This group of projectors includes five "larger venue" projectors that should be able to handle most medium and large university classrooms, with the brightest claiming 6,500 lumens. Of these five, three, this year, have solid state light engines, two with traditional laser phosphor solutions, and the Casio with a hybrid LED/Laser engine. The projectors are listed in alphabetical order.
It’s true that each year those projectors we refer to as “standard” rather than “larger venue” keep getting brighter. A decade ago, a 3,000 lumen projector would certainly be considered large venue, today it’s hard to even find a “standard” K-12 projector claiming much less than 3,000 lumens. Well, with that in mind, we also included the best performance projector from the Standard projectors as an entry in this class. That would be the 3,800 lumen Epson PowerLite 990U.
It took an award in the Standard Class, so I made it ineligible in this Higher Ed/Larger Venue Class for an additional award, making it so the other four projectors are slugging it out for two Best In Classroom Awards - Best Value, and Best Performance.
Counting that one, this year’s five higher education/large venue projectors come from four major manufacturers in the projector industry: Casio, Epson, Optoma, and NEC.
Okay, let’s meet our entries, with a product summary of each.
We wish to thank Epson America for sponsoring this year’s Best Classroom Projectors report.
