Annual Classroom Projector Report Posted!

Greetings all!  Most of the Classroom Projector Report: Best School Projectors for K-12 Education is up and ready! I will still be making a few changes, no doubt, including more smaller comparisons and overviews. The Epson BrightLink 485Wi interactive projector. The Best In Classroom awards are up! If you haven't read about them in-depth yet, here's a taste: The Classroom Projector Report divides the 16 projectors considered into two classes, "Interactive" and "Standard" (non-interactive). For the second year in a row, an Epson BrightLink model took our Best in Classroom award for the interactive class. The BrightLink 485Wi (click for full review) is truly impressive, correcting all complaints we had about its forerunner, the 455Wi.  Aside from not having 3D capability (potentially problematic for a few of you out there), it has excellent networking, the best warranty of all projectors considered (3 years P/L and 3 year replacement program), great color and brightness and the best interactive feature set we've reviewed. For the standard projector class, it was the all-new BenQ LW61ST (click for full review) projector that earned our Best in Classroom award! This innovative BenQ boasts a laser light source (not an LED/laser hybrid like Casio uses) that means low cost of operation. It has networking capabilities and is 3D ready. The BenQ even has an optional pen to add interactivity. It really does it all. Two truly great projectors. In addition to these two Best in Classroom awards, we also came up with 3 Runner-Up award winners, one interactive and two standard. Make sure you read the report to see which projectors took these titles, as they are great choices too! We tended to find ourselves weighting our awards toward those projectors with extremely long life lamps or hybrid light sources, due to their lower long-term cost of operation. If this was a report focused primarily for business people, likely there would have been less emphasis on the light source. This year's crop of projectors overall shows definite real improvement over last year's, always a good thing! More lumens, lower cost of operation, more interactivity, and, in general, more features/benefits. -art