BenQ last week introduced two new short-throw projectors aimed at the education market featuring a mercury-free blue core light engine — the LX60ST and LW61ST. Blue core light gives off whites like a laser light source rather than a bluish-hue like a traditional mercury lamp. Effeciency-wise, the projectors use up to 90 percent less light source power consumption. BenQ also claims their blue core light engine uses a so-called SmartEco Advanced technology that optimizes the units’ light source systems to deliver 20,000 hours of lamp use (similar to the life of an LED) and 2,000 ANSI lumens brightness. They are both single-chip DLP projectors.

Spec’d at an 80,000:1 contrast ratio (hmm…), the LX60ST projector is XGA (1024×768), while the LW61ST projector is WXGA (1280×800). Both have a 0.6/0.49 short-throw projection lens, use less than a half-watt of power in stand-by mode and 250 watts of power when on, and offer VGA and HDMI inputs.

Full details are here: http://www.benq.us/product/projector/lx60st/specifications