Viewsonic PJD5123

Value

While the Optoma HD20 is about twice as expensive as the PJD5123, the better value is ultimately going to be decided by whether you’re in the market for a home cinema projector or one for office presentations. The Viewsonic is bright enough for a room that’s not totally dark, so it could be a good buy in that regard, but its color fidelity is much worse. The HD20 also has the advantage of a native 1080p resolution.

	Comparison Specifications
	ViewSonic PJD5123	Optoma HD20
Price
Resolution	SVGA 800 x 600 (4:3)	1080p 1920 x 1080 (16:9)
HD	No	Yes
3D Support	Yes	No

Blacks & Whites

The PJD5123 is much brighter, making it a better choice for classroom and office presentations. Its greyscale gamma was phenomenal, so it should do well at this. The Optoma HD20 had better screen uniformity and tunnel contrast, making it a better choice for a home theater.

Color

Color on the Viewsonic PJD5123 is outright laughable. Unless, perhaps, the image being projected is a joke whose punchline is a smooth, color-accurate gradient; in this case, you might be confused and not laugh. In any case, it will suffice for bar graphs and text, but don’t expect to be wowed by strong visuals.

Remember that the color temperature chart below is not helpful for the PJD5123. See the chart above for its color drift for every shade of grey, from black to white.

Motion

Projectors are bad at motion. That’s just how they are. However, the HD20 seems to do a marginally better job at it, which is good, since it’s targeted towards the home theater audience.

Viewing Effects

The HD20 is a little better in terms of its throw (projector-to-screen distance) flexibility, due to its 1.2x zoom lens. This beats out the PJD5123, whose lens is only 1.1×.

Connectivity

Any projector is probably going to have better connectivity than the Viewsonic PJD5123, and the HD20 is no exception. This Optoma has 2 HDMI ports instead of, oh, zero. It also has a component video port instead of the outdated S-video.