Sony VPL-DW240 Projector Review - Summary

Overview

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The VPL-DW240 is marketed as a portable business/education projector and comes with a carrying case/bag.  This model offers good picture accuracy in its best picture mode (i.e., Cinema) and offers brighter, but less accurate, picture modes suitable for using with larger screens or in environments where room lighting cannot be well controlled.  However, as compared to some other compact size business/education projectors, this model has more limited signal input capabilities, offers no built-in networking support, lacks built-in multimedia support and has a built-in speaker with limited capabilities.  Even with these limitations, the VPL-DW240 deserves our Special Interest Award since for those needing a portable projector this model's performance makes it a viable choice when none of the above mentioned limitations are show stoppers.

The VPL-DW240's Cinema picture mode offered a good picture with reasonably accurate colors.  Moving up to the brighter picture modes resulted in a less accurate picture, but these modes could prove useful when the extra brightness is needed either to overcome room lighting or for when a larger screen size is being used.  Since this projector uses 3LCD technology, it color brightness is the same as its white brightness, which is frequently not the case for competing DLP projectors.

The VPL-DW240 projects a very sharp image with excellent corner-to-corner focus.  When displaying text and graphics the readability was excellent, limited only by the projector's native 1280 x 800 resolution.   Overall it offers very good performance for business presentations.

As is typical with other business/education class projectors using 3LCD technology, this model projects images with limited contrast.  This means blacks are displayed as only moderately dark greys.  This is not a real limitation in most business or education applications where there will be some room lighting present.  However, if the venue has total light control and when displaying video or photos where having good contrast is important, the competing projectors using DLP technology may be a better choice, as they generally provide higher contrast and lower black levels.

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Pros

• Compact and light enough to be viable as a portable projector (carrying case/bag is included) and providing much more light output than what you can expect from a pico or pocket projector
• Offers good out-of-the-box picture accuracy in the best available picture mode (i.e., Cinema)
• Offers picture modes with over 2,000 white and color lumens that should be acceptable for most business and education applications where either the room lighting cannot be well controlled or a larger screen size is being used
• Supports use of "Miracast" and "Stick-PC" plug-in dongles, available from various manufacturers
• Very flexible Eco mode options offering extended lamp life (up to 10,000 hours) and reduced power consumption
• 1.3X zoom lens offers reasonable placement flexibility
• Very good 3-year warranty on the projector with 90-days on the lamp

Cons