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Hitachi CP-RX80
Low price, practical projector
To be fair, these menus work well and they are quick and, in most cases, reasonably intuitive to navigate. The colour adjustment functions are extensive, offering six customisable gamma presets and another six for colour temperature.
Good image quality makes the foibles forgivable
For education use, there are optimised settings for projecting onto shiny whiteboards and dull greenboards, and an interesting collection of ‘template’ screens that project horizontal lines for writing and graph-paper lines for drawing. A ‘Myscreen’ feature allows you to choose any two menu commands for quick selection from the remote handset: our vote goes for brightness and contrast.
The handset is slightly wedge shaped in such a way that we kept picking it up and pointing the wrong end at the projector. Despite the lack of direct brightness and contrast buttons, there is a useful keystone adjust button to make up for the lack of an auto keystone feature in the projector itself. That said, we kept pressing the wrong buttons anyway, as most of them are tightly packed and easily confused, while the grey-coloured labels, albeit in English, are almost impossible to read in a darkened room.
Verdict
Available from many suppliers at huge discounts on the list price, the CP-RX80 represents decent value for money. However, a bargain price means you have to make sacrifices: the lack of any digital inputs limits your options and we found the fan noise distracting. On the other hand, the image quality is excellent, and that's what matters most in a general purpose projector. ®
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