Proxima Ultralight LX

The secret to a compelling presentation is interesting information and clear visuals. The latter can be addressed with a quality LCD projector; the former, well, that’s up to you. The Proxima Ultralight LX. is a compact projector with some handy features, good image quality, and easy to use image setup utilities.

The name, however, is a bit misleading. Although the Ultralight LX projector size is small, about the size of a shoe box, its weight of 8.4 pounds is almost twice the weight of the lightest projectors. While the Ultralight LX is portable for short distances, for longer distances it would be tough on the back, especially when added to the weight of a PowerBook.

On the road, you’ll like the easy setup of the Ultralight. We managed to get it working by simply plugging it in to our test Power Mac G4 without rebooting. Although we generally recommend restarting your machine when you hook up monitors and projectors, we were pleased at how easy setup was.

The image quality was acceptable for simple presentations of text and charts, but for pictures and illustrations the color was either washed-out or oversaturated and distorted. If your presentations rely on color accuracy or detail precision, you might consider the Proxima UltraLight LS1

The menus are easy to understand and are, in general, very Mac-like: menus with submenus and point-and-click functions. We had a problem with the control setting however. To change settings you have to use the on-screen up or down arrows. We would have like the option of using the up and down arrows on the remote or on the projector.

Connection to newer laptops or desktop machines might also be a problem. Currently, the machine ships only with ADB (Apple Desktop Bus) and Serial connections (for PCs). InFocus does not have plans to support USB with future versions of this model. The projector will work if you buy an ADB to USB adapter. A minor, but annoying feature, the bulb indicating that the projector is working is an alarming red, instead of a more likely choice, such as green.