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NEC NP-L102W Projector Review

Posted on September 5, 2014 by Art Feierman

Specs Preview

NEC NP-L102W Specs
Price 1099
Technology DLP
Native Resolution 1280x800
Brightness (Manufacturer Claim) 1000
Contrast 10,000:1
Zoom Lens Ratio 1.10:1
Lens Shift No
Lamp Life 20000 hours
Weight 3.1
Warranty 2 years P/L, 1 year InstaCare

NEC NP-L102W Overview

This projector review is included in our 2015-2016 Best Classroom Projectors Report, which is sponsored by Epson America.

This NEC projector is a serious small business portable.  It comes with a credit card remote control, a sliding cover to protect the fixed lens, and has one HDMI input.  The projector supports several, but not all major 3D formats (more later), but it does have a very impressive built in media player, which will also be covered in this projector reviews's Special Features section.

This projector uses single chip DLP technology, has no filters to change, and is physically smaller and lighter than virtually any lamp based projector.  Like most competing projectors, it sports WXGA resolution which also translates to supporting native 720p.  You can take this little PJ home for some fun viewing, but it's not a match for the better picture quality, yet similarly priced, home entertainment projectors.  It's also smaller and lighter than those.  It has a built in speaker.

The NEC has the brightness to do fine in a typical conference room on screens 60 to 80 inches diagonal, with just basic lighting control, such has killing half the room's fluorescent lights

There are a large number of preset modes, as NEC is trying to keep things simple.  Menus have most of the usual offerings but far less than some feature laden projectors.

I should note that it is very reasonably eco friendly, drawing only 110 watts.  By comparison a lamp based projector that draws less than 200 watts is a real rarity.  Of course, it's also barely half as bright as most of those others.

List price may be $1099, but street price is right around $799 it would seem, with some variation in pricing.  I can't confirm, but I would expect that NEC offers some form of educational discount.

One of the images above shows what comes in the box.  The NEC has the manual on disc

I was surprised to see in the specs that the projector only handles up to 1080i video, but that seems to be a specs error.  The NEC had no trouble at all with 1080p blu-ray discs played on two different brand players.

One of the highlights of the NP-L102W is the media player.  A gig of memory is on board, so that the NEC can handle video and photo formats, but also has a Microsoft Office player to run your spreadsheets, Word docs and the rest.  It will accept SD cards, but only up to 32 gig, which is just fine!

The projector comes with a setup guide, but, to my disappointment, there's no hard copy user manual.  Instead, it's provided on CD.  Yo, folks at NEC - people are doing presentations and other stuff on projectors like this one, from tablets as well as PCs without CD drives.   For that matter, my new MacBook Pro, like many new laptops, doesn't have a CD drive.

I would suggest to NEC, that in this day and age, providing the manual on an SD card, or USB stick makes more sense.  My solution was to go to NEC's site and just download the manual.  That was easy enough.  Still sometimes its handy to have a hard copy manual.

The manual itself was probably average or slightly better than most similar projectors, all the basics seem to be covered, but no real recommendations as to when and why to use certain features.

OK, let's turn the page and start looking more closely at the NEC's special features.

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