While most business and education projectors in the $1000 price range still use conventional lamp light sources, Casio uses a hybrid LED/Laser light source instead.  Although the XJ-F210WN may have an initial cost of $200 to $400 more than some competing lamp-based projectors, the life cycle cost for the Casio is very competitive.  This is because the rated life of this hybrid light source is "up to" 20,000 hours, which is about 4 to 6 times as long as a typical lamp.  Thus, the costs associated with multiple lamp replacements are eliminated.

Overall the XJ-F210WN produces a better picture than many other DLP projectors of this class that I have reviewed recently.  The XJ-F210WN received our Hot Product award for the combination of very good picture quality, low maintenance, good networking support, a good feature set and a built-in speaker that can play fairly loud.

The Viewsonic PJD7835 is a relatively small, crossover portable business and education projector that doubles as a great "bright room" projector for the home. It has particularly good color in its "best" modes, 1080p resolution, and 3500 white lumens! That’s impressive considering the reasonable $899 list price in the US.

Viewsonic has been making projectors – mostly DLP, for about a decade I believe, but what really put Viewsonic on the map as a major competitor happened perhaps 5 years ago, when Viewsonic freaked out most of their competitors by launching the first of this series – the 1080p PJD7820.   At the time, companies were rolling out their first "affordable" 1080p or WUXGA projectors. Except that everyone was pricing them from $1999 and up!  Then, at CES, here comes Viewsonic, making a rather effective statement.

Update:  11/18/16:  The PJD7836HDL replaced the 7835.

Their “statement” was the launch of a 1080p native resolution projector for $899 – basically half the price of any of their competition. It was an overnight success.

Like that price performance breakthrough, and other earlier 1080p projector from Viewsonic, consider this a crossover projector. That is, it’s suitable for many environments – schools, businesses, and the home.

Now while some Japanese and Taiwanese projector brands are far more recognizable (Epson, Sony, Optoma, NEC…), Viewsonic is very serious about projectors. A quick look and count on their website currently shows 40 different projector models.

We have reviewed NEC ultra short throw projectors in the past and the UM352W builds on NEC's solid reputation for producing quality projectors in this category.  This particular NEC projector is heavy in terms of having a full suite of interactive features making it suitable for presentation or collaboration in the classroom, boardroom, or training room.  NEC describes this model as:

"...a bright 3500 lumen projector that provides a complete interactive solution with built-in whiteboarding, advanced collaboration capabilities, auto set-up and content delivery over wired or wireless LAN.  With its ability to be mounted to the wall directly above the screen on which it projects, this model helps eliminate the shadows and glare typically found with standard projections systems.  Any flat surface can instantaneously be transformed into a digital whiteboard where participants can share information and annotations from computers, tablets and smart phones from withing the room or remotely.  Concurrently, the UM352W can be used to control and annotate over any PC software."

The model is targeted at both education and business markets.

The UM352W received out Hot Product Award for its combination of solid performance, great features and a competitive price.