Projector review: Toshiba TDP-TW300U

Toshiba TDP-TW300U
In the last two years, there has been a great and steady decline in the price of the common business projector. Though this trend, fingered as a sign of industry commoditization by several market analysts, may not be welcomed by projector- company accountants, there's no denying that price cuts and turf wars have delivered immense value to the projector consumer. The Toshiba TDP-TW300U is a good example of the trend. Now that XGA-resolution (1,024 x 768 pixels), 2,000-ANSI-lumen projectors are becoming standard in business-portable lines, and selling for as little as $1,200, the high-brightness, feature-rich, meeting-room projectors like the TDP-TW300U are seeing precipitous price drops as well.

Indeed, at $3,199 the TDP-TW300U is loaded with extra features, connectivity options, good audio, a decent warranty and a respectable base set of brightness, resolution and contrast specifications. Toshiba's marketing literature refers to it as a "multifunction" projector, meaning it was designed to handle both electronic slideshows and video media. Its intended venues include auditoriums, lecture halls and large conference rooms, which account for some of the goodies found on this model, including wireless networking, auto-keystone adjust, auto-image adjust, motorized-zoom and -focus, built-in network management tools for remote administration, added security features, and a healthy range of connectivity options on the backside for sourcing the TDP-TW300U to just about any AV device on the planet.

In the Presentations lab, we were impressed right away with the projector's feature set and low price. It excelled with video in our initial tests, and audio from its dual 4-watt speakers far exceeded expectations. But as we took out the illuminance meter, ran some DisplayMate test scripts and started tinkering a bit deeper, the Toshiba revealed a couple of weak spots.

On the up side, DVD movies looked superb with this model, which is not always the case with business projectors. We observed no jitter, lag or pixelization, even in tough nighttime scenes. The footage was sharp, with good shadow detail. Colors were accurate onscreen, though not as vibrant as we've seen on some models.

Photographic images were above-average for a DLP business projector. The yellow tones appeared true yellow, and the photos had great detail and warm colors.

Of the many extra features Toshiba built into the TDP-TW300U, we were impressed with the picture-in-picture mode, which lets you view more than one input source at a time — say a video feed and a corresponding slideshow of charts — in the corner of the screen or side-by-side in split-screen mode. Other nice-to-haves include a monitor-output connector to view presentation content on an ancillary monitor while