Casio XJ-A245

Before the first LED home cinema projectors come onto the market, we decided to have a look at this data projector - for pro use then - the Casio XJ-A425. We wanted to see if it was possible to adapt this product to multi-media use.

Hardware & handling: noisy, economical and 20,000 hour lamp

The real drawbacks on this product are the lack of backlighting on the remote and the fact that there's no lens-shift. Next come the very high noise levels. The readings we took in normal/eco1/eco2 modes are as follows: 56/38/32 dB. Moreover, this is accompanied by a disagreeable crackling. Lastly, there's the built-in speaker. It's a good idea to give audio directly through the HDMI in but the very metallic quality leaves something to be desired. Only for use as a fallback solution.

The positives are the powerful zoom (with focusing problems depending on the zoom/focus ratio(*)), low energy consumption in standby and when running (0.3 / 119 watts) and a nice compact casing.

Note, if you were expecting a product that doesn't heat up because of the LEDs, you'll be disappointed. It does and is even difficult to pick up once it's been running for a while.

(*) better to move the projector back and forth to work with the size of the projection area and keep a sharp image rather than use the zoom and focus.

Image quality: faded colours because of the restricted gamut


The black level is fine once the brightness is reduced (see inset). We measured it at 0.48 cd/m² in eco mode 2 (the least bright). The contrast is then 521:1 which is a good score. Nevertheless the faded colours spoil it somewhat. The range of colours covered by the projector (gamut) is reduced across the three axes: red, blue and green. In practice, this translates into a weak image and a worse perceived contrast than what is measured.

Video noise is very high. Unfortunately, there's no settings option to reduce it.

Bright areas are well handled. Even the brightest zones don't lose detail.

Upscaling and 1080p: as with almost all projectors, DVD upscaling isn't as good as with a good DVD player or other latest generation console. The main difference is visible in terms of the diagonal lines and contours which show aliasing effects. With 1080p images, we noted a lack of sharpness. A bit sketchy overall.

Picture smoothness and 3D: neither one nor the other.

If you were expecting not to see any rainbow effect with LED projectors, you're going to have to be patient. This projector is subject to them, whether in colour images (for the sensitive amongst you) or black and white (pretty much everyone).

What the pros think

We're rounding off our article with a look at XJ-A245's pro potential. The longevity and power of the light source, compactness, built-in speaker, powerful zoom (large image from close up), low power consumption and cable or wi-fi connectivity are all positives on this machine. On the other hand, the very high noise levels in normal LED mode are definitely a drawback. To reduce noise, change to eco 1 mode, where you get decent visibility at lower noise levels (this goes for both films and video games). There's also the problem of sharpness/focus that is difficult to get right. Note also that with fixed images, the rainbow effects are much less visible, even on images in black and white.