Posted on March 30, 2019 By Art Feierman and Nikki Kahl
Welcome to Projector Reviews 10th Annual Best Education Projectors Report – originally named our Best Classroom Projectors Report.
This page is designed to provide a heads up as to what is within this report in order to help you take best advantage of it. It is also intended to help you to find the things you are looking for.
Most readers will find that by scanning this (and the following page) and picking out key areas of interest will serve you best. Most will not need to read all the content.
The goal of this Education Projector Report remains unchanged over the years. It is more about providing insights to what is currently available to schools, both K-12 and higher education, than attempting to find a single or several, “best” projectors for everyone (no such thing exists). Many years back, this report only covered K12.
Currently, we are focusing not only on K-12, and the usual Higher Education. This year, we’ve included a “High-end and specialty projector” Higher Education section as well. In that section, you’ll find some of the highest power projectors – only needed for the largest lecture halls, massive auditoriums, and for special applications such as museum exhibits and digital signage as it relates to schools and museums. Plus we include specialty projectors that are needed by those same educational institutions.
Ultimately, there is no single “best” projector, because there is so much variation in what requirements are needed for a particular location, use, and support: price, resolution, placement flexibility, picture quality, networking, wireless, etc. Every installation has different requirements. We hand out awards to those with superior performance and value for their capabilities.
Does a school need all their projectors to have basic networking, or more likely, advanced networking (that comes with supporting protocols like Crestron’s RoomView, Control4’s…
What about interactivity, or rooms where placing a projector is difficult?
Or perhaps cost is the key? What are the short term costs and long term costs?
Important consideration: The majority of projectors being sold to schools of all types today are widescreen projectors. Prior to the last few years, however, most of the school projectors in classrooms etc. were 4:3 ratio – either VGA, SVGA or XGA.
For budget purposes, many/most schools want to avoid widescreen projectors (16:10 or 16:9), when replacing older 4:3 aspect ratio projectors because changing the aspect ratio means new screens and possibly moving the ceiling mount.
If not replacing a 4:3 projector, then, most likely you will be going widescreen. The choice of aspect ratios is basically HDTV’s 16:9 aspect ratio, or business/education’s 16:10). That said, while 16:10 dominates business/education projectors some of those are also 16:9 (the two aspect ratios are similar enough). Widescreen, it should be noted, is highly desirable from a presenting standpoint, but the replacement market is still huge. This keeps the sales of 4:3 aspect ratio projectors significant, if now in the minority of sales.
Our objective is to give you a pretty good idea of what’s out there in terms of features, capabilities, options, and why they are important to various users.
Our goal is also to help decision-makers figure out which projectors will best serve their classrooms, their networking requirements, their auditoriums and special purpose rooms, as well as, when appropriate, which portable projectors work best for those traveling with a projector, whether from room to room, or perhaps a specialty instructor that travels from school to school, or a professor that prefers to carry “his own” when visiting other institutions.
We wish to thank Epson America for sponsoring this year’s Education Report.
We fully understand that those of you reading this report come to it with a wide variety of needs, of background, of expertise, and objectives.
If you have good ideas and info relating to school installations that you believe other readers will find useful, please comment, or if you have some longer content, please email it to us and we will try to add the information in. I’m speaking of features, networking, dealing with the environment, support, and more. If you have an epiphany to share, we want to help get the word out.
We hope we have provided enough explanations for those less familiar with projectors, and also good advice on how to assess needs and requirements. All things considered, we believe we have assembled a report that will provide useful information to virtually all people involved in researching, buying, and using projectors, whether in K-12, Higher Education, or specialty fields like museums. We hope you agree and find it quite helpful. Again, your feedback is definitely appreciated!
As always, I would like next year’s report to be even better, so if you have ideas for improvement, email me at reviewer@projectorreviews.com. Just remember, we’re a relatively small organization (I am the only full-time person – although we typically have 3 reviewers), so resources – especially time, is somewhat limited.
Again, thanks for taking the time to visit us. If you do find our report useful, we sure would appreciate the Likes! You can find us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. Thanks! – Art
© 2021 Projector Reviews
