The Canon LV-8215 - The Spaceship has Landed

When I first unpacked the Canon LV-8215, I didn’t think it would be capable of much. It’s just another multimedia projector that isn’t even capable of playing back Full HD files. It’s also quite large, and doesn’t have HDMI. Still, I took my time with it and over the course of the day, found myself warming up to it a little. Let’s see what it’s capable of.

Looks quite futuristic

Design and Features
At first glance, the LV-8215 is quite bulky, but I like the design, as it stands out when compared to the regular box-like projectors available today. It actually looks kind of space age if you look at it from certain angles.

The rear of the LV-8215 is pretty accommodating when it comes to connectivity. Sure, there’s no HDMI port, but Canon has tried to make up for it by adding in a DVI-I port with HDCP. There are also all the other usual suspects such as VGA, S-Video and Composite. You will also find two audio inputs; one RCA and the other, a 3.5mm jack along with a composite video input. This is great, as it gives you the option of connecting to a DVD or a Blu-ray player as well. There are also seperate Audio and video outputs provided. Canon has also provided a VGA cable along with a DVI converter. Last, but certainly not least, you will find an Ethernet port, which allows you to connect the projector to a wired network.

The inputs

As far as other features go, the LV-8215 has five preset modes and six colour temperature settings to choose from. It is also quite bright, at 2600 lumens, has a native aspect ratio of 16:9 and supports a resolution of 1280x800. It has a contrast ratio of 450:1 and weighs 3.3 kg. The LV-8215’s lamp lasts for around 4000 hours on standard mode and 5000 hours on eco mode.

Performance
I first tested the LV-8215 with a PC and played a 720p file off of it. I was really surprised to see some pretty good colour reproduction and deep black levels. I was quite impressed to say the least. I also tried it out with the Philips BDP2700/12 Blu-ray player and the picture quality shone once again. I also played Left for Dead on it for a while from the Alienware Aurora ALX, and there were no signs of lag or other discrepancies. I even tried a text file, and it seemed nice and crisp.

Clear picture and an easy to understand menu

The sound for this projector leaves a lot to be desired, though. It has an inbuilt 7W speaker, but this is not loud enough at all. If you plan on using this projector for watching movies and playing games, I’d definitely suggest a set of good speakers to go along with it. However, if you are simply making a presentation, these speakers should suffice.

One thing I noticed about this projector was that it is quite noisy and also dissipates quite a bit of heat. It actually smelled like someone was ironing a piece of cloth when it was on.

The LV-8215 is definitely a very easy projector to use. Although the menu doesn’t look too attractive, it is easy to navigate and functions quite well. I didn’t have to put too much thought into it. The remote is also pretty standard, and easy to use. The only thing I found a little weird was the navigation buttons didn’t have anything in the centre. Usually, the OK or Enter button always rests there, but in this case, it is on the left side of the remote.

The remote has the OK button at the side and not the centre

One thing I found weird about this projector is that the network cable doesn’t really have much use. Its primary function is to send an alert when the bulb life is coming to an end or when an error occurs.

I found that it excelled in areas such as the flicker, screen uniformity, colour scale and Streaking and Ghosting test. It also did pretty OK in tests like fine line moiré pattern, Defocusing, Blooming & Halos, Pixel Tracking & Timing Lock. Out of a total score of 70 points, the LV-8215 came out of the exam room with an above-average score of 40.

Verdict
This is definitely one of the better projectors I’ve seen. It has excellent colour reproduction capabilities, is easy to use and is not too expensive at Rs. 89,995. I would definitely recommend this projector, although it does have its share of problems. It’s a little noisy, gets hot quite fast and is a little bulky. But if you can get past these issues, it is definitely a good projector to go with.