Casio XJ-S57 Projector - Image Quality2

Posted on June 1, 2009 by Art Feierman

All considered, Theatre mode delivers very good color, although you can get better still from many 3LCD projectors. Also, Mike points out that Casio has another projector in the series with a more advanced color wheel, that should do better still, if that's critical for you. -art

The next two images (of the Projector Reviews homepage) give you still another look at the color performance of the XJ-S57 portable projector. The first is in Presentation mode, and the second, with better color, is Theatre mode. You can compare them to what you see on your own computer. Still, note the reds ( the big Sanyo banner). You can click on them for larger images:

Presentation Large

Theatre Large

As we’ve seen on some other projectors, there is an electronic zoom that allows the user to zoom in on the center of the image. You can then move the zoomed in section around on the screen. This can be very handy for pointing out details during a presentation.

Connecting the XJ-S57 to a DVD player via its composite video and stereo audio adapter, I viewed a few movies to check out the projector’s video and built-in audio performance. As you might expect from the previous comments about color reproduction, this isn’t a projector that you’d want to use regularly for video playback. There were a number of motion artifacts and the usual DLP rainbow effect. To be fair, the picture quality was typical for this type of projector and it would certainly be sufficient for short video presentations. For those who require better video performance in an equally lightweight projector, the Epson 1730W would be a better choice for a few hundred dollars more, although it is definitely a larger projector.

On the audio side, as expected, the 1-watt speaker was only sufficient for use in a small, quiet room. Fortunately, audio can be output to a separate sound system.