Posted on May 12, 2016 By Art Feierman
The Viewsonic PJD7835 is a relatively small, crossover portable business and education projector that doubles as a great “bright room” projector for the home. It has particularly good color in its “best” modes, 1080p resolution, and 3500 white lumens! That’s impressive considering the reasonable $899 list price in the US.
Viewsonic has been making projectors – mostly DLP, for about a decade I believe, but what really put Viewsonic on the map as a major competitor happened perhaps 5 years ago, when Viewsonic freaked out most of their competitors by launching the first of this series – the 1080p PJD7820. At the time, companies were rolling out their first “affordable” 1080p or WUXGA projectors. Except that everyone was pricing them from $1999 and up! Then, at CES, here comes Viewsonic, making a rather effective statement.
Update: 11/18/16: The PJD7836HDL replaced the 7835.
Their “statement” was the launch of a 1080p native resolution projector for $899 – basically half the price of any of their competition. It was an overnight success.
Like that price performance breakthrough, and other earlier 1080p projector from Viewsonic, consider this a crossover projector. That is, it’s suitable for many environments – schools, businesses, and the home.
Now while some Japanese and Taiwanese projector brands are far more recognizable (Epson, Sony, Optoma, NEC…), Viewsonic is very serious about projectors. A quick look and count on their website currently shows 40 different projector models.
This review first focuses on the PJD7835 projector for its abilities as a rather lightweight portable, and as a small install projector for schools and businesses. I figure discussing portability makes sense – not just because of the lightweight, but because they went to the trouble to provide a nylon carry case in the box. Projectors that are suitable for both – portability and permanent mounting, are the most common these days, unless you need super bright “heavy metal” projectors designed for large venues.
But we won’t stop there! For those of you looking for an affordable, bright room projector for home, you aren’t forgotten. I devote part of this review to discussing how this Viewsonic projector does as a high brightness entry level home entertainment projector as well, and have a number of images from movies and HDTV as well as those from computers and browsers that are more commercial oriented. I imagine at least some folks are looking for a home projector they can double for work, or vice versa, and I’ll say now, that the PJD7835 most certainly qualifies.
Let’s continue with a bit more overview, and then a list of this Viewsonic’s highlights. From there, we’ll move on to the Special Features page, where there’s a fair amount to cover.
Viewsonic has stayed highly competitive, since those “early days”, not only with the pricing of their projectors, but in that they offer a 3 year warranty on their projectors including the PJ7835, while the bulk of their competition offers only 1 year, (some offer 2 years). Three years coverage under $1000, is mostly unheard of.
Thus, score one for Viewsonic!
This Viewsonic has a pretty good feature set, which we’ll explore at length. BTW, for those interested, Viewsonic is a US company, based in California. The PJD7835 uses a TI (Texas Instruments) DLP chip at its heart.
Not only does Viewsonic have HDMI, but it offers one HDMI port with MHL. That’s hardly unique in this day and age, but what they have done is hide that port, so that a streaming stick inserted into it, isn’t visible!
The PJD7835 is one of five current projector models in Viewsonic’s 78xx series.
You probably have noticed that we have the PJD7835HD one of our Hot Product awards. The reason is straight forward, in that this is an excellent little crossover projector – that is, very good, at a lot of different things. It’s bright, of course, supports MHL, has the big sound needed for gaming, or in the classroom, etc.
Part of the reason is that Viewsonic goes the extra mile, with things like longest standard warranty in the class, cable cover and carry case both included, the optional wireless, 3D with HDMI 1.4 support for Blu-ray 3D, plenty of zoom range… All sub-$1000 projectors are at least somewhat “entry-level” or at least limited in features, but the PJD7835HD puts together an impressive list of capabilities and performance, that makes it especially competitive. All that translates into it receiving our top “regular” award. (We have specialty awards given out in our Education and Home Theater reports.)
As you mentioned, there’s a respectable, rather powerful speaker system on board, multiple pre-set picture modes, also multiple eco modes and more. Heres a round-up of the Viewsonic PJD7835HD’s key highlights (aka features):
Time to turn the page, and take a look at some of this Viewsonic PJD-7835HD’s special features.
We wish to thank Epson America for sponsoring this year’s Best Classroom Projectors report, in which this projector is considered.
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