Interactive short-throw projectors like the Acer S5201M ($900 street) aren't as inherently impressive as interactive ultra-short-throw projectors like the Editor's Choice Optoma TW675UTi-3D ($1800 street, 4 stars), but they're less expensive. The S5201M is a fairly typical representative of the breed.

What makes ultra-short-throw projectors like the TW675UTi-3D or the Hitachi iPJ-AW250N ($1,800 street, 4 stars) so impressive is that they can throw big images from short distances. For the 78-inch wide image we use for most testing, they typically need only 10 to 15 inches between the projector and the screen.

For the same size image, the Acer S5201M needed 49 inches in my tests. That's enough farther to make it a little harder to avoid shadows when you're standing close enough to the image to interact with it. However, it's far closer than the nine or more feet a standard projector would need, close enough so shadows aren't a major issue, and not a bad tradeoff for the lower price.

The S5201M is also smaller and lighter than ultra-short throw projectors. When I reviewed the Hitachi iPJ-AW250N, I pointed out that unlike other ultra-short-throw models, including the Optoma TW675UTi-3D and Dell S500wi ($1,599 direct, 4 stars), it was light enough to serve as an occasional traveling companion. The S5201M is definitively in the portable category, at 3.9 by 11.4 by 10.0 inches (HWD) and 7.7 pounds.

The Basics

Aside from its interactive feature, the S5201M is a fairly typical portable projector. Built around a DLP chip, it offers a native XGA (1,024 by 768) resolution and a 3,000 lumen brightness rating. Setup is standard fare for an interactive projector, with more inputs than you might expect on a portable. Choices include two HDMI ports for computers or video sources, two VGA ports for computers or component video, and both composite video and S-video ports.

As you might expect from the DLP chip, the S5201M uses Texas Instrument's approach to interactivity, so it doesn't need calibration. The projector adds a grid over the image that the supplied interactive wand can see to report the position you're pointing to. Simply turn on the projector, set it to interactive mode, and point the wand (or pen if you prefer to call it that). Note too that the wand doesn't need to touch the screen, which means you can turn literally any surface into the equivalent of an interactive whiteboard.

Image Quality

The S5201M scored reasonably well for data image quality. Colors were a little dark in terms of a hue-saturation-brightness color model, and yellow was a little mustard, but still well saturated and acceptably bright. Beyond that, the projector did a good job even with some of the toughest screens on our standard suite of DisplayMate tests. Both black on white and white on black text were easily readable down to the smallest sizes we test with, and even with an analog connection, screens that tend to show pixel jitter were rock solid.

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Video image quality wasn't in the same league as data image quality. The projector had a serious problem handling shadow detail (details based on shading in dark areas), losing details in scenes that few other projectors have problems with. With scenes that tend to bring out the problem, large areas of the screen turned into solid black. It handled brighter scenes well enough to be usable, but, as with most interactive projectors, the S5201M is clearly not designed for video, and I wouldn't use it for anything more than short clips at most.

Other Issues

One related issue is that the S5201M tends to show rainbow artifacts easily, with light areas breaking up into little red-green-blue rainbows. This is a potential problem for any single-chip DLP projector because of the way DLP chips create color. However, some projectors show the rainbows more easily than others, and people vary in how sensitive they are to seeing them.

With the S5201M the rainbows show relatively often, particularly with video. For data screens, even those who are sensitive to the effect will probably consider the projector acceptable. However, they will likely see rainbows often enough with video to find them annoying, which is another good reason to limit video on the S5201M to short clips.

As with most projectors in this weight class, the built-in audio is hardly worth having. The sound system, with two 5-watt speakers, was good enough in my tests to make out spoken words at low volume, but it suffered from distortion and clipping that only got worse at higher volumes. If you need good quality sound, plan on using an external audio system.

One final feature that demands mention, mostly because it's much more limited than you might expect, is 3D. To begin with, using 3D can get expensive, because you have to outfit your entire audience with DLP Link glasses at $70 to $100 each. That's a good reason by itself to ignore the feature. Also note that, as with most interactive projectors with 3D, you can't use 3D and interactive mode at the same time.

It's also not clear what the 3D ready feature is ready for. The documentation says it will work only over a VGA connection. But it also says it will work with an NTSC DVD player (which would not be connected by VGA) to play HQFS 3D DVDs. (Unfortunately, I don't have any 3D DVDs to test that claim. We basically ignore the format for testing, since the image quality is no match for Blu-ray 3D.) As of this writing, the Acer representative I spoke to has been unable to confirm whether, as with most 3D-ready projectors, the S5201M requires a computer with a Quadbuffered, Open GL 3D-compatible graphics card or, if not, what its requirements actually are.

Issues about 3D aside, I'd like this projector better if it didn't show rainbow artifacts so easily. Even as is, however, it can do the job it's meant for, in 2D at least. The interactivity works as promised, and the data image quality, portability, and low price are strong points. If you want an interactive projector and don't want to pay the extra cost that goes with an ultra-short throw like the Editors' Choice Optoma TW675UTi-3D, the S5201M is at least worth a look.

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