If you are a “tech illiterate” like I was, but you need to purchase a Power Point Projector for an upcoming assignment or graphic presentation, it can be a daunting task. With it’s focus on your needs, this article was written with the beginner in mind. If you go looking on your own, the first thing that the salesman will tell you is about resolution and brightness and will use other accepted industry buzzwords, but now you’ll know what they are talking about.

Whether you view an image via your laptop or a presentation projector, that image is comprised of pixels. Your laptop or video source determines the resolution and if you are going to upgrade soon, you may wish to pick an LCD projector with a high resolution.

Amazingly, not long ago the common resolution used to be rather crude VGA (640 x 480), this was later replaced by SVGA (800 x 600) and the more modern quality XGA (1,024 x 768). One can even venture into the really high end resolutions such as SXGA and UXGA, (1,280 x 1,024) and (1600 x 1200) respectively. This ultra high-end resolution comes with a high price tag.  Some projectors support a number of different resolutions, but the “default” is usually referred to as its native resolution.

Brightness is one of the most important parameters when it comes to making presentations on the go, the projector bulb that will come with your projector will be graded by something called lumens.  The brightness of a projector in lumens is a very important specification to consider when doing power point presentations on the go or even in a conference room with the lights on. Huge venues or brightly lit rooms that remain so during a screening require projectors that are capable of a great amount of lumens, possibly 5000 or more.  With a small audience and a very dark room, you could get by with just 1,000 lumens. You often see lumens expressed as Ansi lumens in projector literature, ANSI is just a uniform standard of measuring lumens, by having a standard you can be sure you are comparing “apples to apples” as the saying goes.

You might hear about “throw distance”  as well, this one is pretty simple; it refers to the actual distance that your projector will be from the screen.  If you will be relatively further than 15 feet, you’ll have to ask for a “large throw” lens. Short throw power point projectors can be great when doing presentations as you can place them close to the screen and enjoy a shadow free presentation. The speaker or presenter also doesn’t have to contend with distracting, bright projector lights beaming in her eyes while the short throw projector is actually in front of her.

Connectivity is very important when interfacing your computer to a projector. Making sure that you have compatibility is important to someone who does power point projector presentations. Be sure that the resolution of both the projector and your laptop are compatible, ideally the same. Most of the time this is not an issue. None the less, be sure that regardless what kind of projector you purchase that it has all the cords and other port attachments that you’ll need.

Find a place where you can compare a large amount of projectors and brands easily. Projectorselect.com is one site that meets this criteria. Good luck in finding presentation projector that meets your needs. With just some basic knowledge, you’ll find that it’s not as difficult as you imagined.

No related posts.