InFocus IN5504 projector

The InFocus IN5504 is a titanic installation projector aimed at high-end audiovisual installations for rooms such as university halls and auditoriums. It has impressive specifications, and its striking modern aesthetics and a clever design make it a good choice for a long-term installation. Most importantly it's reasonably priced given its specifications, making it an economical choice compared to other installation projectors.

The InFocus IN5504 is a massive 67cm long, 43cm wide and 24cm tall — roughly the size of a large travelling suitcase. It's heavy as well, at 20kg, but as it's designed to be used with a well-secured roof mount this is hardly a concern. The InFocus IN5504, along with the IN5502 and other new InFocus projectors, features a revamped design scheme with a modern bent. Older InFocus projectors were conservative and unobtrusive, but the new models look very modern, with a glowing blue iris appearing around the lenses of every unit.

We think this design looks great, and different skins are available to match the InFocus IN5500 series to different ceiling colours — ranging from standard white and black to woodgrain and a pre-primed skin that can be painted in any colour.

Designed for use in bright halls, the IN5504 has a light output of 5000 lumens. If your needs are even more extreme than this (we can barely think of any situations where this would be the case) InFocus offers models with up to 7000 lumens of brightness. Our testing in a relatively small room wasn't able to stretch the legs of the InFocus IN5504, but we're sure its twin lamps' output (you can elect to run a single lamp at a time and split hours between the lamps for longevity) is able to handle much larger spaces with ease.

The projector's contrast ratio is also more than acceptable for multimedia and video presentations. At 2000:1 it's not going to rival a home theatre projector for accuracy of blacks or colour gradations, but the definition between colours is clear and easily visible. We ran a few Blu-ray movies through the projector and found good (although not brilliant) performance in The Dark Knight and Batman Begins. A reasonable amount of detail was visible in the difficult early scenes of The Dark Knight, which usually cause projectors to struggle due to the high contrast between dark and light areas of the screen.

The resolution of the IN5504 was a high 1920x1200 pixels; other models in the IN5500 series offer 1280x800 pixel displays. Optional lenses are available to adjust the image to larger or smaller venues, but these cost extra.

Designed to be installed with multiple inputs hooked up , the IN5504 has two HDMI, two VGA and single component, composite, S-Video and BNC input sets for video and audio. USB DisplayLink and Ethernet ports make remote access and control simple. For the majority of our testing we used a virtual remote control through USB without any issues, although the regular bundled remote also works as expected. The IN5504 is also compatible with InFocus' LiteShow II wireless adapter, while USB flash drives can be directly connected for computer-free playback.

The IN5500 series is designed to be purchased through InFocus' distribution partner Revolution Technologies, with prices available on request. It's available for a reasonable price compared to other installation projectors.

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