NEC NP-V332W Projector Review – Performance

Brightness

All brightness measurements (i.e, taken at the center screen position) were made with the projector’s zoom lens at it mid-point.  With the very limited zoom range of this projector’s lens, the brightness as compared to using a mid-zoom setting effectively did not change at maximum zoom and decreased by only approx. 4% at minimum zoom.

Brightness measurements reported in the above table were with the projector operating in normal (i.e., high lamp) mode.  Setting the lamp to Eco mode reduced the measured brightness by approx. 27%.

Brightness uniformity was only fair with a measured approx. 40% drop in brightness from the center of the image to the dimmest corner of the image.

Color uniformity appeared good with projecting a full screen white test image.

I only measured the Color Brightness (color lumens) for two of the Image Modes (i.e., High-Bright and Movie).  Color brightness in the brighter color modes (e.g., High-Bright was substantially lower than the white brightness, but no more so that I have seen on certain other single chip DLP business or classroom projectors.  This has to do with the Brilliant Color feature and the use of clear segment in the projector’s color wheel to pump-up the brightness of whites and lighter color shades, but displaying well saturated colors too dark in comparison.  For more information on color brightness see our short video on the subject – HERE.

Custom User Settings

In addition of the 5 pre-defined Image (i.e., Picture) modes, this projector offers two User Image Modes (i.e., User 1 and User 2).  Changes to the various picture adjustments will be saved to the projector’s memory for these two User Image Modes.  I used the User 2 setting to perform a quick calibration of the color temperature (color balance) across the grey scale and to adjust a few of the other settings, including reducing the effect of the “Brilliant Color” feature, to obtain a more accurate picture than was available with any of the factory out-of-the-box Image Modes.

The 1st of the 3 photos in the gallery above shows the settings used for the top-level Image Menu > General.  The 2nd photo shows the Image Menu > Advanced settings.  The 3rd photo shows the Color sub-menu settings, that is found under mImage Menu > Advanced.  I must note that on this Color Menu I found that Gain adjustments appeared to be non-functional as they did not alter the image when adjusted.  However, the 3 Bias adjustments did function, but acted more ventional gain adjustments.  In any case, these adjustment were sufficient to obtain good color temperature tracking at near 6500K across the grey scale as shown below.

Note the optimum user adjustments for the color settings ma vary from unit-to-unit and even for a new lamp vs. one that has a few hundred of hours of run time.

Noise