Product Review: Toshiba TLP-S41
Feb 1, 2004 12:00 PM, By Jeff Sauer
During the past few years, Toshiba has carved out a comfortable projector niche by building a line of models that includes a built-in document camera. It's an odd feature in some ways, perhaps, but one that has considerable appeal in education and in certain vertical business and government markets. The TLP-S41 is Toshiba's latest SVGA version of the document camera/projector line, but now it's just six pounds and very portable. At $1,799 it is the most affordable in the line yet.
As with any SVGA projector, the TLP-S41 is a value-oriented model that gives up a little in resolution and sharpness in exchange for proven technology at a reasonable price. That's particularly true these days when the most affordable SVGA models from several companies, including Toshiba (TLP-S10U), have broken the $1,000 price barrier in hopes of greatly broadening the projector market. The TLP-S41 is Toshiba's least expensive document camera-equipped model but a step up from the S10U in brightness (1200 versus 1600 lumens). So what do you get for that relatively low price?
The TLP-S41 weighs only 6 pounds — 5.95 pounds with the document camera attachment on my scale — and that officially (to the extent any of these categories have any true status beyond marketing) makes it a microportable, travel projector. At a little more than 14 inches wide, it's certainly larger than most of today's travel projectors, but you can detach the document camera arm and pack it separately, and that makes the projector itself a more manageable 12.0-by-8.0-by-3.3 inches, roughly. The main chassis is silver with rounded edges, with a lens that peeks out only slightly from the front, making it easy to slide in and out of a briefcase or tote bag.
On the other hand, this model is ultimately more apt to move inside buildings between classrooms or conference rooms than in and out of a traveling presenter's luggage. Sure, there will be traveling lecturers for whom the document camera is a clear value, but the TLP-S41 was clearly built with an eye toward classrooms and other lecture and auditorium spaces. For example, though the unit has minimal connectivity options, just six ports in all, it does have a 15-pin RGB monitor output port for a presenter's local display, a bid-winning necessity for many institutions. The other ports are the obligatory 15-pin RGB in, S-video, RCA composite, 8-pin control, and miniaudio.
Similar, the control buttons on the TLP-S41's top and remote are basic, if consistent with the low price. There is a dedicated button for input selection, as well as menu access and navigation arrows, which double as volume up/down and digital zoom in/out. But beyond the power button, there are only two other dedicated controls. Those two, Auto Set-up and Auto Keystone adjustment, speak directly toward the ease-of-use focus of many of today's projectors and to the limited amount of time a professor or lecturer will care to spend on technical setup. For those that do venture into the onscreen menus, there is little beyond the normal fare of brightness, contrast, and so on.
GOT THE DOCUMENTS?
Any glamour in the value-oriented TLP-S41 comes in the form of the document camera. That document camera functionality is Toshiba's distinct value-add that's particularly appropriate for projection environments in which not all of the users have moved much beyond overhead projectors on the comfort scale.
As a document camera, the TLP-S41 is utilitarian, with almost none of the special features of a standalone unit. There is no video output, for example, for recording a lecture to tape. There is no Sharpen or Text mode for viewing text. In addition, though some Toshiba models do have an overhead light, the TLP-S41 has no backlight or overhead light for illuminating documents or objects. That can be a problem in dark rooms or spotlit rooms where shadows may cause trouble.
Still, the TLP-S41's document camera is hard to argue with for ease of use and utility. First, the camera unit is an extension to the side of the projector, with an arm that easily unfolds and telescopes upward. There's a focus ring on the camera lens and Gain control buttons to help adjust to ambient light, though low light causes problems. Best of all, the document camera module detaches from the main projector. Toshiba provides a 44-inch cable to reconnect it to the projector, giving much greater flexibility for position and for avoiding those shadows.
More important, in any reasonable ambient light the camera is surprisingly good for an add-on, with nice accurate color. With the arm extended all the way up, you can easily show an entire 8½-by-11 document and fairly comfortably read as small as 12-point text. However, bringing the arm down and refocusing allows you to project legible text as small as 9 point. Legible depends on your audience's eyes and distance from the screen, but at least the TLP-S41 and its resolution are good enough to support those text sizes.
The projector itself is rated at 1600 lumens, though I measured just 1363 ANSI lumens (1190 in Toshiba's low lamp mode, which saves lamp life and lowers fan noise when ambient light is controllable) averaged across the entire image. That 15 percent difference is regrettably fairly common in an industry that often exaggerates marketing specifications, but the actual brightness numbers are fairly consistent with similarly priced (the document camera premium excepted) projectors. My contrast ratios of 347:1 full on/off and 134:1 ANSI checkerboard are also comparable to industry norms, and that's really about what you would expect, if not hope for, from a value-oriented product. The bottom line is that these bench test numbers point to a level of quality that is at least good enough for organizations looking for strong price/performance balance.
That rings true when looking at the TLP-S41's picture quality. Toshiba does a good job reproducing saturated colors, as do many baseline projectors these days. The weakest in this class projector is in shadows and highlights, especially in darker scenes where color differences tend to be lost in a smaller range of gray scales. That's true of the TLP-S41, too, though where this unit is distinctly not a home theater or movie-watching model, those performance issues are less critical.
The TLP-S41's other weakness is, of course, its native SVGA resolution, at least compared with more up-to-date, if more expensive, projectors. Lower resolution simply means text and graphics are not as sharp as those from an XGA projector. Naturally, that's the trade-off when you're looking to save cash. For many organizations for which price is a serious obstacle, or for schools or businesses investing in several units, SVGA models offer tremendous value.
Ultimately, SVGA's sharp shortcomings are unlikely to distract from any presentation once the projector is put into use. That's certainly true in the case of the TLP-S41. More to the point, Toshiba's addition of an affordable document camera for less than $2,000 presents a great value for presenters who go beyond (or in the case of old-timer lectures, haven't gotten to) computer slide presentations.
PRODUCT SUMMARY
Company: Toshiba, www.toshiba.com
Product: TLP-S41
Pros: Lightweight. Portable. Affordable. Easy to use.
Cons: Lack of back- or overhead light a problem in dark rooms.
Applications: Document camera/projector for education, business, and government markets.
Price: $1,799
SPECIFICATIONS
Brightness 1600 ANSI lumens
Contrast 400:1 full on/off
Native Resolution SVGA (800 × 600)
Configuration 3 × 0.7" TFT active matrix p-silicon LCD panels
Light Source 165W high-pressure mercury lamp
Lens F=2.0-2.3, f=23-27, 4 mm; manual focus, manual zoom (1.2:1)
Projection Distance 4.1-31.9 feet
Screen Size 33-300 diagonal inches
Keystone ±15° vertical
Speakers 1W mono
Dimensions (H×W×D) 3.3 × 14.1 × 8.1 inches
Weight 6.0 lb.
Warranty 2 years parts and labor, 90 days lamp
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