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Customer review from the Amazon Vine Program I've spent that last couple hours playing with the projector and am impressed. I wanted a projector for photo club presentations that would give us a better color accuracy than our aging unit. This does. The auto color setting is quite good, if a bit strong on yellow. By running a color calibrator (ColorMunki Photo Monitor, Printer & Projector Profiler), I was able to get very nice color accuracy. Obviously, a projector won't have the gamut (color range) of a good monitor, but this MegaPlex MG-850 is a huge improvement and more than good enough for our needs.
There are a couple bonuses that come with the projector. One is built in speakers that are actually loud enough to be heard in a meeting room. The amplifier in the unit will over-drive the speakers so you'll need to balance volume and clarity, but within a reasonable range it does pretty well, for meeting use. I'd say it's the equivalent of a $40-50 set of external computer audio monitors. For home theater use, you will probably want to connect it to a higher quality system.
Connectivity is the other special feature. I plugged in my iPod Touch and ran a photo slideshow with music. It just worked. There's a slide-out tray that has an iPod/iPad/iPhone jack. The tray easily holds my wife's iPad with no strain.
Next, I connected my laptop with a USB cable. Again, it just worked. I then tried it from a HDMI cable, then a RGB cable. All worked off my MacBook. No problem with Apple products that I can see. It also supports composite cables, which I used from our DVD player. There are the expected audio out ports too. It will also show photos or video off a USB thumb drive. That will greatly simplify letting members share their photos at club meetings.
One unexpected bonus is a microphone port. I plugged in an old Sony mic that was laying around in my attic, and it turned the unit into a portable PA system. I guess you could also use it for karaoke, (Shudder) as the microphone works over music playing through the projector.
There is no video cable included with the unit. With all the connection possibilities that the projector offers, that's not surprising. Which would you include? Anyway, that's just a heads up thing.
The included remote works fine. The projector has a number of projection modes that alter the lamp intensity. With a maximum of 2800 lumens, it will work nicely in a normal room with the lights on, but probably not a brightly sunlit room. That's not a problem we see often in the Pacific Northwest. In default mode, the projector will adjust intensity for ambient light. Nice.
Refresh seems fine for action video viewing. Contrast is excellent. As I mentioned earlier, color is very good. Fan noise is about average. There's an angle adjustment, that should work if you can't get quite 90 degrees to a screen, and a mode that is supposed to color correct for displaying on a green chalk board. I didn't test that.
The unit is large by modern standards, coming in about the size of 10-12 year old unit. It's bulky, but not quite as heavy as the old projectors. There's no way you're going to get this in a briefcase. It has a built-in handle but no case. You'll have to carry the remote and power cord separately.
I'm more than pleased with the projector. We'll probably be hosting movie nights at our place. ;-)
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