It's been about a year since the first projectors with a street price less than $1,000 were released, and there are now several models in that category from a variety of companies. All are SVGA, LCD-based, 4.5lbs. to 7lbs., and come with few thrills.

Mitsubishi's new 1,200-lumen SE1U matches all of those markers, and awkwardly cuts a few features. But when it comes to pay dirt — picture quality — Mitsubishi's got something special at the price.

Mitsubishi's SE1U projector is an SVGA model with a focus on affordability. That puts the squeeze on special features, but the image quality is surprisingly good for this price point.

It should be no surprise that this product sector is growing quickly and that more manufacturers are throwing their hats into the ring. Money talks, and these landmark low prices are bringing new users into the fold.

There has always been plenty of interest in display technology from small businesses, educational organizations, and nonprofits. However, past prices have been prohibitive. While a few thousand dollars for a quality model may seem like a steal by the standards of a couple years ago, it pretty much still ends the discussion for budget-strapped groups. But now at less than $1,000, the price of large display is within the realm of possibility for more users.

The trouble for the industry is that at these prices, margins are extremely low and there's little room for companies to maneuver. There are a lot of me-too products in the space and little way to differentiate. Companies can't easily add features without adding cost-of-goods expenses and jeopardizing the higher-end, higher-margin product lines that keep them viable. So for now at these price points, users are likely to see only small specific advantages.

Not surprisingly, then, the SE1U exhibits plenty of compromise in its bare-bones design. The SE1U is housed in a nice blue-colored chassis, but it's a generic box that's bigger than you'd expect for a projector that weighs 4.5lbs. It's light enough to travel with, but its size requires an extra carrying bag (There's a misprint in the brochures and on the Web that lists the height at 2.1in. — it's really 3.1in.).

The connectivity is nearly bare bones as well, but it is pretty much what you'd expect to find in a sub-$1,000 projector. On the back panel there's an RCA composite input, S-Video, and an 8-pin RS-232 port. There's a single audio port for all inputs, but the 1W monaural speaker is strictly utilitarian and best avoided anyway.

The one addition is that the SE1U has both a 15-pin RGB input, which doubles as the component video input (conversion cable not supplied), and an RGB pass-through. With that pass-through, Mitsubishi gives the SE1U a commonly requested feature for educational usage and government bids.

The remote control that comes with the SE1U is not at all special, nor are the navigation arrows or dedicated buttons for Source, Keystone, and Auto position found on the top of the unit. Mitsubishi's on-screen menus are minimal, with no presets to adjust color temperature for different sources or ambient light situations, nor the ability to save multiple settings.

The most obvious omission in the SE1U is a zoom lens. There's a cut-away on the top to allow access to the manual focus ring, but that's it. There is no optical zoom for adjusting picture size, and that hurts the unit's ease of use and setup. On the one hand, the SE1U is small enough that it should be easy enough to adjust the picture simply by moving the unit forwards or backwards. However, manufacturers have omitted zoom lenses before in an attempt to cut components and ounces and break size and price barriers for microportables.

Ultimately, users want a low price, but they are generally less happy about giving up features, especially expected ones like optical zoom.

Yet for all those caveats, the SE1U delivers where it counts most: image quality. Yes, it starts with a lower, older native SVGA resolution. That begets some shortcomings, but those are the same inherent shortcomings of all the other projectors in the same price class.

Mitsubishi has done a fine job of scaling both computer and video content to greatly minimize that resolution drawback — particularly for such an inexpensive model. With HD source material, the SE1U looks like a million bucks; well, at least few thousand. Indeed, I'd pick this model over some I've reviewed lately at two and three times the price, even some with native XGA.

Very strong and vibrant color has a lot to do with the impression of sharpness and clarity. Mitsubishi has supported sRGB for data mode in all of its projectors for several years. That is here as well, and even with video saturated colors are very good. What's more impressive for a projector in this price class is that little of that color depth is lost with subtler colors. The SE1U is rated at 1,200 lumens, and I'd expect that number to yield a poor range of grayscales. But the projector does a good job of balancing brightness and contrast across a range of dark and bright screens.

On the test bench, I didn't even get the 1,200 lumens, but a more modest 1,069 lumens at its brightest and just 993 ANSI lumens as an average across the entire picture. That's 20 to 30 percent lower than other sub-$1,000 projectors that I've tested. On the other hand, Mitsubishi gets credit for a fairly solid brightness uniformity of 83 percent, a good deal better than many of those brighter models in the class.

From an LCD-based projector, I'd expect a full on/off contrast ratio of between 300 and 400:1 and that's just what I found here (303:1). Against the ANSI checkerboard, I measured 109:1, and that also fits the price category. The SE1U had no trouble synching efficiently to a variety of source inputs, although it does not cycle through to find a source. Instead it requires that you enter the Source menu and manually select the input.

There aren't very many frills with the SE1U. There are even some disappointing omissions, like the lack of a zoom lens and lack of menu depth. But remember the price. It's a bare-bones number that yields bare-bones features. With the SE1U, what's more important is the image quality you get for that money. That's the frill here, and the thrill, and that's a pretty good bottom line.