By Alex Serpo, ZDNet Australia and Philip Wong, CNET Asia
05/01/2009
URL: http://asia.cnet.com/reviews/home_av/projectors/0,39037571,44412511p,00.htm

There is much to both love and hate about Dell's M109S micro projector. It has a very low resolution, runs hot, and is only 50 lumens in brightness. At the same time, it's tiny yet has the longest lamp life we have ever seen, and is mercury-free.

Design

Oh look! It's tiny! It seems the age of the massive projector is over and small is the new black. Which bring us to Dell's M109S projector which is small enough to fit in the palm of your hand and weighs only 360g. It's also piano black, meaning it will accumulate fingerprints given ever the slightest touch.

Unfortunately, the amount of cabling you have to haul around with this projector somewhat reduces its portability. We're talking about the power brick and detachable cord. On the other hand, these are also compatible with selected Dell Latitude laptops. In other words, you could easily share the adapter between the beamer and notebook. For example, using batteries for the Latitude and AC for the M109S during a presentation.

There is also a three-way breakout cable which plugs into the only port on the back of the projector. This gives you access to power along with two data inputs for this device: Analog PC (D-Sub) and composite-video. It's also worth noting that while the former is relatively long and connects directly to a PC, the latter is just a short input socket. You'll need a separate cable to hook up to a DVD player or settop box.

There aren't many control keys, ports and indicators on this diminutive concoction. Across the top is a set of backlit buttons for keystone correction, switching video input and miscellaneous functions. There are also numerous warning lights and a dial to manually focus the lens. During the review, we did encounter a noticeable lag using the touch controls which can be a bit frustrating when navigating the menu.

Features

The DLP-based M109S has a humble resolution of 858 x 600-pixels, meaning even the Netbooks won't be able to display in their native resolution on this projector. It's also only 50 ANSI lumens and is less than ideal for lit environments. This is about 40 times dimmer than a regular beamer with an average brightness of 2,000 lumens. The contrast ratio on this Texas Instruments Brilliant Color-enhanced (think richer hues) model is 800:1, a bit less than half what you would see on a full-sized equivalent.

The minimum and maximum display sizes for the M109S are 15 and 60 inches, respectively. The latter should work out fine for small workgroups, while the former is strictly meant for personal usage. One unique proposition for this kit is its LED-based lighting. It lasts much longer than the standard mercury affair (and less toxic, too; mercury can form nasty derivatives like dimethyl mercury--a fraction of a drop will kill you).

Furthermore, the LED lamp has a massive 10,000-hour life--roughly four times the standard bulb. This works out to around S$0.09 an hour if you divide the projector's S$899 sticker price by the lamp life. That's actually outstanding value considering the four-digit pricing and bulb life of its non-LED peers. The tradeoff is that the LED lamp cannot be replaced.

For a no-fuss setup, this beamer is equipped with a slew of functions to facilitate installation. For starters, the M109S features quick startup and shutdown to get your presentation going in a snap. Dell also has managed to cram vertical auto-keystone correction into this tiny unit. This takes care of uneven mounting surfaces that produce geometrical distortions such as a trapezoidal projection--it does not cover situations where the projector is slanted horizontally from the screen.

Performance

Once set up and powered, all it took was 7 seconds for the M109S to warm up and be ready for action. On the flip side, the time it took double at 14 seconds to shut down the unit. For those concerned about fan noise and heat, this beamer was emitting a mid-frequency hum audible 1m away and ran pretty hot as well. More importantly, the screen geometry was fairly accurate with smooth brightness uniformity, while light spill was negligible and automatic signal detection quick and spot on.

Even at 50 lumens, the M109S was surprisingly bright as long as there're good ambient lighting controls. With all the lights in our Lab switched off, it had no problem lighting up a 60-inch projection. In fact, the situation wasn't as bad as we imagined with the lamps fired up. The image cast was still somewhat viewable, except that colors were washed-out. To counter the room illumination, we tried downsizing the screen size. This boosted the picture's brightness a little at 20 inches and below.

Sharpness and clarity-wise, this Dell was pretty good but not exceptional. As the M109S features an unconventional native resolution, we were able to evaluate our test unit at only 800 x 600 pixel. The mismatch resulted in softer fonts and this was generally the case up to XGA signals. That said, text and fine graphics were perfectly legible, well within tolerance for most users. As for colors, there was nothing major to nitpick on its vibrant hues, though mild circular banding was picked up on our test chart.

Playing back DVDs from our reference Pioneer player and Xbox 360's Need for Speed: ProStreet via composite-video, we couldn't help noticing distinct flickering on subtitles, wordings and high-contrast areas. Other than that, the picture quality was more than decent for a compact multimedia projector. This was characterized by an overall stable and clean picture, matched by a grain-free background. In fact, we felt the M109S was a tad better in sharpness for movies with no shortage of details to boot.

The S$899 Dell M109S is an interesting product. On the one hand, it's extremely portable and offers superb value with a super-long lamp life. On the other hand, you'll need a dark environment to project a good image and an AC socket which limits outdoor applications. Taking everything into consideration, it's still a fine presentation tool for busy executives on-the-go, as long as the task is confined within office walls.