Labs

NEC's LT180 has an unconventional design. The lens is rather short, giving the projector a long, slender shape, and all the connectors are on the side. It is a very stylish projector and would look equally good in the boardroom or the living room. NEC has included a wall colour adjustment feature, which is useful if you don't always have a white screen or wall on which to project.

This is the second-cheapest projector in the group, but it produced some of the best images

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in our computer tests. It produced the smoothest transitions in our greyscale test, and there were no rainbow effect problems in our video-clip test. Strangely, this projector has a contrast ratio of just 1,000:1, the lowest of all the DLP models here, although this didn't affect the picture quality. Unfortunately, its running costs are very high, with each hour of use costing 17p.

When it came to our video signal processing tests, the LT180 didn't do very well. Its performance was on a par with those of the office LCD projectors. It got full marks for sharpness and its noise reduction was the best in the group, but it performed poorly in our de-interlacing tests. The LT180 has a component video input, but we spotted some rainbow effects when playing a DVD.

This projector lacks a digital connector for hooking up to a computer, but at this price we're not complaining. The LT180 will produce crisper images for presentations than the Acer PD125, and you get more features for your money. We wouldn't recommend it for home entertainment use, though