Posted on June 1, 2016 By Art Feierman
At Projector Reviews, choosing the projectors to be included in the Classroom Projector report each year is more of an art, than a science. This year was typical. Here’s some of what makes it all come together.
There are really just a couple of factors:
First is availability. There have been times we wanted to review a projector but due to timing, it doesn’t work out. This tends to happen because many new models don’t hit until early summer. But, we have to have our reviews finished by mid-May at the very latest.
In the past few years, we’ve had Proxima, Casio, and others simply not have what we are looking for available in time.
Or, there may be a scheduling issue. Or, as was the case a a few years ago, with Hitachi – they simply told us they were no longer sending out review units.
With Sony, were were recently able to get in a large venue model, but when looking for a mainstream, the timing wasn’t good.
Another factor is the companies themselves. We’re a small shop, with limited resources. Some manufacturers are constantly hounding us to review models. (That can change from year to year, as to who is.) Other companies, I’ll run into at a trade show and go, we’d love to review one of these, get in touch with me… And I never hear from them. Poor communications from their PR companies (they often handle review projectors), or their product management, (sometimes due to turn over), results in no contact, no reviews.
For example we like reviewing InFocus products, and we are doing one later this summer, but I had to make several calls to find anyone to talk to, to even find out who’s in charge now. (Fortunately, in their case, one of the folks I used to work with for several years, just returned to InFocus so we’re back communicating.)
Then there’s Panasonic: We’ve had Panasonic projectors represented in this report in most years, (and they’ve won a couple of key awards) but in the past year Panasonic hasn’t been interested in sending us any projectors. I had requested their newest laser, got the cold shoulder. No one attempts to contact me from Panasonic anymore. Not sure why. We will survive, there are plenty of other brands. They were an early leader in laser projectors but there are plenty of Sonys, Epsons and others these days.
We wish to thank Epson America for sponsoring this year’s Best Classroom Projectors report.
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