A business projector is a useful tool to have for professional presentations and to be able to deliver your message in a powerful and memorable way.
The problem is that there are so many different ones to choose from and such a variety of features and sizes to consider, that it becomes difficult to make the right choice.
Here are five good questions to get answers to before you part with your money.
Portability
This is one of the first questions you should ask yourself, how portable does the projector have to be?
If you are going to set up your projector in a dedicated conference room and it is not going to moved very often at all, then portability is clearly not that much of an issue. If you are going to be on the road with your projector and setting up business presentations in all sort of different places, then portability is most certainly an issue.
You can get projectors that are small enough to fit in your pocket right through to ones that are fit for permanent installation only. If you look at a good range of projectors available you will find that a lot of the more popular models tend to be somewhere in the middle, not too light to be possibly lacking in versatility or features due to its size and weight and not too heavy to be difficult to carry around with you when you are on the move.
Resolution
A common question to ask is what resolution you need from your projector? Take into account what kind of information you are projecting and how it will look to your audience but for a typical PowerPoint presentation, to give you some sort of reference point, SVGA (800×600) will be cheaper than XGA (1024×768) but if you want more detail and clarity for showing spreadsheets and drawings then you should choose XGA over SVGA.
Widescreen
We are all now familiar with widescreen technology and probably watch TV at home on it and projectors with widescreen resolutions are now becoming more commonplace.
If you have a widescreen laptop that you intend to connect to the projector then you may find that your presentation will look better but be aware that widescreen resolutions to tend to vary, so make sure that the pixel count for your laptop and the projector you are looking to buy are matching.
Technology
With most electrical products, technology seems to be forever changing and trying to keep pace is almost impossible. There are three types of technology that current projectors are based on and they are DLP, LCD and LCoS. You can’t be expected to know the relative merits of all of these but as a rough guide, DLP projectors project their primary colours sequentially which can lead to a rainbow effect for some viewers when they shift their gaze around the screen.
LCD projectors don’t suffer from this problem but they tend to be bulkier models due to the better technological capabilities that they have compared with DLP. LCoS projectors are considered by many to be capable of the best quality images, but they have a price tag to match the superior quality.
Audio
The other question that you should consider is whether you need audio capability with your projector. Even when a projector has audio built-in, the quality often leaves a lot to be desired, so this should not be a deciding factor when choosing your projector, as you can connect it up to a separate sound system anyway. Companies like http://www.ligo.co.uk specialise in portable headsets that can be worn. This gives you a lot more range of motion while doing presentations as opposed to holding a microphone in one hand.
Take the time to consider your needs by asking yourself these five questions rather than simply being driven by the price tag, and you should end up with the right projector to match your needs.
Image Credit: ideum
