Great quality, abundance of features and long bulb life .
Disadvantages:
Unless found reconditioned or second - hand is pretty steep !
Recommend to potential buyers:
yes
Full review
LCD Projectors purchased new are out of the reach of most of use plebs - unless you happen to find one reconditioned, ex-rental, ex-commercial or secondhand. And that is exactly what we did!
Because of its legendary quality, tweakability and bulb-life Proxima has long been a favourite of business and commerce. Our family managed to grab one from a business that was being bought-out by another - and as a result had 4 or 5 of things floating around. We managed to purchase one off that company for about a tenth of its price which I'm sure is a steal.
Proxima, when bravely trying to challenge other established companies in the desktop projector market created a beauty. Since there are so many features I'll simply list them, give a brief explanation and state why its good/bad:
Bulb-type/Bulb-life: Projectors such as this have LED bulbs through which a very powerful light source is passed through. This creates an image once placed on a wall or projector screen.
This model has an LED (Light Emitting Diode - Electronic semi-conductor which emits light when current is passed through it) bulb with both UHP and UHB (Ultra-High Power and Ultra High Brightness) - which means its got a bloody powerful light source and LED package.
Most importantly the LED bulbs (which cost £258 or thereabout from www.projector-bulbs.co.uk/proxima_lamps.htm) last around 2,000 hours which is 5 hours of life every day for a year. Since you'll be shelling out £250 or so this is great news, and it is unlikely that you'll be watching regular TV on this unit for 5 hours every day!
Intergrated Speakers: The intergrated speakers are a nice feature and are in Stereo, but only useful for business presentations where other audio sources can't be accessed. I'm assuming that most people would want to make this the visual part of a home entertainment system, if so another audio source would be essential.
Ergonomics: This unit weighs 3.4KG and although designated as "desktop" (just rubber casters on its bottom for desk surfaces) with standard shelf brackets and a PC of MDF this can fit snuggly on any wall or ceiling.
Colour: Features a 24bit 16.7 million colour output, in plain english this means that the colour representation (of TV, video games and DVDs) will be similar to that of most new computer systems. If you have ever watched DVDs on your computer and you have similar capabilities then you can judge how well the colour represents. This ability is excellent considering the sheer size of the available viewing area.
Inputs: Allows mice (for business presentations), composite video and S-Video to be plugged directly into the unit. This means that output from a Digital Receiver (the thing used to decode Dolby signals) or other hardware plugs directly into the projector. Great choice because you can either plug in a S-Video lead directly or use convertor cables to change for instance Scart on hardware to S-Video or composite video on the projector.
Adjustability: The Proxima DP6100 has high levels of adjustment. This unit unfortunately does not include automatic focus so that will have to be done manually once the correct viewing surface, and positioning of the projector have been found. There is also on-screen digital control panels so that all of its adjustments (high levels of colour, contrast, sharpness and brightness adjustment) can be tuned independently leaving you with the best picture quality available.
Overall: Unless you can afford £3300 or so, then this projector is out of budget. But if like us you can find it second-hand or ex-commercial than it is well-worth haggling down towards the £300-£400 mark because this is an excellent projector. The Proxima website had no buying info on this projector, which leads me to beleive that is a discountinued line - but new units can still be bought, search@ www.pricerunner.co.uk for units and www.projector-bulbs.co.uk for replacement bulbs (which are generally generic alot of the Proxima range and so are still sold in abundance). Well worth the money if you can get it - and have the necessary space!
Chris
More details
Ease of Use
Simple
Compatibility
Diverse
Quality
Excellent
Evaluate this review
How helpful would this review be to someone making a buying decision? Rating guidelines
This product has not yet been reviewed. 
