NEC HT510 - Overview

Posted on January 20, 2005 by Art Feierman

NEC's 1000 lumen HT510 is built around the Texas Instrument Matterhorn DLP chip, which sports 1024x576 resolution. The last time we reviewed a DLP projector with this resolution, it was last spring; BenQ's 7800 projector. We liked that projector a lot, especially for the price (which has since come down significantly in price but still should sell for a few hundred more than this NEC)

Specs Preview

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NEC HT510 Specs
Price	995
Technology	DLP
Native Resolution	1024x576
Brightness (Manufacturer Claim)	1000
Contrast
Zoom Lens Ratio	1.20:1
Lens Shift	Yes
Lamp Life	2000, 3000 eco-mode
Weight	6.6
Warranty	2 years parts and labor

This NEC home theater projector is poised to compete against highly touted projectors around the $2000 street price, such as Sanyo's Z3 and Panasonic's AE700U. From an interfacing standpoint the HT510 lacks an HDMI or DVI for digital interfacing, but beyond that it has everything else you would expect, and it sports vertical lens shift, to simplify setup. It is a compact model, which as you can see, is a long, narrow projector, as opposed to many LCD home theater projectors which tend to be wider than deep. At only 6.6 pounds, its also very portable for those that might choose to have a projector they setup and take down frequently in a multi-purpose room.

The NEC projector comes with a 2 year warranty which is fairly typical - although since we mentioned two of its major competitors - the Sanyo Z3 has a 3 year warranty, and the Panasonic AE700U projector has a 1 year warranty (note Panasonic sells a 3 year extended warranty, but that makes it siginficantly more expensive).

Overall performance of the NEC projector was very impressive and you will be able to find more on this in the Performance - Image Quality, and Summary sections. It is a serious contender to the hot LCD models even if it lacks a few features, and is one notch lower resolution.