Casio XJ-A140 Projector - Image Quality

Posted on April 30, 2010 by Art Feierman

Casio XJ-A140 Color & Picture Quality

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Casio has a done nice job when it comes to video quality and compression with the XJ-A140. I put the projector through a series of tests with higher resolutions than its native 1024x768 and found the quality of small type to be superb. The highest resolution I tested was 1600x1200 and from 15 feet away I was still able to make out 10pt type fairly well while projecting an 80 inch diagonal image. I would not want to work in that resolution for long, but in a pinch, I felt fully confident that if a certain piece of a presentation material needed a higher resolution, then the projector could handle it.

Another test performed was how the projector would handle text if keystone correction was used. As has been noted before, using keystone correction can degrade image quality, but I found XJ-A140 did a superior job compressing text. I would almost be able to say that with this projector it is ok to use it if you are in a hurry and will be presenting in native (1024x768) resolution.

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Color reproduction was pretty accurate right out of the box. The default color mode is Standard and it produced a nice yellow. This is unusual for DLP's to produce such a nice yellow without modification of the light output. When switching to Graphics Mode the image dimmed and the colors had become less accurate. Not bad, but generally felt Standard Mode looked best. Moving to Theater Mode, the image dimmed even more but that is expected. The projector is attempting to create a higher contrast ratio. Although the colors in a pie chart started to look off, Theater Mode is meant for showing video content, so the color issues would not be an issue. In fact, you will find the movie image in dark scenes will present more detail. Blackboard Mode produces the most innacurate color, but on a Blackboard surface colors should reproduce accurately.

Generally DLP projectors have a hard time with yellows, but the XJ-A140 produced an acceptable image. For artists or those that need strong color accuracy for a presentation, you might need to do some tweaking and testing of different color modes, but for the average road warrior with a canned sales presentation, the factory defaults will more than suffice. Great thing is, the menu system is easy to navigate through and changing settings is a snap. Although photographs are no replacement for the naked eye, a few shots of the projector performing in different color modes are below.