Posted on June 11, 2016 By Art Feierman
Casio’s V series is all about bright, affordable solid state projectors. The Ecolite XJ-V110W is WXGA and offers 3500 lumens for $799, with a 20,000 LED/Laser light engine.
Although the flagship of the five Casio projectors in this series, the XJ-V110W still has to be considered a no-frills projector. It’s all about delivering a bright image, with a long life LED/Laser engine at a low cost. Seriously, if you want solid state, and under $1000 other than Casio, you are looking at those “pico” projectors – really pocket and large pocket projectors, where under $1000 you aren’t likely to find one with more than 800 lumens. That makes this Casio at least four times as bright, and with comparable brightness to competing lamp based projectors. Delivering a no-lamp, long life solution at a bargain price does have it’s costs, however, in terms of features.
Editor’s note: Although this review is listed as one of mine (Art), I had help. The review was started by Bill Livosi, who provided a major assist. Bill started with the projector, and handled doing all the Casio measurements. He also provided about 1/3 of the content within, although I have done some editing and rearranging of his work.
To create an attractive “budget” classroom projector, Casio took away some of the features found in their more expensive projectors — everything from extra connections (notably a second HDMI port, USB port, and network connectivity) to a hard-wired control panel on the projector itself. Removing these items doesn’t affect picture quality, but it cuts cost. At the end of the day, it’s all about the image on screen, so this makes sense — especially from the point of view of schools that are already doing their best to stretch a budget.
The XJ-V110W retains some features that make it easier to use in a classroom, namely HDMI input and a 1.5x zoom lens. The former is almost mandatory these days, as all current video devices and computers use HDMI, while the latter makes the XJ-V110W easier to use in a variety of classrooms of different shapes and sizes across an entire school (or district).
As previously touched on, the projector has native WXGA resolution (1280×800) and a maximum brightness spec of 3,500 lumens. An MSRP of $799 makes the XJ-V110W affordable enough for widespread deployment. If the XJ-V110W does not fit the bill, Casio manufactures nineteen additional models with a range of specifications, starting with the value winner in last year’s education report, the $599 XJ-V1, and offerings up to about $2000 including some ultra thin, some “pro”, and one interactive ultra short throw projector. The V110W being one of the “core” series, naturally has less features than found in those more expensive series.
Of course the primary feature found here is the solid state, hybrid LED/Laser light engine. That’s what sets it apart from all other serious sub-$1000 competition on the market.
The Highlights list is rather short for this projector – and we had to dig a little, at that.
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