Features to Consider When Choosing an Education Projector

Posted on April 20, 2020 By Art Feierman

When choosing a projector for your education applications, there are several factors to consider:

How Much Brightness Do You Need?
How Much Resolution Do You Need?
What Are Your Installation Requirements?
What Are the Best Presentation Tools for Your Applications?

How Much Brightness Do You Need?

The amount of brightness, or lumens, needed depends on your room conditions – whether or not there is some degree of control over ambient light.

General Brightness Scale: Estimates for 100″ diag. screen

Room Environment	Recommended Lumens
Bright w/ No Control Over Ambient Light	5000+
Bright w/ Some Control Over Ambient Light	3500-5000
Good Control Over Ambient Light	2000-3500
Able to Fully Darken	800-2000

Click the terms below to get their definitions.

ANSI Lumens

Ambient Light

Ambient Light Rejecting Screen

How Much Resolution Do You Need?

Resolution is a term that refers to the number of horizontal and verticle pixels of the projected image. The higher the number of pixels, the higher the resolution, and the sharper the image.

Common resolutions found on education projectors:

Type	Resolution	Aspect Ratio
SVGA*	800 x 600	4:3
WVGA*	853 x 480	16:9
XGA	1024 x 768	4:3
WXGA	1280 x 800	16:10
WUXGA	1920 x 1200	16:10
1080p	1920 x 1080	16:9
4K UHD	3840 x 2160	16:9

* SVGA and WVGA are essentially “legacy” resolutions.

While there are still some very low cost projectors sold with SVGA an WVGA resolutions (including some “toy” priced dim LED pico projectors for home), but they are no longer normally bought by schools. There are still large numbers of them in K-12 schools. Most are long overdue for replacement. Their bulbs last only a fraction of the life of new projectors (nevermind laser projectors), so the cost of supporting those old projectors is high.

XGA models are typically used to replace the SVGA (and if any are still around – VGA) projectors. SVGA projectors are typically replaced by WXGA, WUXGA or 1080p projectors.

Click the links below to read the full definition of each projector term.

HD vs Pixel Shifting vs Native 4K

Equivalent Visibility Rule