Panasonic PT-L701SDE

As anyone who has ever done a PowerPoint presentation on the move can testify, lugging round all that equipment can cause serious arm-ache. In addition to an LCD projector you need to carry a laptop too. Panasonic hopes to make your life slightly easier with the PT-L701SDE.

Its key facility is a slot for a Secure Digital (SD) card on the back of the unit. SD is a small card-based storage system, not unlike Sony's Memory Stick, co-developed by Toshiba, SanDisk and Panasonic.

The clever bit with this projector is that in addition to the slot and 16Mb card it also features jpeg conversion software that turns bmp, tiff and PowerPoint images into compressed and easily stored jpeg files. So, in theory, you store your presentation on the SD card and leave the laptop at home.

The LCD projector itself is tailored towards the corporate boardroom market, although at 3.9kg it's very portable. Panasonic claims it delivers an 80in image over a distance of 8.2 feet which, in reality, is a little generous. Images are certainly very bright at 1000 ANSI lumens in 1024 x 768 XGA, which is fine in darkened rooms. However, if the projector is going to moonlight as a home cinema system it needs to be paired with a low gain screen.

Set up is comparatively simple, and there are a couple of neat features to experiment with. Image Capture allows the user to save a still from a DVD or VCR on the SD card, which they can then transfer to a PC, while Index Window splits the screen in half with the DVD/video/PC image on one side and a frozen still image on the other.

On the whole this is a fairly neat projection system. Its detailed images, high level of brightness, portability and SD card slot make it ideal for travelling presenters. However, its fairly high price rules it out for anyone else.

CONTACT: Panasonic
08700 100 464
www.panasonic.co.uk