ViewSonic PLED W200

Palmtop projectors like the ViewSonic PLED-W200 ($500 street) aren't quite as interesting as they were even a year ago. That's partly because pico projectors in the size category below them have gotten brighter, and partly because they're now also in competition with budget micro projectors, which are brighter, not much heavier, and don't need proprietary cables or a separate power block. Even so, the palmtop size remains worth considering, and the PLED-W200, with its claimed WXGA (1,280 by 800) native resolution, is an attractive member of the breed.

Like most pico and palmtop models, the PLED-W200 is built around a DLP chip and LED light source, a combination that helps rein in both size and weight. The PLED-W200 measures just 1.3 by 5.1 by 5.0 inches (HWD) and weighs 0.9 pounds by itself. Even at 1.4 pounds with the required power block, it's still about a pound lighter than budget micro projectors in the next step up, including, for example, the Optoma ML500 ($650, 3.5 stars) and the Acer K330 ($600 street, 3.5 stars) that I've recently reviewed.

The key limitation that goes along with the small size is a relatively low brightness, with a 250 lumen rating. Fortunately, that's not as low as it may sound compared with portable projectors rated at 2,000 or 3,000 lumens. Perception of brightness is logarithmic, which means that you'll perceive 250 lumens as much more than one tenth as bright as 2,500.

To put the brightness in perspective, keep in mind that early pico projectors offered ratings as low as 10 lumens and were still usable for small-size images. Similarly, our current Editors' Choice for palmtops, the BenQ Joybee GP1 ($500 street, 4.5 stars), is rated at only 100 lumens, and the recently announced BenQ GP2 is rated at 200 lumens. The Dell M110($499 direct, 3.5 stars) is a touch brighter, at 300 lumens, but that's the brightest rating we've yet seen for a palmtop projector.

Basics
The PLED-W200's light source is meant to last the life of the projector, with a claimed 20,000 hour lifetime. This is typical for LED-based projectors, but still a welcome feature that cuts down the cost of ownership.

Like an increasing number of portable projectors at all sizes, the PLED-W200 enhances its portability by letting you show images without a computer or other image source. It can read files directly from an SD card, including most common image, video, and audio files, as well as PDF and Microsoft PowerPoint, Excel, and Word files. It also offers an easy to use menu system to let you find the files on the card, along with the convenience of letting you work through the menus using its credit-card size remote.

Setup is standard for a palmtop. The projector comes with a cable that plugs into the proprietary port on the back and offers a variety of connectors: a VGA connector for a computer or component video adaptor, a female RCA phono plug jack for a composite video cable, and a female miniplug jack for a stereo audio cable.

In addition, the projector itself offers a mini-USB B connector, which is supposed to let you connect to a computer to display an image. As with most USB display features, the projector stores the video driver in onboard memory and is supposed to automatically install it on the computer the first time you connect by USB cable. However, I tried connecting to Windows 7, Vista, and XP machines, and none recognized the projector as a USB drive, much less ran the installation program. As of this writing, ViewSonic is investigating the problem.

Brightness and Data Image Quality
For my tests, I settled on a 42-inch wide image (50-inch diagonal at WXGA's 16:10 aspect ratio) as an acceptable size for comfortable viewing with a low, but not theater dark, level of ambient light.

Data image quality was surprisingly good for a palmtop projector. On our standard suite of DisplayMate tests, colors were well saturated and vibrant, although red turned a little orange with the brightest mode. Gray was acceptably neutral at all levels from white to black, despite some darker tones showing just a hint of a red.

Remarkably for a DLP-based projector, I didn't see any rainbow effect, with light areas breaking up into little red-green-blue rainbows, even on screens designed to make it easy to see. When I made of point of shifting my gaze to try to make the rainbows show up, I saw just a fleeting hint of blue, but that was it. Given that I'm sensitive to seeing the effect, it's highly unlikely that anyone will see many rainbow artifacts, with data screens at least, on the PLED-W200.

Despite the good data image quality overall, I also saw apparent scaling artifacts at the claimed native resolution. (Scaling artifacts typically show as extra patterns added to repeated pattern fills, like an area filled with dots or lines). This is something I've also seen with other recent palmtop and budget micro projectors, including the M110, the ML-500, and the K330. Those three projectors all use the same DLP chip. As of this writing, ViewSonic has not confirmed whether the PLED-W200 uses the same chip as well, but it's likely that it does.

Scaling artifacts show up on a DLP projector when the projector adds or drops pixels in the image to match the number of pixels on the chip. Since the native resolution is defined as the number of pixels the chip offers, there shouldn't be any scaling when the computer is set to that resolution. I've discussed this issue with Texas Instruments, who makes the DLP chips, and have yet to get an answer that explains what's causing the artifacts.

TI insists there's no scaling. However, it also says that the artifacts likely result from the chip's architecture. In any case, whether the artifacts are actually due to scaling or not, they look just like scaling artifacts. The good news is that they don't show up on most images, because most don't include repeating patterns of small dots or lines over a large area.

The bad news is that this affects text readability, because it requires anti-aliasing that gives text a soft focus effect. For the PLED-W200, that makes any text smaller than 9 points hard to read from any distance. Again, this won't be a problem for most purposes, and certainly not for typical PowerPoint presentations with large fonts, but it makes the PLED-W200 less useful than it might be for showing text-based images like spreadsheets or word processing documents.

Video and Other Issues
The video quality on the PLED-W200 gets a lower score than the data image quality. I didn't see any motion artifacts in my tests, and the projector handled skin tones reasonably well, but it had more of a problem than many data projectors with shadow detail (losing detail based on shading in dark areas).

It also showed rainbows relatively easily with video. If you're not sensitive to seeing the rainbow effect, this won't be an issue. But if you are sensitive to it, you may well consider the rainbows too annoying for watching anything but short clips. Note too that the audio, with two 2-two watt speakers, is severely underpowered, so you either have to sit right next to the projector or use an external sound system. That's typical for palmtops, however.

The issues with video keep the PLED-W200 from being a good choice as a consumer projector. Even so, if you buy it to use as a business projector, you might find it useful for occasional home use too, as long as you're not sensitive to the rainbow effect. More important, as a data projector for business use, it's very much in the running. It's highly portable; it comes with a soft protective case plus a separate small bag for the cables and power block; and it offers an acceptably bright image and reasonably good data image quality. You should take a look the alternatives too, particularly the similarly priced Dell M110, but the ViewSonic PLED-W200 is a perfectly reasonable choice.

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