Make Your Projector Better!

Raise your hand if your office, school, or place of worship has a projector. If your hand isn’t up, this might not be the article for you. But, we’re guessing that most of you raised your hand. Projectors have quickly become one of the leading pieces of tech for most industries, making presentations, lessons, and services more interactive and accessible.

Now, raise your hand if you’ve ever had a lamp burn out in the middle of a big presentation. Or, better yet, been the person responsible for climbing a ladder to reach the ceiling to change said lamp. That is, if you were lucky enough to have a replacement available and didn’t have to scour the web for the exact size and model you need.

The point we’re getting at here is that, while lamp-based projectors have been a tried-and-true option for projection, laser-based projectors are the new and improved version that eliminates many of the downfalls of its predecessor. Here’s what we mean.

Quality and Brightness

With lamp-based projectors, you’re losing brightness from the moment you turn on the projector for the first time. As the lamp dims over time, your image will lose its quality, making pictures harder to see and words more difficult to read. With lasers, brightness remains more constant over time, outputting a higher quality image. Laser projectors also have higher redundancy, which means if one laser malfunctions, your image will still be clear because there are other lasers to pick up the slack and complete the picture. With lamp-based projectors, you have one lamp, so if it goes out, you’re out of luck.

Cost

While laser projectors are a more expensive investment initially, the amount spent over time for upkeep is far lower than that of the lamp-based projector. With projector replacement lamps ranging in price from $60–$300 depending on your model, maintenance fees could add up quickly. Laser projectors also consume less energy over time, so your electricity costs could potentially go down after the switch.

Life Expectancy

For laser projectors, the typical life expectancy is around 20,000 hours. That means, that if you use the projector every day for eight hours per day, it’ll last nearly seven years. In those seven years, you will not have to buy or change a single lamp or filter. Projector lamps have a life expectancy of between 2,000–6,000 hours depending on your model and usage. While that might seem like a long time, keep in mind that your image quality at hour one will be drastically different than at 3,000 hours. But with lasers, your image quality will be the same for the entire life of the projector.

Ease of Use

We think it goes without saying, but laser projectors require less maintenance over time than their counterpart. If you have a lamp-based projector, you might be used to waiting for your projector to warm up before you have full brightness. However, as soon as you turn on a laser projector you have full brightness with no wait time. That, coupled with the lack of lamps and filters to buy and replace, makes the laser-based projector an easier product to use and maintain.

While not all organizations will find the switch to laser projectors an immediate necessity, for some it can be a huge benefit for your day-to-day operations. If you currently have a lamp-based projector and are thinking about switching, or you’re in the process of purchasing a projector and have questions about the differences, we can help. Give us a call!

AVG Projector Case Studies:

Episcopal High School Theater

CycleFit Frederick