Posted on May 5, 2011 By Art Feierman
Welcome to our projector review of Casio’s new XJ-A250V Projector.
There will be additional, competitive information about the XJ-A250V, will be available in the full K12 Education Projector Comparison Report much of which is already updated from last year. This Casio XJ-A250 is one of the last three projectors reviewed for that new education report.
The Casio XJ-A250V projector earned our Runner-Up Best In Classroom Award in this year’s 2011 Classroom Projector Report: The Best School Projectors for K-12 Education!
The XJ-A250, or as it is officially known, the XJ-A250V, is Casio’s newest Green-slim projector. Green-Slim is about Casio’s projectors using their hybrid Laser and LED light source. We almost didn’t get this Casio in, in time to be included in the school projector report.
Casio just launched (4/11), three additional new projectors (not yet available), with different features, which may be better overall for more permanent school use (mounted), but this Casio projector is considered as best fitting when a school has to share projectors and move them from room to room (and lock them up at night), or perhaps in the hands of a specialist teacher who travels from one school in a district, to another. Bottom line, the Casio is a micro-portable (sub-five pounds) first. As such, it has compromised the feature set accordingly, lacking the larger more powerful speakers many other projectors have, in favor of that enhanced portability.
This DLP projector is one of two thin projectors reviewed for the education report. The other, the Epson 1775W, isn’t quite as slim, and lacks the Casio’s extensive placement flexibility, but has a bit more sound (not much), networking and a number of other features. There are definite, real trade-offs, although both are pretty impressive portables. The Epson is actually lighter, but the Casio, is easier to pack into, say, a briefcase.
The Casio XJ-A250 offers up multiple brightness modes – different eco and bright modes. If you need maximum brightness, the projector ends up the noisiest of the field of fifteen covered in the report, but intermediate modes lower the fan noise.
This projector has a great warranty, and an extremely low cost of ownership based on no filters to change, and a light source that should outlive the rest of the projector. Of course there can be out of warranty issues over the life of any projector, consider: 4 hours a day, times 5 days a week, times 35 weeks a year (school year) equals almost 30 years!
For reference, thirty years ago, this summer, the first IBM PF shipped. If the light sources last as long as claimed, I don’t think anyone will need a replacement.
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