First Look: Acer's H5350 HD projector

 

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Posted on 13 May 2008 at 11:14

At only £469 inc VAT the H5350 is among the cheapest HD projectors we've ever seen. Its boxy chassis is compact, measuring 267x187x80mm, and it only weighs 2.3kg. Plus it comes with a carry bag so you can tout it about to show off to friends and family - anyone with an appropriately sized white wall.

It's a bit fiddly to set up unfortunately. Its small size means there's no space for a lens shift system - so you can only project an image directly forward. The zoom lens has a very small range as well, so you don't get much flexibility in how far you position it from the screen.

The 2,000 lumen rating goes some way to making up for these deficiencies, as you can at least use this projector in a wide range of lighting conditions. It's based on DLP technology, and has a respectable 2,000:1 contrast ratio and a 720p native resolution. Initial tests showed vibrant colours, and a good amount of picture detail, though video certainly wasn't as sharp or as detailed filled as from our preferred Panasonic PT-AX200E.

There are no controls built into the projector itself, so you have to use the small remote control. This slides into a slot on the top of the projector for storage, and can be used while in this position. There's only a single HDMI input, along with VGA, component, S-video, and composite.

Acer claims the lamp will last for an impressive 4000 hours on the 1600 lumen eco mode. This should make it a very affordable projector to run, though we couldn't find any replacement lamp prices with which to calculate a per hour cost. At full-power it seemed a little noisy for our liking, though this is unsurprising given such a powerful lamp in such a small chassis.

If you want to use your projector with some lighting on, and don't want to spend much money, then this is a good choice. We'll be doing further testing this week and will bring you a full review shortly.

Author: Seth Barton