If you need a WXGA (1,280-by-800) projector for business or educational use that's light enough to carry with you and bright enough to throw an image suitable for a mid- to large-size room, add the Dell 4320 ($1,499) to your list of potential choices. Rated at 4,300 lumens, it's very much in the same class as, for example, the Optoma W401, making it of particular interest to anyone who needs a brighter than typical portable projector.

Like the W401, the 4320 weighs 6 pounds 6 ounces, which is a little heavy to count as easily portable, particularly given the relatively large size, at 4.3 by 11.2 by 9.7 inches (HWD). In fact, most projectors that weigh this much wind up permanently installed or mounted on a cart. However, it's light enough to carry with you if you need to, and Dell even ships it with a soft carrying case, to make it a little easier.

The other key feature the 4320 shares with the Optoma W401 is that it's unusually bright for the weight. In comparison, the Editors' Choice NEC NP-M311W, is a bit heavier and is rated at only 3,100 lumens. These ratings aren't entire comparable, because the 4320 and Optoma W401 are DLP-based while the NEC NP-M311W is LCD-based. (More on that below.) But to the extent that you can compare them, the 4320 obviously delivers more lumens for the weight.

Connections and Setup

Setting up the 4320 is typical for the breed, with a manual focus and a 1.2x manual zoom, which is enough to offer some flexibility in how far you can put the projector from the screen for any given size image. For the 92-inch diagonal image I used in my tests, and using the maximum zoom, I measured the distance at 102 inches.

Image inputs on the back panel include the usual HDMI, VGA, and composite video ports, with the two VGA ports also working for component video. In addition there's an S-Video port, a USB B port for direct USB display, and a USB A port for reading files directly from a USB key. You can also get an optional Wi-Fi dongle ($69.99), which plugs into the USB A port, to connect by Wi-Fi.

According to Dell, you can send data to the projector over its LAN port as well, but only if you have the Wi-Fi dongle installed. Without it, you can use the port only for controlling the projector over the network. Also note that although the projector offers 3D support, the 3D is limited to working with computers equipped with quad-buffered, Open GL 3D-compatible graphics cards.

Brightness

As with most DLP-based data projectors, the 4320 has a different white brightness than color brightness, which complicates any attempt to compare its brightness to the competition. (For a discussion of color brightness, see Color Brightness: What It Is, Why It Matters.)

As a point of reference, using SMPTE (Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers) recommendations, 4,300 lumens with WXGA resolution would be bright enough for roughly a 250- to 340-inch diagonal image in theater-dark lighting, assuming a 1.0 gain screen. In moderate ambient light, it would be suitable for roughly a 165- to 185-inch image.

Various preset modes, as well as Eco mode, also let you lower the brightness for smaller screen sizes or lower light levels. Even with the 92-inch diagonal image I used for testing, I had no problem finding a comfortable brightness for viewing in either theater dark lighting or moderate ambient light.

Image Quality

The 4230's data-image quality on my tests was a little short of excellent, but good enough for most purposes. On our standard suite of DisplayMate images, the projector did a good job with color balance in all preset modes, with suitably neutral grays at all shades from black to white. Red, blue, and yellow were a little dark in some preset modes in terms of a hue-saturation-brightness color model, but colors were nicely saturated and suitably eye-catching.

More important for most data screens, the projector held detail well. Both black text on white and white text on black was highly readable at sizes as small as 6.8 points. I saw some minor dynamic moire patterns in some images designed to bring them out. However, unless you use patterned fills rather than solid blocks of color in your graphics, you'll probably never see this issue.

For video, the WXGA native resolution lets the 4320 show widescreen 720p input without scaling, and the projector did a good job with shadow detail (details based on shading in dark areas). Image quality suffers from an obviously low contrast ratio and, with some clips, a high noise level. However, the video is at least watchable for long sessions, which is more than you can say for many data projectors.

Very much on the plus side, the 4320 doesn't show many rainbow artifacts—with light areas breaking up into flashes of red, green, and blue—with either video or data screens. Even if you see these artifacts easily, it's unlikely that you'll see them often enough to find them annoying.

One other plus is the stereo sound system. The two 5-watt speakers are too close together to offer any stereo effect, but they deliver good sound quality with enough volume to easily fill a mid-size room. For still better audio, you can plug an external sound system into the audio output on the back panel.

If you have no tolerance for seeing rainbow artifacts, you'll be better off with an LCD-based projector like the Editors' Choice NEC NP-M311W. But if you don't mind an occasional rainbow in the image, and need a bright, WXGA data projector—particularly one that's light enough to carry easily, the Dell 4320 is certainly worth considering. It offers light weight, a bright image, near-excellent data-image quality, watchable video, and far better audio than most projectors in its weight class. Depending on your needs, the balance of features can easily make it a more than attractive choice.