The Sanyo PLCWXU700A: The First HD Business Projector with Wireless-N Wi-Fi

Since you're reading this, may I assume you’re looking for a fairly high performance projector for your business, school or organization and have heard about the new “Wi-Fi Projectors"?

Out on the market today there are literally hundreds of great projectors which will probably suit your business needs quite well. Prices and features have also "harmonized" in recent years, meaning there's very little to distinguish one project model and brand from the other, given a certain price range. Luckily for us consumers, competition among project manufacturers has caused prices to fall quite dramatically in the past 2 years. The amount  and usefulness of built-in features is greater than ever.

You can probably read hundreds of reviews from online merchants explaining why so-and-so projector is your best bet, or why Brand X is so much better then Brand Y, but if you've come this far in reading my review, you probably don't need to be convinced that you need a projector. I’m guessing you already have a good idea as to the type and general budget of the projector. If you've found my site from a Google search, chances are that you may be intrigued with, or perhaps have simply heard about the  niche of  "wireless network projectors" - projectors that playback video from wireless streams instead of cables.

Click HERE to Lowest Price of the Sanyo PLCWXU700A 

I'm not going to waste your time with the long-winded, redundant review of what projectors do and the benefits you can get from them. Since my site only focuses only on wireless projectors, than eliminates about 99% of all other projectors being sold today. If you think you need a wireless Wi-Fi projector, I might guess you’re 20% focused on the projector's specs, such as lumens, optics, resolution, etc.

I'm betting that 80% of your attention at this point in your prospective purchase is on the wireless capabilities of these network projectors. The two questions that most of my visitors have are: "What is a Wireless Wi-Fi Projector, and how does it work?", and "Which Wi-Fi Projectors will meet my needs and budget?"

 

With that being said, here's my "30 second recap" on the projector specs (the 20% part)

The Sanyo PLCWXU700A projector is a fairly solid performer, with a bit of a "checkered" technical spec sheet when it comes to measurable and comparable attributes. First off, forget using the PLCWXU700A for home theater.  The PLCWXU700A kind of sucks at satisfying HD movie playback, such as that you would expect from Blu-Ray. With native resolution maxed out WXGA (1280x768), the projector will accurately reproduce 720P HD content.

As a home theater projector, resolution is not my main concern however; it's the relatively poor 500:1 contrast ratio that concerns me. For the kind of money that you would spend on this projector, there’s plenty of projectors that operate at native 1080P resolutions, with over 10,000:1 contrast ratio can be purchased for around same price. To read about the importance of contrast, click here.

 

The fact that the PLCWXU700A is not a great movie projector should not detract from the fact that it is awesome projector for businesses, schools, and other organizations. For business presentations, product demonstrations, educational training, marketing/promotion multimedia - the PLCWXU700A  would be a great starting point when evaluating a projector for your organization. The WXGA resolution is typically the upper range, for all practical purposes, that is needed for business organizational use. The reason I strongly recommend this project for business use comes down to three reasons:

 

1. Built-in Wireless-N Networking:

   Believe it or not, the PLCWXU700A  is currently the ONLY projector on the market that has built in support for Wi-Fi Wireless N. Wireless N is currently the fastest wireless protocol that is licensed general public use. It is twice as fast as Wireless-G, the older Wi-Fi technology protocol that's been around since 2003. Wireless-N supports data transfer rates of 108 Mb per second, or roughly 10 "megabytes" per second. In in addition to the enhanced wireless data transmission speed, Wireless-N also has a significantly increased effective transmission radius. What this means is you can place the projector farther away from the Wi-Fi access point than you can with Wireless-Wireless-N also performs significantly better than wireless G, when it comes to longer distances. This is especially important for Wi-Fi projectors, because the longer the distance between the project and the access point, the greater the chance that the wireless streaming video will experience problems like jerkiness and pixilation.

   For example, an access point  located 20 feet from either a "G" or "N" Wi-Fi projector will probably stream 100% clean and smooth video for BOTH Wireless-G and Wireless. Now let's say the projector is moved 125 from the access point: A Wi-Fi G Projector may experience up to a 75% transmission slow down due to the weakened Wi-Fi signal. This would likely cause poor HD streaming video performance. A Wi-Fi N projector, like the Sanyo PLCWXU700A would perhaps experience a 20% transmission slow down, but since Wireless-N has a much higher native transmission rate, the streaming video would appear continuous and smooth throughout the duration of the playback.

   Wireless-N's faster data transmission rates will allow you to stream video to the projector at maximum resolution and frame rate, with little or no pixilation, freezes, or other visual glitches. The ability for high definition media to be streamed cleanly and without interruption can also depend on a other factors, including network congestion, video CODEC (such as h.264, mpg, xVid, etc.). While Wireless G, (the slower wireless protocol) may be able to adequately stream HD content at 720 P resolution (as long as it's close enough to the Wi-Fi Access Point), it really comes down to a question of "acceptable marginalization", in other words: for a few extra bucks, you can virtually eliminate the chances of streaming video problems. If your business was depending on a critical executive presentation, why wouldn't you want to leverage the performance of your projector investment, after all its purpose is to add value and opportunity to the business organization

2. 3800 Lumens for Extremely Bright Projection:
   Great for Business and School Use. The second justification in my recommending the Sanyo PLCWXU700A  for business and organizational use is the projectors outstanding video brightness, measured at an extremely high 3800 Lumens. For businesses, I recommend brightness as an attribute to be concerned with far more than contrast ratio and ultrahigh resolutions (such as 1080P).With the brightness of 3800 lumens, the SanyoPLCWXU700A  Wireless Projector can easily project an image or video on a screen measuring up to 10 feet wide in a fully lit room. While no one wants to use a projector in a lit room, when it comes to the real world, needing bright and crisp video, even when the lights are on is something that occurs more often than we want. Projectors with marginal brightness, such as in the 1000 to 2000 lumen range are simply not adequate for displaying content in even partially lit rooms and auditoriums- the audience will struggle to see the projected image which is being drowned out by the ambient room lighting. The extremely high brightness of this projector will enable it to project a high-quality image on a screen up to 25 feet diagonal in a fully darkened room.

Another nice thing I noticed about his unit is the relatively low cost of the replacement lamp. I've spotted the man at several online merchants, selling it for between $275 and $350. For those not familiar with projectors, this may seem like an outrageous amount for a "light bulb" - from my experience, lamps that output 3500 to 4000 lumens often cost $400-$500. This projector lamp is rated to last 2000 hours, which works out to approximately 5 years of duty when used for an average of eight hours per week.

1. Superior Business Oriented Features:
   Lastly, the Sanyo PLCWXU700A has some great build-in features that were clearly intended to enhance its appeal to business, organizational, and educational environments.  Your organization’s network engineers and audio-visual professionals will love the fact that the projector has built-in remote monitoring features. What this means is alerts can be systematically sent out to designated persons within the company. Certain events and triggered conditions such as the projector malfunction, overheating, or the lamp reaching its end of life. The remote control and management tools also allow the projector's real-time status to be read remotely via IP network. Up to 100 projectors can be managed simultaneously, reducing costs and easing the burden of your staff having to trek out to the projector's location just to check some simple status reports from projector’s interface.

There is another super handy feature for business users included with this projector. I believe Sanyo calls it something like "PC-Less operation". In a nutshell, this is the projector's ability perform automated and saved tasks, including displaying presentations in PowerPoint, or firing up a video, all without needing to be hooked up to a computer. This is done by inserting a standard USB memory stick which contains either the playback content, or specific instructions such as launching the PowerPoint presentation, and sequencing through the slides.

As you can imagine this can be a lifesaver in a situation where your computer suddenly crashes or cannot get on the network, right before that critical presentation for your boss. Just pop in the USB key, and you should be good to go.Oh, before I forget... The size of this project is also quite "business friendly" when it comes to travel and transport. The Sanyo PLCWXU700A Wi-Fi projector weighs just less than 8 pounds, and has a footprint of about 10" x 13". It's small enough to pack into a travel shoulder bag, and light enough to travel around with you and not weigh you down.

Final Conclusion:

The Sanyo PLCWXU700A Wi-Fi projector is everything you will likely need in the projector for business and organizational use. The low contrast ratio and lack of 1080P native resolution means that the PLCWXU700A is not the greatest projector for home theater use but it's incredibly high 3800 lumens of brightness and its innovative Wireless-N capability mean that this projector is going to be hard to beat for use outside the home. The retail price for the Sanyo PLCWXU700A is around $1600 to $1700.

Specifications Recap:

• 3800 Lumens: Easy to see images in even fully lit rooms
• 500:1 Contrast Ratio: perfectly adequate for virtually all business and organizational content
• WXGA (1280 x 800) Native Resolution: HD 720P Video Playback
• 480p, 720p, 1080i/1080p: maximum video input compatibility with virtually all modern broadcast standards
• NTSC, PAL, SECAM: a true worldwide ready product, works America, Europe, Africa, and Middle East, Asia-Pacific
• "PC-Less Mode" for Presentations With USB Drive - display presentations and video content without the need for an computer
• Video Streaming Via Wireless-N Wi-Fi: perhaps its most unique feature - able to streams 720P HD video without costly and unwieldy long HDMI cables
• Wired and Wireless Network Ready: built-in support for wired (RJ45) cable as well as Wi-Fi  "B", "G", and "N"