Dell 3300mp Projector Review

I recently purchased a Dell 3300mp to use as a TV and for movies/games, and posted this review on a different site a while ago, but I can add pictures here, so I copied and pasted most of it here. Pictures at the end.

Pros:

• Image brightness will not disappoint if there is little/no ambient light.
• Can make an 80-inch wide (over 100 inch diagonal) screen at ~14-17 feet. Good luck finding an HDTV that will do that, especially for $1300.
• All basic inputs except HDMI.
• Comes with many cords.
  
• Eco-mode only slightly affects image brightness. Well worth it for 5000 hours lamp life instead of 3000.

Cons:

• Scary "fluke" happenned to me, but I seem to attract this kind of thing.
• Poor performance in dark movie/game scenes until settings are changed... still not perfect.
• Extra-button cover on remote loosens with use, and soon opens when you don't want it to, disabling the remote's mouse.
• VGA/Component video/DVI shares the same port.
• Projects at a very high angle, meaning something needs put under the back feet (like a hardcover book). Unfortunately, this makes it harder to adjust.

Throw Distance Calculator (Opens in new window)

Image Quality 4/5
Features 5/5
Construction 3/5
East of Use 4/5
Reliability 4/5
Overall Value 4/5

This was my first projector. The first thing I noticed when I plugged it in to my laptop is that the color was a little inaccurate. This really isn't that big of a problem, since changing the color mode will fix that. The projector also does not do very well in dark scenes with default settings. Dark colors/greys tend to show up as black. Turning up the brightness and contrast really helps it though. Unfortunately, the remote does a poor job of navigating the menu, and turning things up or down is really slow.
No rainbows of any kind seen. Just a clean, beautiful (once adjusted), image. Motion works great. Eco-mode is hardly any dimmer than normal. I see no reason not to use it. The image is still bright, even in Eco-mode.

After messing with the settings, I decided to use
Brightness 48 (default)
Contrast 59 (default)
Color Temp. Mid (default)
No changes to "Color Setting" (default)
Manual keystone
White intensity 2
Degamma 2

I use a plain white projector screen, and these settings gave me a decent image. Increasing the brightness and contrast will hurt picture quality a bit, but it will make dark scenes in movies look much better.

Be warned, the only way to input component video is with the included adapter, which has male plugs. An input-switching box or 3 "couplers" will be necessary if you want to use the component video cord on some devices (like xbox, gamecube, ps2) Either should be available at any wal-mart.

Problems
About the third time I turned it on, it told me "Lamp Failure" and wouldn't let me do anything. After unplugging it and plugging it back in it worked fine. It must be just a fluke, since it hasn't given me any trouble since then

The projector really does project the image very high. The only way I found to conquer that is putting books of different thicknesses under the back feet and adjusting keystone. Just be very gentle when adjusting the projector while the bulb is hot, because they are easy to burn out.



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Here are the pictures I promised. Not that it is bad here, but the image looks better in real life, I assure you.


The LCD on the left is a Samsung 172x (17 inch diag), with the projector screen about 6 feet behind it. Obviously, the lights are on, and the image still shows clearly, but it isn't perfect.


You can barely see me on the left of the screen. It really is huge!


This is next to my Hypersonic Aviator EX7, which is very big. This projector is amazingly small compared to the old LCD projectors back in High School, and some reviews claim that even it is larger than usual.