Latest Projector Reviews

3M S55 With Balanced Projector Lamp

In a world where projector prices are going down and features keep increasing, 3M has managed to build a projector that still creates a separation between the “have’s” and the “have not’s”. The 3M S55 is a projector that came out in late 2004, December to be precise, with a price tag of $2300 US. It is a bright projector that has strange SVGA qualities, but does not entirely come through on the whole contrast thing.

The lumens on the S55 are incredible ,spitting out 2000 ANSI. With the money you have to spend to afford a projector that put outs this much brightness, I’m surprised that the S55 doesn’t have anything else up its sleeve, or does it?

The funny thing is, the S55 only has SVGA quality resolution, meaning that its native aspect delivers a mere 800x600p. So you must be asking yourself, where is the “Super” in all of this? Well, apparently even while its native resolution is low, the S55 has the capability to compress a high resolution signal.

The resolution goes from 800x600p to a potential 1600x1200p. But that is only if you have a feed coming in that can deliver resolution of that quality, and you still don’t get the true resolution anyhow. The signal is being compressed, meaning that the image is going to be crisper, but basically the incoming pixels are sharing a spot on the total possible pixels.

The S55 does produce a pretty good image with enough brightness to project onto a screen 14 feet wide, but since the contrast isn’t terrific, you may want to keep your image size a little bit smaller. The contrast is quite low for a projector that is so expensive, the S55 produces a ratio of 400:1.

The black levels are not going to be great on this particular projector, but you get some piece of mind with its brightness, in hopes that it might counteract and balance things out. It is a loud machine jamming out 41 db of Chewbacca trouncing noise, and the reason is obvious, since it is trying to calm down the high power projector lamp.

Speaking of projector lamp, the S55 uses a 165W lamp that lasts for 2000 hours on average, or can last up to 3000 hours in economy mode. It has every input necessary except for the good old DVI (when will projector manufacturers catch on?), and 3M gives you a 3 year warranty.

If you are going to buy this projector, make sure you get a good deal on it, and make sure it is the right projector for you.