto this review appears, ya, I know, I should get out more.....

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a clone.

The Acer K330 and a couple of other brand options seem functionally identical ... and the K330 is 'half a ton' cheaper i.e. GBP 450

[Chris Bidmead]

I can see readers are going to take a long time to forgive me for that "half a ton" slip.

Moving lightly on: yes, I spotted that there is at least one other manufacturer using the same LED engine, which probably originates from the Optoma factory. I haven't yet investigated whether the firmware's the same. Viewsonic tends to add its own touches to features like this. I noticed, for example (although there wasn't room to include this in the review) that the PLED-W500 guesses that you may just be using a blank wall as a screen and has a menu for adjusting the picture according to the colour the wall's painted.

I think the K330 figure you're looking at here is the street price, which we can expect to come down across the board. It's worth bearing in mind though that however and wherever you buy, the PLED-500 comes with a three year warranty from Viewsonic. eBuyer's offering a three-year warranty on the Acer equivalent, but that'll cost you a fairly hefty £60-ish on top of the selling price.

--

Chris