InFocus organizes its range of projectors into a nine categories. There's Mobile, Portable, Classroom, Auditorium, Large Venue, Home Entertainment, Home Theatre, Gaming, and you'll find the IN26+ in the Meeting Room group along with six other IN models.

The plus sign after the model code designates this as a reworking of the basic IN26 with the brightness increased from 1,700 lumens to 2,200 lumens. It's a fairly bulky projector, which doesn't matter too much as you won't be carrying it around all that often. After all, it lives in a meeting room, right? The dimensions are 304 x 240 x 101mm yet the weight is a relatively low 2.7kg.

It's a DLP projector with native XGA, 1,024 x 768 resolution that can also handle 640 x 480, 800 x 600 and 1,400 x 1,050 signals as well as 720p and 1080i HDTV.

The range of inputs is limited to VGA, S-Video and Composite while the audio connection uses RCA plugs. The only cables in the box are VGA along with the mains power cord, so you can forget about a digital DVI connection, and if you fancy the idea of HDTV you'll have to sort out a Component-to-VGA adapter.

You'd have to be incredibly charitable to describe the styling as exciting, and we can't bring ourselves to be that pleasant. The IN26+ is little more than a two-tone grey plastic box with a flat top surface that carries twelve control buttons and an opening for focus and zoom adjustment. The remote control is surprisingly large for a device that only has six buttons, but on the plus side you're unlikely to lose it in your pocket.

We had noticed the absence of auto keystone adjustment, which seems like a useful tool if you're moving a projector from one room to another, so we rather hoped that the IN26+ hadn't suffered by being built down to a price. After all, it is very cheap, and you can usually see where the money has been saved. Perhaps the large, plain housing had been enough to cut costs?

Well no, apparently not, as the picture isn't very good. This projector uses a 2-speed colour wheel with four segments and that's not very sophisticated compared to a great many DLPs on the market, albeit with a higher price tag. Despite the brightness rating and 2,000:1 contrast ratio, the pre-sets struggled to deliver an image that was a good all-rounder. Presentation was too harsh and bright while the two movie modes went too far in the other direction and were overly dark.

That's not good news, but if you keep telling yourself that the InFocus will spend its life in a meeting room then you may consider it will perform its task at a reasonable cost, so we'll take that opportunity to bang a final nail into its coffin. The IN26+ is rated at 35dB which is too loud, but worse than that, the fan makes a nasty whining noise that would distract you from even the finest PowerPoint presentation.

This budget DLP projector is short on features, which is understandable at this price point. Unfortunately it also delivers dubious picture quality and all the while the cooling system will steadily make you deaf.