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  • ShieTar - Wednesday, February 22, 2012 - link

    "LEDs are power efficient, but they do seem to generate a lot of heat and something has to dissipate that."

    On top of the LED power losses, the DLP technology means that a significant amount of the light generated by the LED is just sent to a heat dump. Have you checked if the noise changes significantly between bright and dark images?
  • NCM - Wednesday, February 22, 2012 - link

    Err, "LEDs are power efficient but they do seem to generate a lot of heat" is a pretty much a contradiction in terms. The heat generated is a direct function of inefficiency.

    I think the real answer is that while a halogen bulb is much less efficient, by its very nature it operates at and is tolerant of high temperatures. A high output LED, on the other hand, must be aggressively cooled to prevent overheating and self-destruction, despite its better luminous efficiency.

    You can also see this effect in LED bulbs for domestic lighting, many of which have substantial finned metal heat sinks.
  • kmmatney - Wednesday, February 22, 2012 - link

    "Since the P1 uses an LED light source, you can expect those lumens to be very constant throughout the life of the projector, unlike conventional projection bulbs that can easily lose 25% or more brightness in less than 500 hours of usage."

    LEDs will lose brightness if you drive them too hard. I have a very bright LED nightlight, and it has lost brightness after a year. I'm sure it uses crappy LEDs. I have 2 of them, and both of them have lost a noticeable amount of brightness:

    http://www.amazon.com/Maxxima-MLN-50-Night-Light-S...
  • cheinonen - Thursday, February 23, 2012 - link

    Everything loses some brightness, but the curve on LEDs (at least those used in projectors) in a much, much slower decay than anything else used to light one. There have been very few LED lit projectors for home theaters at this point (mostly because home theater projectors need 1100+ lumens to start with before calibration) but those that have been released do have some light fall off, but it's very, very slow in comparison.
  • ProDigit - Sunday, March 4, 2012 - link

    200 ansi lumen is not nearly enough to see in a dark room!
    Most projectors are placed 4 meters from the wall, and provide a 180cm diagonal screen.

    This one will not be good enough for the bedroom;just replacing a $300 TV.

    For a good projector, you need one with 2000Lm at least!
    Then, in complete darkness you can see a 180cm screen projected on a wall.
  • nicolaim - Wednesday, February 22, 2012 - link

    LG arguably makes the best projectors in this category. Unfortunately they still have some flaws. It's too bad things aren't progressing faster with this technology, because the potential for top-notch image quality with low fan noise is there.
  • Ryan1981 - Wednesday, February 22, 2012 - link

    I have been familiarizing myself with led projectors for the last few months since I want one as a video projector for in the bedroom (live in a very small apartment and this is an ideal solution). After looking at a lot of models (LG hw300y, Optoma LM500, Qumi, vivitec, Abis, Samsung, etc) My final decision has fallen on the Acer K330. It comes highly rated by this site:

    http://www.projectorcentral.com/acer_k330_portable...

    And price vs quality it is a very good deal. I have read about the LG not scaling source material properly which is a definite no no if you ask me. LG does offer some very nice features, two of which is not available in the UK (EU) (the DVB T tuner and the FM transmitter).
  • JNo - Wednesday, February 22, 2012 - link

    ... to see a review of this sort of tech. I too have a normal / 'full size' projector but this one looks incredibly small. It seems there's a whole new category of bigger-than-pico 200+ lumen LED projectors. As usual, www.projectorcentral.com has got decent selection of reviews including recently the Dell M110, Optoma ML500 and Acer K330.

    The Acer in particular scores very well and is 500 lumens so I would be curious to see a comparison vs this Asus model (the Acer does not have a power brick either).
  • JNo - Wednesday, February 22, 2012 - link

    oh - and the Acer has hdmi input! 4000:1 contrast, internal memory and automatic keystone correction.

    However a quick goodle and it looks bigger physically that the Asus but hard to tell without seeing them side-by-side.
  • DanNeely - Wednesday, February 22, 2012 - link

    Acer lists the K330 as:

    Weight 2.73 lbs (1.24 Kg)
    Dimensions (W x D x H) 218 x 168 x 46.5 mm (8.6" x 6.6" x 1.8")

    Which is considerably larger than the Asus P1.
  • Ryan1981 - Wednesday, February 22, 2012 - link

    True, but it does not have a power block. And since it is in the same price range, it's definitely worth considering carrying those 900 grams extra.
  • Ryan1981 - Wednesday, February 22, 2012 - link

    Ohw and those 900 grams is inclusive power block, don't know what the asus (if it has one) weighs.
  • Ryan1981 - Wednesday, February 22, 2012 - link

    Ah, after some digging in specs I found the following on the Asus website:

    http://www.asus.com/Display/Projectors/P1/#specifi...

    Weight Net Weight (Esti.): 415g
    Gross Weight (Esti.): 1.3kg

    I saw a youtube movie where it looks like the power block is a standard laptop block. So although the projector itself is small and light, with the powerblock you the situation is less favourable if you ask me.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tydvxGOaEv4 Around 2:

    As we say in Holland a monkey came out of the sleeve here :P
  • earthrace57 - Wednesday, February 22, 2012 - link

    Yea, its a standard ASUS laptop charger...I think they should make some power block that would charge both a laptop and a projector....make it more feasible to travel with it...
  • Qapa - Sunday, February 26, 2012 - link

    What would be great would be if it could be powered by an USB cable, now that would be a(nother) major breakthrough.

    And I also expected these to have progressed more in the last few years... sub $200 price for entry levels and single usb cable for power...
  • gseguin - Wednesday, February 22, 2012 - link

    With the amount of iPads being sold, a 500$ portable presentation unit supporting iPad wireless display would be nice... of course, I could buy an apple TV and use that connected to the projector if it had an HDMI cable.

    Apple likes to show us how the iPad is great for presenters, but everywhere I go, it's a VGA cable sticking out of the podium. There seems to be a rather un-tapped market.

    Also, does the unit have a speaker, and if so, is it better than using the one on a native iPad2 ?
  • blueeyesm - Wednesday, February 22, 2012 - link

    It might as well include Intels Wi-Di, at that rate.

    Remember, Apple (like any tech company) would show off their product like that in order to sell units. :)

    Asus' site has conflicting info. Their news press says it does, while the specs show nothing.

    http://bg.asus.com/News/gziHMoeyKbTcacXw/

    'For audio output, the P1 includes a high quality 2-watt speaker**' (the asterisks lead nowhere on the page :) )
  • earthrace57 - Wednesday, February 22, 2012 - link

    I think the ** means high quality for a 2-watt speaker.
  • CharonPDX - Wednesday, February 22, 2012 - link

    Apple (and third-party companies) makes a Dock-to-VGA adapter.
  • hp79 - Wednesday, February 22, 2012 - link

    It's hard for me to believe that a Macbook doesn't support 1280x800 resolution output, but I can't say for sure because I don't have one.

    "The closest resolution the MacBook reported as supporting was 1280x768"

    I thought 200 lumens was for toy projectors, but from reading the article it looks like it'll be bright enough for most of home or office use.
  • cheinonen - Wednesday, February 22, 2012 - link

    To put 200 lumens in perspective, the JVC X30 projector (shown in the gallery) lights up my 122", 2.40 home theater screen and puts out under 800 lumens calibrated. The ASUS isn't going to put out nearly as large an image, and will likely have to deal with more ambient light, but 200 lumens is enough for its intended purpose.
  • Guspaz - Wednesday, February 22, 2012 - link

    Cree makes single LEDs (the XL-M) that does 1000 lumens at 10W... And you could always combine multiple lower-power but more efficient LEDs... So why only 200 lumens?
  • ShieTar - Wednesday, February 22, 2012 - link

    There are several parts within an imaging optical system where light is lost. I would be surprised if this system gets more than 50% of the light generated to your wall.

    On top of that, the projector needs 3 lightsources (R,G,B) instead of just one, and I read that one of the three is much harder to get to high power than the other two. Don't remember which one, though.

    The problem with multiple LEDs is, that you need bigger optics to image a large source onto your DLP. That contradicts the whole concept of the compact beamer.
  • ciparis - Thursday, February 23, 2012 - link

    That is a really great-looking projector. I haven't even read the review yet, but I'm already inclined to like it.
  • MobiusStrip - Thursday, February 23, 2012 - link

    The lack of HDMI or DisplayPort is a bit ridiculous.
  • Stuffster - Thursday, February 23, 2012 - link

    My Windows 7 devices all seem to support 1280x800.

    I once owned a screen that worked perfectly except for the lower little bit of the display. Since PCs are ubiquitous and inexpensive, I'm not clear on why the reviewer didn't just hook up a PC. It would have been nice to see the review done on a computer that at least shows all the pixels that the projector is putting out.

    Just sayin'.
  • cheinonen - Sunday, March 4, 2012 - link

    I don't have a laptop that's a PC unfortunately, and a projector like this is going to be used with a laptop instead of a desktop usually. The cropping of 34 pixels isn't a huge deal, but it's also relevant to the review so people can know that this might happen with their laptop as well. It might just be the MacBook Air, or it might be what some chipsets detect from the projector itself.
  • jsandhill - Thursday, April 12, 2012 - link

    Looks awesome..

    I've been looking into these LED projectors and I found some great ones on ebay and amazon:
    ledprojectortips.blogspot.com/2012/03/buying-led-projector-from-ebay.html
  • jsandhill - Thursday, April 12, 2012 - link

    I meant
    http://ledprojectortips.blogspot.com/2012/03/buyin...
  • HannahNguyen - Monday, April 16, 2012 - link

    I really enjoyed reading your thoughts on the ASUS P1 <a href="http://www.hitachi.com.au/dps.html">led projector/a>. As a sales consultant, we are prone to a lot of traveling for business visits so a machine that is small and lightweight would be ideal for my partner and I. At first we looked into some other projectors, as you your point mentioned above, there are some with larger lenses which I thought may be more beneficial to us. However, it really comes down to performance and how easily it is to transport in our situation. As long as the size of the lens does not interfere with the quality of vision the actual size is lo longer a concern. According to your review, there doesn't seem to be any real issues besides some technicalities and personal suggestions so we will definitely be considering the ASUS p1. Thanks again for your detailed review, it has really helped me.
  • chubbywubby - Wednesday, October 28, 2015 - link

    I haven't seen many asus projectors on the market that have been getting top reviews lately. My first projector for the bedroom was the asus p1 but recently made the upgrade to the optoma x305st and have been very happy. I found an interesting read here for anyone interested http://www.pricenfees.com/best-short-throw-project... . They seem to know what they are talkin about when it comes to projectors.
  • projectorking - Thursday, December 5, 2019 - link

    As P1 used LED technology so these seem to generate a lot of heat that can cause serious damages. LEDs will lose brightness if you drive them too hard. I have a very bright LED nightlight, and it has lost brightness after a year.

    Also, 200 ANSI lumen is not nearly enough to see in a dark room! For a good projector, you need one with 2000 Lumens at least!
    Then, in complete darkness, you can see a 180cm screen projected on a wall.

    Here you can read more about projectors: https://projectorfinder.com

    Thank you!!
  • Saadi - Monday, November 22, 2021 - link

    Thanks for sharing your personal experience and providing me a solution to my problem. I was looking at multiple websites including <a href="https://guidedreview.com/projector-guides/"&g... This site also gave me a pretty good idea of what to look for in a projector.
  • freezentertain - Thursday, March 17, 2022 - link

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