Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)I will break down my review into the following sections:
1. Introduction
2. Specifications and Build
3. The Good
4. The Bad, The Ugly
5. Conclusion, recommendations
Introduction
I use the Elmo HV-110u in my 4th grade classroom for presentations. It is supplementing our traditional overhead projector. We awaited a document camera eagerly and use this device many times a day because of the logistical problems of having to make transparencies, and the fact that we can now display texts and illustrations in full colour.
Specifications and Build
The ELMO HV-110u is a small, highly portable electronic document camera. It features an auto-focus lens, auto white balance correction (to preserve colour fidelity) and the ability to display images directly from an SD card. It includes an LED lamp if you need extra light.
Setting it up is a snap. It has a power cord and a video cable. In my class we connect the video cable to one of several Dell DLP projectors (more on this point later).
The instruction manual is printed and bound. It is in English and French. It is short and easy to follow. It includes the standard warnings ("Do not clean using solvents such as benzene," "Do not operate unit during a rainstorm".)
Additional controls allow you to adjust the internal settings for "seeing" (capturing) what's on the scan table (cleverly engineered as integral to the unit). You can adjust the image's lightness and darkness. You can also zoom in and out electronically. You can also affect additional zooming by moving the camera toward, and away from, the document or image.
The build is overall pretty tight. You won't mistake this for a piece of Nikon engineering, but it's not cheap either. The unit is constructed of what looks and feels like an acrylic or very hard polycarbonate.
The Good
a. The ELMO is a good example of what can happen when you let loose a great industrial designer. It's a neat, smart package.
b. The HV-110u is incredibly portable and light.
c. Its scanning table is integral to the body of the unit, and cleverly hinged so that when closed it becomes a smallish plastic box, protecting the camera/scan head completely.Thus it's quite portable and I even let my trustworthy 9 year olds move it around. Additionally, the insides of the table are made of a ferrous metal. Thus, if you want, you can put magnets on it to hold down papers. This is a nice, smart, touch.
d. Set up is very quick and easy. Once connected to our Dell DLP projectors, it sends its signal very quickly--there was no appreciable lag when I plugged it in and turned it on. I estimate it took about 10 seconds to send the image to the projector.
e. Imaging controls are easy to use, although a little small. Nonetheless, they're smartly designed: the electronic zoom gets its own, dedicated buttons. You don't have to peck through a tiresome menu, or a nested level of controls, as you would if there were no dedicated buttons. Similarly the light/dark controls have their own buttons.
f. The camera/scan arm moves easily and holds its position, rather than "sinking" and getting accidentally closer to the scan item.
The Bad, The Ugly
a. The ELMO's camera is not up to the job of capturing details, especially in high-contrast items like pictures and even text. The images are typically "noisy" in photo parlance, meaning that there is a lot of interference in the image around--shooters sometimes call this "mud" and it can appear as same. You know this effect from anytime you've watched a YouTube video--the grainy, pixelated video that makes the video look amateur.My kids don't seem to notice, but I'm a shooter and I do notice. It's quite distracting for me personally, and given how expensive this item is, rather strange. Smart Board makes one At any rate, the ELMO's objective lens is quite small, which probably explains at least part of that. The rest, I believe, is entirely at the hands of the image processing hardware built in.
b. The ELMO is designed to work best with LCD projectors, so if you have a DLP you're out of luck. I'm honestly quite surprised that there's no way to adjust for this via a switch. I might be ignorant as to some of the technical demands that would bring that about, so feel free to call me on it---I'll own that.
c. It is difficult to get a sharp image. Zooming in and out manually by swinging the camera/scan arm is about the only way to achieve readable clarity.
d. The electronic zoom is no good. I think that's fair to say of anyone's electronic zoom, which is achieved via soft- and hard- ware manipulation of the captured image, rather than zooming "naturally" by increasing the optical focal length of the lens. You've seen the atrocious results on your buddy's camcorder when he uses the "1000x digital zoom", and the results here are no better.
e. The LED lamp provided is quite strong, perhaps too strong. When I used it in a darkened classroom, I found it washed out the image, even after the camera's exposure controls compensated automatically. Hence any advantage bestowed by direct illumination was almost nullified as the image became even harder to read. As a work-around, I would up putting the shades half-down to provide enough ambient light so as to obviate its use. This of course introduced its own problems for the projector, which obviously looks better in a darkened room. Finally, white LEDs are quite "hot", meaning their colour is a white-blue. This "hot", high-Kelvin light tends to cause colour-correction problems. The light isn't well-diffused, so you wind up with glare problems as well.
Conclusion
I give this unit two out of five stars. I wouldn't buy this unit for any purpose, save for one that did not require good image quality (and I can't imagine what that would be) and/or put an absolute premium on portability. This unit is incredibly disappointing, and I'm back to using my old overhead at least half the time when I need students to really see what I'm doing. Does it do the job? Yes, but poorly--hence the two stars but not one.
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Product Description:
HV-110u is a digital presenter ideal for taking on the road; the unit is designed to easily go where you go. Capable of outputting to either a projector or computer monitor, the HV-110u is as versatile as it is portable.
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