Nec NP-V260X

NEC NP-V260X

The back of the NEC NP-V260X ($550 street) is bristling with ports and jacks that make it a good fit for a classroom or conference room's data projection needs. Though it's light enough to be easily portable, it's best suited for use within a school or company rather than being lugged by a road warrior. In our testing, its image quality was decidedly better for data than for video. The DLP-based NP-V260X has an XGA (1,024 by 768) resolution, a 4:3 aspect ratio befitting data presentations. Its brightness is rated at 2,600 lumens. The NP-V260X, a white projector with rounded corners, measures 3.7 by 12.2 by 9.7 inches (HWD) and weighs a reasonably light 5.5 pounds. Two factors make it less portable than it could be. Unlike most projectors in its weight class, it does not come with a carrying case. It also lacks a port for a USB thumb drive, meaning that it can't run a standalone presentation and you'll have to have a computer or other image source on hand for it to connect to (or at least access to a network). As for connectivity, it does have an HDMI-in port, something we're seeing in XGA as well as higher-resolution projectors. It also has S-Video, and the three RCA jacks for composite video and audio.