I need to buy a projector that will be good enough for occasional business use - i.e. used indoors but in daylight conditions without being able to black the room out.

Both the Optoma HD720X and HD65 seem like good buys from the comments here, but are pitched as home cinema projectors rated at 1000/1300 lumens respectively.

As many business-oriented (LCD) projectors are rated at 2000 lumens+, are either of these Optomas going to meet my needs? If not, what's sort of spec should I be looking for?

Sorry if this is a dumb question but I'm new to this and despite reading various reviews I can't find this kind of guidance anywhere.

Thanks in advance for any pointers on this.

Hi,

I don't know much about pj's but I thought I'd try and help since noone has replied.

I'm pretty sure you need some good brightness considering most of what is displayed is usually white - especially so, as you will be using it in the daylight. So I would bet, like you said that you're gonna need about 2000lums.

It really depends on your budget and what kind of quality you're looking at, which is why I would say those Optomas aren't the best choice as they are aimed at the home cinema market rather than business use. Which will probably mean that the strong points of their operation is the ability to process moving images rather than stationary images, so a wasted feature you're paying for.

If high quality is a strong requirement, then I would say you need at least an XGA pj. If good quality is enough, then SVGA would be fine. Same applies to screen size, the bigger the screen, the high res you will need to maintain quality.

Contrast ratio I would say look for something again, around 2000 This should help black font to pop out and be clearer on a white background.

So:

High Quality - 2000lums+ , 2000:1cr+ , and XGA+.
Good Quality - 2000lums , 2000:1cr, and SVGA.

I personally have been looking around for a projector and decided to buy an Optoma HD65 for home theatre. But along the way, I found this which looks like a bargain for business use and judging by the comments left, good for gaming/DVD purposes also:

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/127042

It is DLP which should be ok for business use, I don't see why not but if you're presenting to people that can see the RBE (If it's visable), it may be an eyesore and offputting.

Good luck,

Evan

And please, anyone correct me if I'm wrong - I'm learning too