The measurements in the table were made with the projector's zoom lens at its mid-point and with the lamp in full power mode. All of the user controls were set to their factory default positions. Setting the lens for max. zoom increases the brightness only slightly (approx. 3%) while setting it to its minimum position decreases the brightness by approx. 14%.
InFocus specifies the brightness as 2400 lumens in high lamp mode and 1920 lumens in Eco mode. This implies there is a lower power lamp mode offered as part of the Eco setting. However, the only Eco mode setting I could find within the projector's menus was a mode with auto lamp dimming when there is no signal present. There is also a 'programmed dimming' setting offered which will dim the lamp when dark scenes are being displayed. However, I could find no mention within the user manual, for provisions allowing the user to switch the projector between a high power vs. low power lamp mode.
Brightness uniformity was also an issue. With the projector placed level on a table and projecting onto a matte white projection screen the bottom of the image was brighter than the top of the image. More specific, when measured near the horizontal center the brightness at the bottom of the image was approx. 31% brighter than at the center of the screen while at the top of the screen the brightness was approx. 31% dimmer than at the screen center. To the eye the difference in brightness didn't appear a great as these numbers might lead you to believe, but the brightness variation was visible.
When I connected the projector's HDMI input to my Blu-ray player's HDMI output and set the projector's volume level to maximum I was surprised to find that the maximum volume available was very low, at least at times. It seemed that perhaps the two channels of the stereo audio that was being delivered by the attached Blu-ray disc player were not correctly being mixed together for playback thru the projector's single speaker. In any case I didn't confirm this is what was going on, but that could explain what I was hearing where the audio level for certain scenes, or certain sounds within the scene, were loud enough and others were far too low. So it suggests the IN1118HD may have an issue handling stereo or multichannel audio sources, at least thru the HDMI input.
About one half of the time when I would turn on the projector with a source (either PC or Blu-ray Disc player) connected via the projector's HDMI input, there would be a strong overall color to the image (frequently either red or yellow). When this happened I could switch the projector's input to a different input then back to HDMI and that would correct the problem. This suggests that perhaps the projector is, at times, not correctly detecting whether the HDMI input signal in is RGB vs. component format.
The IN1118HD has both manual and automatic vertical keystone correction modes for use when the projector is not mounted level. For my testing I had the projector sitting level on a table where no keystone correction was needed. For this setup I simply set the projection to manual mode for keystone correction and with no correction being used. However, when I tried switching the keystone correction to automatic I found the projector would periodically briefly apply some correction causing the image geometry to be frequently changing even though the projector was just sitting there level and stationary. I have not experienced this issue before on projectors with automatic keystone correction, but it does appear this specific unit has an issue with its automatic keystone correction function.
Audible Noise
We do not measure the audible noise levels produced by the projectors being reviewed. The InFocus IN1118HD is specified to produce a noise level of 3o dB in high lamp mode. This value is reasonably low for this class of projector. While the noise level is certainly very audible in a quiet room, it should not be loud enough prove distracting when this projector is being used in the intended business or classroom environment.
