Acer H5350 review

We reviewed the budget H5350 five months ago (What's New, Shopper 247) and were impressed with its brightness, portability and quality.

However, there was a caveat to the five-star rating, and that was high running costs. Replacement lamps work out at 10p per hour since they last up to 3,500 hours and cost around £290 - more than half the cost of the projector.

There are a few other niggles. The credit-card sized remote control, which slots into a panel on top of the case, seems a clever idea, but there's no way of controlling the projector if you accidentally lose it. In addition, the lens cap isn't attached to the case, so once you've taken it off it's yet another item that's easy to misplace.

Setting up the projector is easy enough using the HDMI input, but the 1.1x optical zoom is more limited than others, so placement could be an issue. The unit is reasonably quiet when turned on, but the air venting out of the front was extremely hot, and the bottom of the case was almost too hot to touch. We'd advise leaving the unit plugged in after turning it off so the fans can cool it down.

We weren't impressed by the image quality compared to others here. The DLP rainbow effect is particularly noticeable, and becomes annoying in dark black and bright white sequences. Contrast was good in light scenes, but in dark ones we found the lack of detail couldn't be remedied by increasing the brightness. Image controls lacked the fine-tuning options on BenQ's W500 (reviewed right). The H5350 also suffered badly from a fizzing effect on areas of sky in outdoor scenes with bright sunlight, which is another DLP trait.

Although the H5350 is relatively inexpensive, the pricy lamps mean it's poorer value than it seems. In addition, Acer provides only a 90-day warranty on the lamp. For these reasons, we'd recommend spending more on the W500, which has far superior image quality, lower running costs and a six-month lamp warranty.