Classroom Projector Report: Best School Projectors for K-12 Education - 2012

Posted on May 18, 2012 by Art Feierman

16 Projectors we've recently reviewed, plus sixty additional projectors are considered in this report. Reviews were done by Tony, Mike, and myself. Awards are based on feedback from all reviewers. -art This year's Guide to the Report, Special Features, Projector Guide, Image Quality Performance, and Physical Tour pages are also completed. Image Quality and Performance, are also updated. The Awards page, is of course up! The second section of the report - (60+ projectors) is now in process, and will post within the week.

16 Projectors we've recently reviewed, plus sixty additional projectors are considered in this report. Reviews were done by Tony, Mike, and myself. Awards are based on feedback from all reviewers. -art

This year's Guide to the Report, Special Features, Projector Guide, Image Quality Performance, and Physical Tour pages are also completed. Image Quality and Performance, are also updated. The Awards page, is of course up! The second section of the report - (60+ projectors) is now in process, and will post within the week.

Classroom and Education Projectors - Overview

This is our second annual report focusing on projectors for schools. While our attention is primarily on use in K-12 classrooms and multi-purpose rooms, a few of the projectors are bright enough for small auditorium work. This year, we've got a few small portables, a number of classic small fixed install projectors (mostly large portable sized, but well designed for mounting in classroom or conference room), some 3D capable projectors, and a few interactive projectors for your consideration. In our opinion, several of these projectors really aren't education focused in design, but either the manufacturer felt it was able to compete, or simply, the closest thing they had that was available for review. In fairness several manufacturers passed this year, because they didn't want to go against the competition with their last year's models, and the new models weren't available by the deadline.

The goal of this report, is not to attempt to identify the absolute best classroom projector out of some 600 active projectors on the market. Perhaps 1/2 of those 600 are at least somewhat suitable for school use. Rather, our goal is to sample a wide range of projectors with varying capabilities and prices, so that teachers, business people, IT, AV managers, and, tech coordinators, etc., have a good basis for deciding what types of feature/benefits, what price points, what networking (if any) is needed. Still, you will find similarities between groups of projectors. There are several interactive projectors, even more total short and ultra-short throw projectors, and even a few more generic portables. Finally, we offer up several higher power projectors for your consideration, that can tackle larger rooms, even small auditoriums.

There are far too many projectors available for there to be a single best projector that's best for most school environments, but our hope is that between the fifteen reviews, and the specs and comments on another five dozen education oriented projectors, we will help you quickly narrow the choices, and make better decisions.

Our annual Best In Classroom awards will be given out to the best (and most interesting) of the reviewed projectors.

Again, this year, we offer additional comment on some 60 projectors that we did not review. We asked manufacturers to recommend one, or two series of projectors they felt best worked in school environments. From those we picked series we felt best, to add to our big sortable spreadsheet. We add comments on these series, although those will be the last part of the report finished. We do not give out awards to projectors we haven't actually reviewed.

We'd tried to pack a lot of information and guidance in here. Many of you are experts in your own right, but not all of our readers of this report. Forgive our repetitiveness of some basic points.

We recommend that our visitors read (or scan) the Guide to the Report. Also helpful is the Special Features page. That Special Features page provides our take on more than a dozen features and benefits found in various of these projectors, and try to put them all in perspective. Finally if you click (or use the outline), it will launch our Features and Specs Chart for this year's reviewed projectors. It will launch in a separate window so you can quickly reference it when you want. You can sort the specs and features by any column, and for that matter, can sort two or more columns. Have fun with that!