Guide to the Classroom Projector Report for K-12 Education-2

Posted on May 18, 2012 by Art Feierman

60+ Classroom Projectors Considered (but not reviewed)

Again, our goal is to provide you more than just a dozen or so reviews with some competitive analysis. We realize that it is most likely that you won't find exactly the best education projector for your classrooms, multi-purpose rooms, small auditoriums, and conference rooms, among the 15 reviews.

On the other hand, we believe that it is very likely that when you consider all the siblings to those reviewed projectors, then the likelyhood of finding the best match - the best projectors for your requirements, becomes pretty good. You might need widescreen, but we reviewed the XGA version, or you don't need networking, and the same manfacturer has an almost identical model to the one we reviewed, but, without networking... You get the idea. With many series having 3 to 8 related models who only differ by which combinations of features are included, expect that your final choice is likely to be found on the bigger spreadsheet with all the series projectors.

Typically, the series we show in the 2nd section of the report, is directly related to the review projector, but that isn't necessarily the case. We might have reviewed an interactive projector (let's say from Hitachi, the iPJ-AW250N) which doesn't have a full series, so we opted for the best education series of Hitachi projectors that aren't closely related to the iPJ-AW250N.

The chart should help you quickly determine which related projector in a series, has those features you need (or ones you don't want/need, so you can save money).

To use an excellent example from last year's report consier the Casio projectors. Let's say you love Casio's low, long term cost. small size, 2:1 zoom, etc., but you want all new projectors to be capable of presenting over USB. That kills off most of the models, but leaves 3 in the series

Thus, your "winner" isn't one that got a review, but typically a similar projector with a better feature set for your situation. Or, if buying multiple projectors you might even go with 2 or 3 different ones from the same series, depending on the specific needs of particular teachers, or departments. Science teachers may find that higher resolution projectors are more valuable to them, while History teachers are fine with basic resolution...

As was the case in 2011, this year our large chart is fully sortable, which should help you find what you are looking for, a lot faster. You can even sort on more than one field. As an example, you could search only for projectors that are 3D and interactive, or the same, plus widescreen, or show all projectors that have more than 2500 lumens, and networking...

Instructions around the spreadsheet will advise you how to do fancy sorts (easy)!

Defining Your Expectations:

Are you a district level AV or IT manager? Or perhaps you are school level AV/IT manager or network administrator? Maybe you are a teacher, and a driver of technology at your school? Or perhaps you are a Principal or other member of the administration ulitmately responsible for teaching effectiveness and budgets? Below some thoughts organized by these four types. This is the same document as in last year's report, with only minor changes.