The Optoma EH341 ($1,699) stands out as a high-resolution data projector that's both light enough to carry with you and bright enough for a midsize room. It's a little more expensive than some other projectors in the same class, but it also offers a better-quality image to justify the extra cost. More important is that its combination of light weight, high resolution, good brightness, and high quality for data images makes it our Editors' Choice moderately priced, high-resolution projector.

The obvious competition for the 1080p (1920-by-1080) EH341 includes the BenQ MH630 and the InFocus IN119HDx. Both are roughly the same weight as the EH341, and they give you nearly as bright an image, with only slightly lower brightness ratings. They also cost less. However, the EH341 beats both on its quality for data images.

Setup and Brightness

At 3.9 by 12.4 by 8.8 inches (HWD), and 5 pounds 11 ounces, the EH341 is small and light enough to carry with you or store away when you're not using it, but it's also appropriate for permanent installation in a mount or on a cart. Setup is standard, with a manual focus and a manual 1.1X zoom, giving you some flexibility for how far you can place it from the screen for a given size image.

Connectors for image sources are limited to two HDMI ports for computers or video sources, and one VGA port for a computer or component video. One HDMI port supports MHL for easy connection to compatible mobile devices, and both offer full 3D support with video devices like Blu-ray players.

Optoma rates the EH341 at 3,500 lumens. As with the vast majority of single-chip DLP projectors, however, that's for the white brightness only. The color brightness is somewhat lower. The difference between the two complicates brightness comparisons with other projectors, and can affect both color quality and the brightness of color images. (For more on color brightness, see Color Brightness: What It Is, Why It Matters.)

Strictly as a point of reference, using the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) recommendations and with a 1.0-gain screen, 3,500 lumens at the projector's native 16:10 aspect ratio would be bright enough for a 225- to 305-inch image (measured diagonally) in theater-dark lighting. In moderate ambient light, the appropriate size would drop to about 150 inches. For smaller screen sizes, you can set the projector for a lower brightness by taking advantage of its Eco mode, its lower-brightness presets, or both.

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Image Quality and Audio

Data-image quality for the EH341 is excellent, with the projector sailing through our standard suite of DisplayMate tests. Most colors are a little dark in the brightest preset mode in terms of a hue-saturation-brightness color model, but that's expected for projectors with a lower color brightness than white brightness. In other modes, only yellow is a little dark, which is typical for DLP-based projectors, and colors in general are well saturated and suitably vibrant.

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Beyond that, color balance is excellent in all modes, with neutral grays at all levels from black to white. More important for most data images, the EH341 does an excellent job with detail. White text on black is crisp and highly readable at sizes as small as 7 points. White text on black is highly readable even at 4.5 points—assuming you're close enough to read it. Even with an analog (VGA) connection, images that tend to show pixel jitter or moiré patterns because of imperfect syncing between the PC and projector were all but rock solid in my tests.

The projector also does an excellent job of avoiding showing rainbow artifacts (red-green-blue flashes). The only time I saw any with static data images was with one test image that's designed to bring them out. More impressive is that even with that image, I saw them only when I made the effort to shift my gaze back and forth to see if they would show up. That makes it highly unlikely that anyone will see them often enough in normal use to find them annoying.

Unfortunately, the same is not true for full-motion video. I saw rainbow artifacts often enough with a black-and-white test clip and with some darkly lit color clips to find them annoying. Video quality is watchable otherwise, but as with most DLP data projectors, lengthy video clips are best avoided.

Audio quality is good enough so I could make out nearly every word in one demanding test clip of a monologue that gets almost entirely lost with many projectors. The 10-watt speaker puts out only enough volume to fill a small room, however. If you need higher volume, better quality, or stereo, you'll need an external sound system, and you'll have to bypass the EH341 with it entirely, since there's no audio output.

Conclusion

If you can get by with slightly lower image quality than the Optoma EH341 offers, be sure to take a look at the BenQ MH630 and the InFocus IN119HDx, which are just as easy to carry as the Optoma EH341 and offer similar brightness. If you insist on the best image quality you can get in a portable 1080p projector, however, or the slightly higher brightness level it promises, the EH341 is the obvious pick, as well as our Editors' Choice.