Casio XJ-ST155

Casio Short Throw XJ-ST155

The Casio Short Throw XJ-ST155 ($2,049.99 list) is a formidable data projector for a business or classroom. It uses the hybrid laser/LED light engine that we've seen in other Casio projectors such as the Casio XJ-H1750 Pro Series ($2,200 street, 4 stars). This massive projector has a solid feature set that includes WiFi connectivity and the ability to run presentations off a USB thumb drive. It is 3D ready, though you need to supply your own active shutter DLP-Link glasses, and has optional interactivity. Image quality is solid though not exceptional. The XJ-ST155 is rated at 3,000 lumens and has XGA (1,024 by 768) native resolution. Instead of producing red, green, and blue using a standard lamp and a color wheel, it produces red with LEDs, blue with lasers, and green by shining the blue laser light on a phosphor. Its optical system directs the red, green, and blue light to a DLP chip. A big advantage of the hybrid light source is its 20,000-hour expected lifetime—long enough to run the projector 8 hours a day, 5 days a week for 10 years. The lifetime of standard lamps typically ranges from 2,000 to 5,000 hours, and bulbs can cost several hundred dollars to replace.