A native 1,920-by-1,080 (1080p) resolution most often shows up in home-entertainment projectors, not data projectors like the BenQ MH680 ($799). However, if you need to show fine detail or lots of data, whether in the form of complex engineering drawings, large spreadsheets, or multiple windows simultaneously, and you want the information to be readable, a 1080p projector may be just what you need. The MH680($398.99 at Amazon) delivers a high-quality, bright image, and could easily be the right fit.

At 6 pounds 1 ounce, the MH680 is even light enough to carry with you. In fact, it weighs less than the NEC NP-M311W($578.36 at Amazon), our Editors' Choice for WXGA (1,024-by-768) projectors in this brightness and weight class. The MH680 is also less expensive, primarily because it the lacks some of the features the NEC model has, like a 1.7x zoom lens. (The lens on the MH680 is 1.3x.)

Brightness

Another key difference between the two projectors is that the NEC NP-M311W is built around three LCD chips, while the MH680 is built around a single DLP chip. Single-chip DLP projectors typically have significantly lower color brightness than white brightness, which can affect both color quality and the brightness of color images. So even though the 3,000-lumen white brightness rating for the MH680 is nearly the same as the NEC projector's 3,100-lumen rating, that doesn't mean the brightness for all images will be a close match. (For more on color brightness, see Color Brightness: What It Is, Why It Matters.)

According to the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) recommendations, 3,000 lumens is bright enough, assuming a 1.0-gain screen, for roughly a 215- to 290-inch image in theater-dark lighting at the MH680's native 16:9 aspect ratio. In moderate ambient light, the size would drop to about 150 inches. For brighter ambient light or smaller screen sizes, you can lower the brightness level by switching to Eco mode, one of the less bright predefined modes, or both. For my tests, I had no problem finding a comfortable brightness level for viewing a 90-inch (diagonal) image in theater-dark lighting.

Setup

Setting up the MH680 is standard, with the manual 1.3x zoom offering reasonable flexibility in how far you can put the projector from the screen to get a given size image. Focusing is just a touch harder than it could be, however, since the focus changes considerably with very little movement.

Connectors include an HDMI port, a VGA port, an S-Video port, and a composite video port. There's also a USB Type A port for reading files directly from a USB memory key and a USB Type B port. One nice touch is that the HDMI port supports HDMI 1.4a, which means that you can connect directly to a Blu-ray player or other video source for 3D as well as 2D functionality.

Image Quality and Audio

Image quality for data images is just short of excellent. On our standard suite of DisplayMate tests, the projector scored well on color balance, with suitably neutral grays at all levels from black to white in all but the brightest preset mode. Color quality, similarly, had a few minor issues in the brightest mode. In particular, blue and red were noticeably dark. The projector scored well for color quality otherwise, with fully saturated, eye-catching colors in most predefined modes.

The MH680 did a good job with fine detail in our tests. White text on black, for example, was crisp and readable at sizes as small as 7.2 points, and black text on white was highly readable even at 5.4 points. In addition, images that tend to bring out pixel jitter and dynamic moiré were as rock solid with an analog (VGA) connection as with a digital (HDMI) connection.

Video quality is suitable for short clips at most, primarily because of rainbow artifacts—the red-green-blue flashes that are always a potential issue for DLP projectors. They are more often an issue with video than with data, as is the case here. I saw few enough of these artifacts with data images that it's unlikely that anyone would be bothered by them. A key problem for the MH680 is that the rainbow artifacts show often enough with video—more so than with most DLP projectors—that anyone in your audience who sees them easily will likely find them annoying.

For those who don't see these artifacts easily, the video is watchable, but not impressive, with dull color that goes along with a low contrast ratio, and more obvious noise in the image than with most projectors.

On the plus side, the 10-watt mono speaker offers good enough quality to be useful and enough volume for a small to mid-size room. If you need better quality, more volume, or stereo, you can connect an external sound system to the audio-out port.

If you don't show images with the kind of detail that needs full HD resolution, you'll be better off with a WXGA model, like BenQ's own MW523( at Amazon) or the Editors' Choice NEC NP-M311W, which doesn't offer 3D, but has both a more capable zoom lens, is rainbow-free, and has matching levels of white brightness and color brightness. If you need the high resolution, however, and particularly if you need portability, the BenQ MH680 delivers near-excellent quality for data images, is bright enough for a small to midsize room, and is light enough to carry with you.

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Further Reading

• How We Test Projectors
• Canon's M-i1 Mini Projector Fits in a Pocket, Works Without a PC
• Sony Tips $5K 4K Projector, $25K Laser Projector
• Hands On With Sony's Xperia Projector Prototype
• Hands On With ZTE's SPro2 Smart Projector