ViewSonic PJD6553w

The ViewSonic PJD6553w ($700 street) is best described as a well-executed version of a fairly typical design, with some extra brightness thrown in for good measure. Built around a WXGA (1,280 by 800) DLP chip, it's bright enough to throw a suitably large image for a mid- to large-size conference room or classroom even with the lights on. Add in its reasonably high-quality data image and usable video, and it well worth a close look if you need WXGA native resolution and a bright image.

With a 3,500-lumen rating, the PJD6553w falls between the Editors' Choice Optoma TW610ST below, rated at 3,100 lumens, and the Optoma TW762 above, rated at 4,000 lumens. As with both Optoma models, it's in a size and weight class that most often winds up permanently installed or on a cart, but is also light enough to carry. In that context, it has a slight advantage for portable use as the lightest of the three, at 5.7 pounds. Unlike the TW762, however, it doesn't come with a carrying case, which means you'll have to buy one separately if you want to use it as a portable.

Connections, Setup, and Brightness
Setting up the PJD6553w is a touch easier than with most projectors, thanks to the 1.3x manual zoom giving a little more flexibility than most for how far you can put the projector from the screen for any given size image. For image input, the back panel offers the usual VGA and composite video options, plus S-Video and HDMI ports. There's also a pass-through monitor port.

The projector was suitably bright for the rating in my tests, which translates to being able to throw an image that's both bright enough and large enough for the size room it's meant for. More precisely, the 78-inch wide (92-diagonal) image I used was easily bright enough to stand up to a typical level of ambient light in a mid-size conference room or classroom.

Data and Video Image Quality
Data image quality was good to excellent, with the projector scoring well overall on our standard suite of DisplayMate tests, despite some minor problems with color issues. Color balance was a little off with some preset modes, for example, including the brightest mode, which showed a green tint at some gray levels. However the grays were suitably neutral in other modes, including the default setting as shipped.

More important for a data projector, both white on black and black on white text was crisp and readable down to the smallest sizes we test with, at 6.8 points, and test images that are designed to show pixel jitter were nearly as rock solid with an analog VGA connection as with a digital HDMI connection.

Video image quality was also good for a data projector. I saw some moderately obvious noise in some scenes. However, I didn't see any posterization (shading changing suddenly where it should change gradually), even in scenes that tend to cause the problem, and the projector did a good job with skin tones and shadow detail (details based on shading in dark areas). You won't mistake the PJD6553w for a home theater projector, but its video is certainly watchable.

Both data and video image quality are also helped by a relative lack of rainbow artifacts, with bright areas breaking up into little red-green-blue rainbows. Some people are more sensitive than others to this rainbow effect, but it's always a potential issue for single-chip DLP projectors.

With the PJD6553w I saw very few rainbow artifacts with data images, and most were in images designed to make the rainbows easy to see. I saw more with video, which is typical for a DLP projector, but far fewer than with many DLP data projectors. Even most people who see the rainbows easily, as I do, aren't likely to see them often enough to find them annoying with data images or consider them more than a minor annoyance with video.

Other Issues
The audio system in the PJD6553w is better than average for this weight class. The 10W mono speaker delivers high enough quality to make dialogue in a movie understandable, along with enough volume to fill a small room.

Also worth mention is 3D support. As with most DLP-Link projectors, the support is more than a little limited, with the most notable issue being the need to buy DLP-Link glasses. Prices are slowly dropping, but most glasses are $70 or more each, which can quickly add up. Note too that ViewSonic doesn't supply any glasses with the projector. If you need 3D, however, the projector can support it.

By any reasonable measure, the ViewSonic projector delivers a winning combination of good to excellent data image quality, usable video, a bright image, and the convenience of a 1.3x zoom. If you must have the brightest possible image, the Optoma TW762 may be the better choice. And if you can benefit from a short throw lens, you'll want to look at the Optoma TW610ST. However, the ViewSonic PJD6553w is a strong enough contender that if you're considering either of those options, you should be giving it a close look as well.

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