Hitachi PJ-TX300

Hitachi's HD projector is a real eyeball-stroker

If you're looking for a "budget" Hi-Def' projector, this should be top of your audition list. It's a winner before you even turn it on; where most projectors have all the chic style and chiselled good looks of your average technology journalist, this one is cloaked in purest black and features a strikingly muscular design.

This is HD-ready, with a native 720p resolution - it can also downscale 1080i and 1080p images - and produces really gorgeous-looking video.

Even better, you don't need to have a living room that's suitable for parking aircraft in to use this. It has both vertical and horizontal lens shift, controlled using a pair of dials rather than the usual, more fiddly, joysticks. That means dead straight projection, even when it's sitting off-centre from the screen, while the short-throw lens produces massive images when it's sitting relatively close to it.

Hitachi has upped the contrast ratio on this and it really shows. Movies like The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou and Serenity, courtesy of Sky HD, look incredibly cinematic. Blacks are strong and deep while colours look vivid, yet still natural. Our only complaint is that lower-quality sources, such as Freeview or DVDs, don't look as pristine as they do on something like Panasonic's �1,000 PT-AE900.

Another big bonus is the lack of noise generated in use - it makes Optoma's HD72 (�1,200) sound raucous by comparison. Around the back there's a good range of connections, including the all-important component and HDMI sockets for Hi-Def sources.

This is a first-rate projector. It beams out sumptuous High-Definition images and doesn't create a racket while it's doing it. What more could you want?