Infocus IN146 DLP projector

A good reason to buy a projector rather than a TV is to get 3D images relatively cheaply. While a 3D TV will set you back hundreds of pounds more than a standard one, a 3D projector can cost half that.

The Infocus IN146 is advertised as a 3D model ("3D capable so it's ready for the content to come", the marketing material says) but actually it lacks the latest version of the HDMI socket, 1.4, which would allow it to connect to a Playstation3 or 3D Blu-ray player.

It can display 3D images from a computer using the ‘frame sequential' method but it's not certified for the most common way of doing that, Nvidia's 3D Vision (click here to read our review of the 3D Vision kit). That means the choice of 3D viewing is fairly limited.

It has upsides: the resolution of 1280 x 800 pixels means the picture is widescreen by default, so it's good for watching films – some other projectors can show a widescreen picture but you get slightly less bright bars above and below, which can be distracting.

However, the IN146 is billed as an office projector and for that task it did very well. Its resolution meant that documents and video from the computer displayed perfectly, and though it doesn't have much in the way of zoom controls it has a ‘short throw' which means you don't need to place it far from the screen to get a large image (it threw an image 100in across the diagonal from under four feet away).

In fact, place it too far away and the projected image will be unusably big. There is ‘keystone' correction so that you can point it upwards or downwards (if it's ceiling-mounted) and still get a straight, rectangular picture.

It has HDMI, composite, s-video and two VGA input sockets, and a small but well-designed remote, with the same rubber buttons as the projector. It was a little noisy in use but not so much as to be distracting.

Overall picture quality was very impressive for documents, video and games. Though it's billed as an office model, the IN146 is a good general-use projector, as long as 3D gaming or video isn't important, and especially if space is tight.