The Mitsubishi X80 may not have a memorable name, but it is packed with nice features and has great image quality. The bottom line, however, is that it does not provide a compelling argument for its stiff price. You can get just as much for less money from competing projectors like the Epson PowerLite 810p Multimedia Projector.

One of the key differences is that the projector incorporates Mitsubishi's ColorView technology. This allows you to adjust not only the red, green, and blue levels but also cyan, magenta, and yellow. The six-axis control is designed to offer better color-matching capability.

The analog-only LCD projector has a handy pass-through connector for a monitor. It also has a pair of stereo sound inputs—one for the computer image and one for video—and both serial and USB connections for remote mouse functions. The remote has a laser pointer as well as a mouse controller. And it has a picture-in-picture feature, so you can show small data and video images side by side.

The X80 is rated at 1,500 ANSI lumens and measured a bright 1,138 lumens on our test. The 123:1 contrast ratio and 1.1:1 brightness variance scores were respectable amid the group. We saw no apparent pixel defects, and the auto-sync feature did a good job on image size, position, and timing. Scaling of higher- and lower- resolution images was very good.

We found a few image quality flaws, such as some misconvergence between the red and green along the image's left side. Color tracking was off a bit, with midrange grays ranging from a faint olive tint to blue, but this can be adjusted using ColorView. Facial tones in video images were a little posterized.

One small detail: You can use only one of the component video and S-Video connections at a time. If you send signals across both, S-Video takes over. You have to disconnect the S-Video cable to see a component video image. This is not likely to cause most users any problems.