NEC P502WL Projector Review - Hardware Tour

Appearance

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The P502WL is considered a compact installation class projector, but is still significantly larger and heavier that the typical 3000 lumen business or classroom projector.  We have reviewed a number of installation projectors weighting 50 pounds, or more, and the P502WL is indeed much smaller, and especially much lighter at under 20 pounds.  In fact, this projector is similar in size and weight to a mid-size home theater projector, such as the Epson Home Cinema 5030.

As seen in the 1st gallery photo above, the projector's lens is located on the left side of the front panel.  A cooling inlet air vent is just to the right of the lens and the speaker is just to the right of the air inlet.  The window for the IR remote receiver is located toward the right side of the front panel.

The entire right side of the projector is covered with a ventilation grill, as shown in the 2nd photo above.

The rear of the projector, as seen in the 3rd photo above, has all of the signal and power connectors and near the top-left corner is a cover over the connector for the optional wireless network module.

The left side of the projector, as seen in the 4th photo above, has the grill for the air exhaust vent toward the left and the control pad s located toward the right.

The top of the projector has status lights along the left side of the front edge and the lens shift adjustments under a cover toward the right side (more on these below).

Connector Panel

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The power and signal connectors for the P502WL are located on the rear panel of the projector.  The 1st photo above shows the connector panel and the 2nd photo is a NEC illustration showing the purpose of each connector.

Control Pad and Status Lights

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The P502WL has its control pad, as shown in the 1st photo above, on the left side of the projector.  At the top of the control pad is the power button and below that is a row of 3 buttons for:  Source (to select the desired signal input); Eco (to put the projector into a lower power mode); and Auto Adjust (to synchronize the projector for an analog input signal).  Below those are the Menu button (to display the on-screen menu); 4-way menu navigation buttons plus the enter button, and an Exit button.

There are 3 lights along the front edge of the projector's top panel, as shown in the 2nd photo above.  The left light is the Power indicator and the center light indicates Status where it can appear as red, orange or green and as steady of blinking with each combination indicating a different projector state.  The right light indicates if the projector is in Normal or Eco mode.

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Lens

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Remote Control

The supplied NEC remote control is a compact size with no back light.  Note this is a somewhat generic NEC projector remote and certain buttons do not function with this projector model.

The Power On and Off (standby) and the Source (Input) buttons are located at the top of the remote.

Below that is a group of buttons that do double duty as either a numeric keypad or for selecting the specific signal input source.

Below those are buttons to bring up the on-screen menus, AV Mute, Freeze (to freeze the current on-screen image), and Exit (to go back to the previous menu).

Below that is the 4-way navigation buttons with an enter button in the center.

Below that are rocker buttons for Digital Zoom and Page (used with the Viewer App).

Below that are two button for mouse right and left click functions (does not work with this projector model).

The final two rows of buttons are for placing the projector in Eco mode, making keystone corrections, making picture adjustments, controlling the speaker volume, displaying the Help information, Zoom/Focus (does to work with this projector model), and selecting the display aspect ratio.

 

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