Optomo Pi500

Aimed at the business and education markets, the Pi500 is a 15in TFT monitor with a difference: it has a touch-sensitive screen and stylus for mouse-free navigation and input.

The unit functions both as a monitor and a presentation tool. In presentation mode, you hook up the Pi500 to a notebook or PC via a VGA port and an interactive whiteboard or projector. You can annotate the slides, text and images you are displaying from your seat, without obstructing your audience's view of the presentation.

The Power Presenter software takes care of slide annotation. The tool icons: displayed along the bottom of the screen allow you to write over slides, insert blank slides into a presentation and save the whole lot for further discussion.

We were impressed with the responsiveness of the touch-sensitive screen, which operates on the same principles as those used in Tablet PCs. However, the right mouse button function on the stylus was awkward to use, which became very irritating after just a few minutes. If you're not writing on the screen, you'll probably wind up using the mouse for on-screen navigation as it's so much faster.

The image quality of the 15in XGA TFT itself is excellent, giving clear image quality and offering good viewing angles on both horizontal and vertical axis. On its default settings, however, colours were very red and the two speakers integrated in the bezel give tinny audio quality. The on-screen settings menu was also fiddly to use.

As a presentation tool, the Pi500 is handy, but £1,000 is a hefty sum for that slide annotation function. If you're an occasional presentation-giver then the Pi500 is unlikely to be a great buy.

Contact: Optoma 01923 691 800
www.optomaeurope.com

Specifications:

• 15in screen
• 1,024 x 768 native resolution
• Active matrix TFT
• VGA input
• USB
• 3.9kg
• 250cd/sq m brightness
• 400:1 contrast ratio
• 40/60 deg up/down vertical, 60/60 deg left/right horizontal viewing angle