Viewsonic Pro8530HDL Projector Review - Summary

Overview

❮ ❯

The Viewsonic Pro8530HDL projects a very sharp image with its 1920 x 1080 resolution and with good focus across the image.  The vertical lens shift, even with its rather limited range, is a plus for this model and that combined with the 1.6X zoom lens provides good mounting flexibility.  The Pro8530HDL received our "Special Interest" award for its combination of futures and performance.  It represents a good value with an under $2,000 street price.

Viewsonic specifies the projector's brightness at 5200 lumens and this was confirmed by our measurements in the projector's brightest color mode and zoom lens setting. However, picture quality in "Brightest" mode was rather poor while the "dynamic" mode, with about 4000 white lumens, is the mode that many business/education users would probably want to use when high light output is needed.  These values are for "white lumens" while "color lumens" were considerably lower.  In any case, this projector should be plenty bright for most conference room or classroom applications.  As for suitability for "large venue" applications, that will depend on how demanding your requirements are for good color accuracy.  For cases where you can live with less than ideal color accuracy, the PRO8530HDL can put out enough light for use with fairly large screens or for dealing with less than ideal room lighting conditions.

Out-of-the-box color accuracy with the best of the available picture "Color Modes" should certainly be acceptable for most business and education applications.  The "Brilliant Color" feature combined with what I assume is a clear segment on the color wheel produces boosted image brightness for whites and light color shades, but results in the more saturated colors being displayed too dark in comparison.  This is a limitation of many DLP projectors and in the case of the PRO8530HDL, it's similar to what I have seen in other single chip DLP projectors.

The other issue/limitation I noted is the green primary color is substantially shifted toward yellow in all available "Color Modes".   This also impacts the accuracy of cyan and yellow secondary colors.  While this may not be a real issue for most business and education applications, for cases where color accuracy is important this may be a concern.  I did not attempt to perform a full color gamut calibration on the PRO8530HDL, but I did use the projector's CMS adjustments just for the green primary color to see if the position of the green color point could be corrected.  I concluded it could not be corrected to a meaningful degree.  Again this probably will not be a real issue for most business or education applications, but it's a limitation that may effect some potential buyers.

[sam_pro id=1_108 codes="true"]

The PRO8530HDL offers good input/output connectivity and with its "PortAll" feature if extends the projector's connectivity capabilities (e.g., HDBaseT, Wi-Fi) thru the use of optional adapters.

The built-in audio performance with dual 10 watt speakers is excellent for any projector.  The maximum usable volume is loud enough for use in rather large conference room and classrooms (no need to use external powered speakers in most cases).  Of course there is no deep bass frequencies, but overall the performance in this area is well ahead of most of the competition.

Pros and Cons

• Keystone as well as corner geometry correction adjustments are offered.
• Vertical optical lens shift plus 1.6X zoom lens make for installation flexibility.
• Full HD, 1920 x 1080 resolution makes for sharp images.
• Remote control can be used to control presentations from a connected computer.
• Good networking support for management and control of the projector(s) over the local area network.

CONS:

• Color accuracy could have been better with green having the greatest error.
• The projector's out-of-the-box color modes producing the most accurate colors reduce the brightness to around 2500 white lumens and to around 1500 lumens when adjusted for an accurate 6500K color temperature/grey scale and balanced color and white levels.
• Rated lamp life is shorter than some competing projectors.
• Remote control has no backlight making it rather difficult to use in very dark environments