Labs

The Viewsonic PJ650 instantly stands out in this line-up, as it's the only projector to eschew the standard silver-grey case of its peers in favour of sleek black. The noise of the fan is the second thing we noted and, unfortunately, it continued throughout our testing. The loud fan didn't seem to dissipate the heat that well, either, as the PJ650 became very hot to touch after a while. All the units became hot, but this was one of the worst.

The PJ650 offers RGB, component video connections, and two VGA connectors and an S-Video input. Its menu options are easy to navigate and there's a good range of features available to fine-tune the display. There are only three gamma

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settings - normal, dynamic and cinema - and we'd have preferred a few more options. Nevertheless, the dynamic setting coped well when switching between different styles of output.

The remote control lacks any stylish design quirks, but it's functional and has everything you might need to set up the machine. However, the buttons of the remote are spongy and require a bit of pressure before you can be sure your selection is made.

We were impressed with the performance of the PJ650. Video playback was this projector's most outstanding quality, as it gave both bright and accurate reproduction but without losing contrast. Text was also clear and the colours of our presentation were strong but not overpowering. Our only concern about the image quality was a slight bluish caste (although this was easily rectified) and our colour test card confirmed our suspicions that the PJ650 erred towards blue. Overall, though, colours were balanced and accurate with very good mid-range greyscale as well.

We can recommend the Viewsonic PJ650 for its well-balanced output. It coped well across our range of tests and would make for a good business machine. We had slight reservations about the noisy fan, but these were allayed by the overall image quality of the unit.