Projector

If it weren't for its 4,000-lumen brightness rating, the Optoma TW762 ($1,100 street) would be a fairly typical lightweight projector. Built around a DLP-based WXGA (1,280 by 800) engine, it weighs in at 6.4 pounds. On the other hand, the 4,000 lumens pegs it as being suitable for a mid- to large-size conference room or classroom, and bright enough to leave the lights on. That makes it notably bright for a projector that you can easily carry with you, and of obvious interest to anyone who can make use of the bright image, whether they need the portability or not.

As I pointed out in my review of the Editors' Choice WXGA Optoma TW610ST ($1,000 street, 4 stars), projectors in the TW762's weight class are generally less likely to wind up as constant traveling companions than they are to be permanently installed or put on a cart for room-to-room portability. However, Optoma includes a soft carrying case with the TW762, and the high brightness will give it special appeal for portable applications with a particular need for a bright projector. That's particularly true considering that the 4,000-lumen TW762 is a half pound lighter than the 3,000-lumen TW610ST.

Setting up the TW762 is absolutely standard, with a manual focus and manual 1.2x zoom. The back panel offers a reasonably full set of connectors, including an HDMI 1.3 port for a computer or video source, two VGA inputs for computers or component video, one pass-through monitor port, and both an S-Video and a composite video port.

In my tests, the TW762 was appropriately bright for its rating. The 78-inch wide (92-inch diagonal) image I tested with was easily bright enough to stand up to the ambient light in a typical office or classroom. The projector is well suited, in short, for throwing a reasonably large, bright image even with the lights on.

The projector's data image quality is best described as acceptable, but a touch short of top tier. On our standard suite of DisplayMate tests the color balance was a little off, with supposedly neutral grays showing a distinctly greenish tinge in midtones. In addition, although most colors were suitably bright and vibrant, yellow was just a touch mustard-colored. On the other hand, both black text on a white background and white text on a black background were crisp and readable even at the smallest sizes we test with.

With video images, the TW762 handled skin tones well and did better than most data projectors with shadow detail (maintaining details based on shading in dark areas). I saw just a touch of posterization (colors changing suddenly where they should change gradually), but only in scenes that many projectors have problems with. On the minus side, however, I also saw unusually obvious noise in the image.

One other important problem was a more obvious than usual rainbow effect, with bright areas breaking up into little red-green-blue rainbows. The effect is always a potential issue for any single-chip DLP projector, but some are more prone than others to showing it, and some people are more sensitive to seeing it. With the TW762 I saw the rainbows in both data and video screens much more often than with most DLP projectors. Anyone who is sensitive to the effect, as I am, may well find them annoying for either data or video sessions that last more than a few minutes.

The TW762's audio quality is better than average for its weight class. The 8-watt mono speaker is both loud enough to fill a small to mid-size conference room and high enough quality to be easily understandable.

Note too that the projector offers 3D support with DLP-Link glasses. As with all DLP-link projectors, there's some question about how practical this can be. The glasses sell for $70 or more each, and the 3D support is somewhat limited, so the projector won't work directly with a Blu-ray player, for example. However, I tested the 3D by connecting to a Blu-ray player through the Optoma 3D-XL ($400 street, 4 stars) external converter, and the 3D certainly works.