ViewSonic PLED-W500 Review
WXGA resolution for a good quality projector
Design is not a breakthrough on the ViewSonic PLED-W500. The colors it has are the standard green, red and blue LED lights. Variety would have been welcome, but we can’t always have what we want or go around dictating personal preference to manufacturers. That DLP chip that’s on all projectors is here, too. The value of its lumen brightness is 500. Native resolution amounts to 1,280 x 800, which means WXGA.
The category where micro projectors belong contains the most models that are quite heavy. The PLED-W500 is different from those. It packs less pounds: 2.6 pounds. It’s also a small device if you look at the other versions being popular as we speak. That’s proven by the following dimensions: 1.6″ x 8.4″ x 6.4″. So ViewSonic scored a great pro in this department. The projector doesn’t come alone in a box. No, it is accompanied by one carrying case; this has a pouch where users can put the device’s cables, remote control and power cord. We looked hard, but there was absolutely no power block. Maybe on future models.
SD card reader included
Setting this projector up was done with the least possible effort. And without frustration or anger. On the back we came across, while we were testing the W500 for this review, with several connectivity options. Like composite video and S-Video ports, a VGA port and one HDMI port. Like its relative, the W200, this model is capable of reading your files from an SD card. Directly. The projector can also read those from an USB memory key and internal memory. Files in Word, PDF, audio files and other methods are the ones to be read by the device with great ease.
The company let its fans know that the PLED-W500 projector can show images over a USB cable. The latter has to be connected to a mini USB port. But it’s only reliable from a plug and pray point of view. It doesn’t with any operating system. That’s a con for us. The XP OS worked really well with it, though.
Decent video quality
The 500 lumen rating of the PLED-W500 will seem a bad decision from ViewSonic. Don’t get fooled by this value of its specifications: images are plenty bright in reality. We liked what appeared before our eyes. The disadvantage was that we noticed issues when reading text. The reason for that difficulty: soft focus. Balance of colors and vibrancy were very good. But you won’t escape scaling artifacts even here. Size has to be over 9 if you don’t want to embarrass yourself during PowerPoint presentations.
The quality of videos was decent. Posterization was absent and shadow details were maintained. Rainbow artifacts were immediately spotted by our eyes, but that’s because we’re very sensitive to that. If you aren’t, then no problem.
Review conclusion
The ViewSonic PLED-W500 is a micro projector with plenty to like about it.