Projector Reviews

InFocus IN2116Projector – Image Quality

04-26-2010 – Anthony Arrigo

InFocus IN2116 Color & Image Quality

InFocus has been talking a lot about their BrilliantColor technology and out of the box it appears they have made incredible improvements in color accuracy. Color accuracy has been a problem that has plagued DLP’s since their inception. Yellows would often be a mustard color and reds often appeared slightly orange. Adjustments to brightness and color modes like Video Mode often helped, but weren’t always perfect.

Well, as I was saying, things seem to have improved quite a bit. In Presentation Mode I found the colors in the color wheel image to be very presentable. Yellows were accurate and reds seemed to be vibrant. It was not until I tried out other color modes that I saw colors start to lose their accuracy, but that is to be expected since the other color modes are designed for different color surfaces like a whiteboard, blackboard or beige wall.

Oddly enough, switching to Video Mode hurt color accuracy when displaying primary colors. Switching to Video Mode used to be a trick to improve the image in the past. Keep in mind that if you are showing actual video, then the accuracy issues I discussed above are not a problem. When showing video, Video Mode is often best to use since it will improve contrast and allow you to see more detail in dark scenes.

The InFocus IN2116 handled text in higher resolutions surprisingly well. In the projectors native resolution of WXGA (1280×800 pixels), 8 point type was very readable from a distance of about 10 feet away on projected image measuring 80 inches diagonal. A recommended type size for projector presentations would be at least 10 point type, but I wanted to point out how small you could go and still not strain the eyes of the audience. When pushing the projector to take the highest resolution it could accept (1920×1200), it still handled text well, but really small text sizes like 8 pt. type were not good enough to be considered acceptable. 10 pt. was also too hard to read for any length of time. 12 pt. and larger were definitely better and would not strain the audience if the presentation was 30 minutes or so. If the work you need to present most often requires above the native 1280×800 resolution then I would suggest looking into a projector with a higher native resolution. The compression performance on the InFocus IN2116 and just about any other similar model will cause extreme eye fatigue when displaying small details like one might expect in architectural or engineering applications.