Rated to deliver 11,500 ANSI lumens (13,600 ISO), Barco's G62-W14 large venue projector should be plenty of brightness for businesses, schools and houses of worship. It's a highly capable projector with a relatively small footprint and light weight for its brightness, extensive network control options an excellent assortment of available lenses.

Priced at around $17,500 MSRP without a lens, and as little as $16,800 on the street, the G62-W14 is similar in output and intended audience to several projectors that share a comparable footprint and weight in this WUXGA-resolution, single-chip DLP brightness class. Most aggressively priced is Panasonic's PT-RZ120BU, which carries a typical street price around $17,000 with an included standard zoom lens. It's rated at 12,000 ISO lumens or 12,600 Center lumens vs. the Barco's 13,600 ISO/12,800 Center lumens (we measured 12,249 ANSI on our sample), and the Panasonic lacks the support for high dynamic range (HDR) content offered by Barco and some others.

Other major competitors include the Christie DWU1400-GS (14,250 ISO, 12,000 ANSI) at approximately $19,700 sans lens, and the Optoma ZU1300 (14,400 ISO, 12,000 ANSI) at $18,000 without a lens; both are more expensive than the G62-W14. Let's take a closer look now at the Barco.

Features

No matter how you slice it, Barco's G62-W14 packs a lot of projector into its case. Available in black or white, the projector has a solid, well-made feel to it and should fit into anything from a church to a school lecture hall to a large conference room or auditorium at work. While it can be a handful at 7.7 x 20.8 x 19.1 inches and 50 pounds, the G62-W14, introduced last July, fits right into the newest generation of high-output, small-case projectors. Some similarly spec'd, earlier generation models from not too long ago were 35% larger and twice as heavy.

Still, it's a good idea to have at least two people on hand for installation. The G62-W14's adjustable feet add 0.4-inches to its height and allow the projector to be set up on a tabletop, shelf, or projection booth. Underneath, there're four attachment points for hanging it from a ceiling; it worked well with my generic mounting bracket.

Able to project up to 4K, the G62-W14's native WUXGA resolution should be fine for most business, school or church uses. Under the skin, the projector is lit with a powerful sealed blue diode laser array. Part of the beam is sent to a phosphor wheel that creates a stream of yellow light, which is broken into red and green components with a pair of color filters. The beams converge on the G62-W14's 0.67-inch DLP imaging target and on to the projector's output lens.

Its illumination components are rated to last 20,000 hours of use. That means years of service without having to change a lamp. To prevent overheating, the G62-W14 needs 40-inches of clearance but it can be mounted at any angle, including a portrait mode for showing a tall logo or person's picture.

There are eight Barco G lenses available, ranging from ultra-short to ultra-long throw designs that cost between $1,920 and $15,200. I used the $1,920 standard throw lens that can fill a 4- to 25-feet screen with a throw ratio that ranges from 1.22 to 1.53:1. Its powered 1.25X zoom optics are a little on the short side compared to the 1.5X and 1.6X zoom of some others but helped with getting the image to fit the screen. The lens settings can be electronically locked, and the projector includes two shrouds to accommodate different lenses.

The G62-W14's motorized image shifting can be adjusted with the remote control, moving the projected image up-down by as much as 100 percent and right-left by 30 percent with the lens I used; other lenses have a narrower range of motion. The projector has horizontal and vertical keystone compensation for up to 30-degrees.

In addition to Warm, Cool and Standard white balance options, the G62-W14 has detailed adjustments for gamma and a Dynamic Contrast setting. There's warping and pin cushioning control as well as Picture-in-Picture (PIP) and Picture-by-Picture (PBP) presentation. The six Color Modes are tuned to specific types of projected material, and the G62-W14 can compensate for being projected onto a colored wall, with settings for Blackboard, Light Yellow, Light Green, Light Blue, Pink and Gray. It has a built-in Blending mode as well for multi-projector arrays.

The projector's video ports include two HDMI (version 2.0 for compatibility with 4K/60Hz signals), DVI-D and 3G-SDI inputs as well as an HDMI output for driving a display in a lectern, projection booth or an overflow room. There are 3D synchronization jacks for an emitter, an RS-232 serial port for controlling the projector, and a 12-volt trigger for wiring to a powered screen. 3.5mm jacks on both the projector and remote control allow the two to be hard-wired if the G62-W14's remote control is to be used beyond wireless range. The projector has a Type A USB port for powering a streaming module.

There're two RJ-45 ports, one of which is dedicated for bringing in an HDBaseT signal for uncompressed video or controlling the projector. The other is a LAN port that links the projector with a facility's wired network to remotely monitor and adjust the projector's parameters through a networked browser window. The projector's manual didn't contain the needed password, though (hint, it's "admin@g62").

The browser-based interface provides an exceptionally wide assortment of adjust-anywhere items, starting with the Barco Main window that allows turning the projector on and off, switching Color Modes or adjusting 3D operations. In addition to changing the gain of individual colors, a networked projector allows for remote keystone correction, or modifying the color temperature, as well as making brightness and gamma changes. The G62-W14 works with PJ Link, Extron and AMX control software. On the downside, it lacks Wi-Fi to tap into a wireless network, so any local sharing from mobile devices or laptops will have to be facilitated with a third-party wireless HDMI or other casting solution.

For multi-projector setups and fleet management, the G62-W14 is compatible with Barco's free Projector Toolset software, which allows management of multiple projectors via the network or RS232 connection and assists with blending and warping in multi-projector installations. There are tools for brightness settings, diagnostics, image tweaks, and picture-in-picture control. For large fleets spread over multiple locations such as a museum or school environment, it provides rapid one-button power-up and power-off from a central location.

Furthermore, the Barco G62-W14, along with all other G-series Barco projectors, is now compatible with Barco's Insights Management Suite, the company's proprietary cloud-based fleet management and remote monitoring application. This tool was introduced and previously restricted to Barco's flagship models but has now migrated down. Accessible from any device with internet access, it provides a live dashboard with real-time information on the operating and environmental conditions of your full fleet of projectors, and delivers automatic e-mail notifications to alert managers to any developing issues with a projector's health.

The rear-mounted control panel can power the projector up as well as select the input, focus and zoom the image. It has the expected four-way control and Enter buttons, as well as LEDs to show if it's powered, its status and whether it has been AV Muted. Incidentally, like most other large venue projectors, the G62-W14 lacks built-in audio or a speaker and needs to rely on a room's sound system.

It's easier to use the backlit remote control, which adds dedicated buttons for adjusting the image's brightness and contrast. It can cycle through the input choices but lacks dedicated input keys. There are a dozen built-in test patterns, including grids, full field images and color bars, which helped me to get the image on-screen. It uses a pair of AAA batteries.

Barco's three years of coverage is adequate in this genre and generous compared with some, though it does pale next to the five-year warranty on some commercial projectors such as those from Sony.

Performance

Color Modes. As expected, the Barco G62-W14 has several presets for getting the most out of a variety of different projected material. Its six Color Modes include Presentation, Bright, Cinema, sRGB, Dicom Sim and HDR, although the latter was grayed out until I connected an HDR10 video source.

Using a UHD computer source whose output was downscaled to WUXGA resolution at 60 Hz, I watched a variety of material, including nature movies, instructional videos and inspirational programming. Through it all, the G62-W14 did well with smooth video and vivid colors.

Presentation Viewing. As its name implies, the Bright mode lit up the room at 12,249 ANSI lumens in our test sample. That's 6% over its 11,500 ANSI lumen spec and close to its 12,800-lumen center spot rating. On the other hand, as is common with the brightest mode in many projectors, its appearance in that mode was too cold and blue to show accurate skin tones or nature photos.

The Presentation mode is warmer, yielded 10,192 ANSI lumens and made colored type pop from a white background. It worked well for PowerPoint presentations, Excel spreadsheets and school-oriented items like the University of Colorado's PhET science simulations.

The Dicom Sim mode supplied 10,904 ANSI lumens. It enhances contrast for viewing medical scans in a nursing program or hospital auditorium.

Video Viewing. Meanwhile, the Cinema mode warmed up the appearance of the imaging significantly without adding too much pink. It worked well for a variety of movies and online videos, putting out 7,874 ANSI lumens. For instance, in the opening scene in Crimes of the Future, the G62-W14 did surprisingly well with accurate skin tones for a boy on the beach and a lot of texture shown on the sand, stones and water.

The G62-W14 lacks a dedicated Rec.709 mode but its sRGB setting is close, and was the most faithful color mode for skin tones, grass and sky. It should be fine for watching a remote teacher on a video call, a Web campaign or a video feed of the choir. It sent 7,898 ANSI lumens to the screen.

Finally, I connected the G62-W14 to my 4K UHD Blu-ray player and used the Spears & Munsil UHD HDR Benchmark disc to sample some 4K HDR content. The projector's HDR fine-tuning controls include options for Bright, Standard, Film, Detail and Auto. In Auto, it lowered the projector's output to 5,476 ANSI lumens—half the G62-W14's peak brightness, though. Watching BBC's Perfect Planet disc in HDR Auto mode delivered extra highlights as well as vivid reds and oranges for volcano scenes, vibrant greens for forests and saturated sky blues.

Conclusion

With plenty of brightness to put a variety of material on a screen at school, work or a house of worship, Barco's G62-W14 should be more than enough to get the point across. Furthermore, it is one of very few models in its class that can make the most of HDR-encoded material, and has among the more thorough networked browser windows and fleet management options for adjusting parameters from across the room, building or campus. Unfortunately, it lacks wireless network capabilities, but that's not totally uncommon among large-venue projectors at its brightness and may not be an issue outside of a single-classroom environment. All together, the G62-W14 amounts to well-rounded package that competes well on price while offering Barco's well-respected build-quality and support.

For more detailed specifications and connections, check out our Barco G62-W11-W projector page.