Sony VPL-CS21 review

Sony's VPL-CS21 is a small, lightweight projector, which is designed to be easy to carry from meeting to meeting.

It is well suited to a variety of lighting conditions, as its brightness of 2,100 ANSI lumens means the projector can be used in most offices without having to dim the lights.

What will really make this projector stand out in any meeting room is the motorised front stand. To tilt the projector up or down, you simply press a button on the remote or the side of the projector. This not only looks good, but makes it a lot easier to adjust the height of the projected image quickly and accurately without having to fiddle around with levers or dials.

It isn't often we get to see an LCD projector this small. The lightweight, ultra-portable projectors that usually arrive in our labs use single-chip DLP technology (see How it Works, page 160).

Unfortunately, the native resolution of 800x600 is a disappointment, particularly if you're giving presentations. It can accept higher resolutions, downscaling them to fit, and it's acceptable for resolutions of 1,280x1,024, but you still lose a lot of detail over a projector with a higher native resolution.

The VPL-CS21's image quality wasn't very good, either. Even after adjustment, colours in movie clips were muted, while still images lacked detail in the darker areas with oversaturated highlights that resulted in unnatural-looking hues.

There is no DVI connector, just a D-sub connector for attaching the projector to a PC. You can connect your DVD player's component outputs to the D-sub input, but you'll have to buy an adaptor as none is supplied. S-video and composite are also available for video devices. Both these inputs work adequately, although colours in our test movie weren't the best we've seen and straight lines on images appeared jagged, as the projector isn't very good at upscaling the image.

There is no noise control setting in this projector's menu. Compressed movie clips and the clips in our video signal-processing tests were noticeably grainier than those shown on projectors with this setting.

If you're looking for a portable projector on a tight budget, the VPL-CS21 is a good buy. However, its poor image quality and native resolution could cause problems. If portability isn't an issue, you can buy a larger projector with a resolution of 1,280x1,024 for the same price; if your budget can stretch, Dell's similar-sized 3400MP is much better quality.

Author: Lynley Oram