NEC NP61

Full-auto projector takes sweat out of presentations



DON'T WANT TO FUSS setting up a presentation projector? NEC's fully automatic NP61 is for you. Just plug it in, connect a laptop, and it's ready to go. No fiddling with input buttons, focus controls, keystone correction—nothing.

At $1,299, the compact NP61 isn't cheap, but it's appropriately priced for a 3.5-pound portable model with a native XGA (1,024x768) resolution. An instant-off feature lets you turn it off and pack it up immediately without a lamp-cooling period. Should you need to make an adjustment, its controls are on the top of the unit.

NEC claims the NP61 can be placed as close as 4.8 feet from a wall or as far as 44 feet away to produce an image of 33 inches to 300 inches (diagonal). Its Digital Light Processing (DLP) engine is rated at 3,000 lumens with a contrast ratio of 1,600-to-1.

That's bright enough to use even in a well-lit room. In our tests, we placed the NP61 112 inches from the screen to create an 80-inch image. Image quality was excellent. In a medium-lit room, the image was very bright.



Photo and video images were a touch darker than they appeared on our laptop screen, but they still looked impressive. Our only real disappointment is that the monaural speaker delivered, at best, low volume. Also, the constant whir of the projector's fan is noticeable, and it may even grow annoying to the person adjacent to it. Setting the projector to economy mode drops the noise level to about 5dB while delivering an image that's still plenty bright. —Jamie Bsales

Computer Shopper March 2009