Dell 2200MP LCD projector review

The Dell 2200MP LCD projector was designed with board room presentations in mind but will suit home theatre enthusiasts with it's low price, running costs and impressive performance.

Dell 2200MP LCD projector
Low price and solid performance makes this an attractive choice for home or business use

LCD projectors have for a long time been simply too expensive for mainstream use. High prices and short living and expensive bulbs made LCD projectors unappealing for home theatre buffs and big screen gamers.

Dell 2200MP at last a consumer high performance LCD projector

With a retail price of under $900 the Dell 2200MP is a new low cost entrant in the LCD projector market. If you're looking to get a really big screen for home entertainment a projector like this actually stacks up pretty well current CRT and rear projection TV sets.

Provided you have a large enough budget it may be possible to get around LCD projector limitations by buying an inexpensive ~29" CRT TV for everyday use keeping the LCD projector for movies and computer games when you're in the mood.

If you play PC computer games the native SVGA input has got to be appealing. Although you can only run 800 by 600 you'll be able to crank up anti aliasing and detail effects instead to get great picture quality.

With a bulb life well over 2000 hours realistically even with heavy usage you'll never need to replace the bulb more than once a year and it should really last at least 2 years.

While a projector won't suit everyone it certainly does appeal to those who are considering dropping $1500 plus on a high end CRT TV set or even more on a Plasma screen.

The Dell 2200MP uses DLP or Digital Light Processing system, which is based on a digital micromirror display--DMD. This is a semiconductor chip with a surface that is covered with miniscule, square, aluminum mirrors. DLP is a good technology that has a reduced "pixelation" effect that other technologies experience, DLP also has a better response time than other technologies so fast moving games or images have less blurring across the screen. DLP has been criticized for not producing accurate colors but in our test we found color reproduction to be very accurate and the projector was overall a very impressive performer.

The image was very bright and still looked good in a well lighted room but as usual if you get any sunlight spilling on the screen you definitely notice it. DVD movies looked great and even with fast action there was no blurring of the picture.

For home movies and games at night the eco mode provides plenty of brightness with almost no noise and much less heat.

Dell includes a component-to-VGA cable that allows you to connect a progressive-scan DVD player to the 2200MP. Dell's 2200MP also has a Texas Instruments motion-adaptive hardware de-interlacer with 3:2 and 2:2 pull-down to improve image quality on the composite and S-video inputs. 3:2 pull-down is used to convert 24fps DVD content to NTSC's 30fps (29.97fps, or 59.94 fields/sec). 2:2 pull-down converts 24fps DVD content to PAL's 25fps (50 fields/sec).

Here are the specifications:

Projector Technology: Single Chip DLP DDR with four-element color wheel
Brightness (in Lumens): 1200
Contrast Ratio: 1700:1
Maximum Resolution: SVGA (800x600)
Estimated Lamp Lifespan: 2,000 hours or 2,500 in eco-mode
Inputs: Composite, S-Video, VGA (with pass through)
Replacement Bulb Cost $349.00

Dell 2200MP LCD projector low price but high performance

You would have been happy to pay $2000-$3000 a couple of years ago to get an LCD projector that performs as good as this. There really are no drawbacks to the Dell 2200MP that I can see.

In the end the biggest decision is whether you really need an LCD projector at all because for the money the Dell 2200MP is your best choice at the moment.