Genee Vision 6100 review

Matthew Reames Read more March 8, 2012

£756

Price when reviewed

Nobody buys a visualiser for its looks, but the Genee-Vision 6100 elicited excited comments as it was unboxed. The camera arm rotates upward for use and its base serves as a working surface, while two arms with lighting swing upwards and out.

The operation panel has several lit buttons as well as additional controls, and the remote control tucks neatly away in a special slot. Get it out in front of a class, and you’ll soon find that this is what pupils think a high-tech gizmo should look like.

Eagerness rapidly changes to disappointment, however, when the images are projected onto the screen. With just a 470,000 pixel camera, the output is grainy. Larger objects and text are discernible enough but regular-sized handwriting is less readable.

Genee Vision 6100

You can improve this by zooming, but while the specification promises a 220x zoom, the optical zoom is limited to 22x, and after about 38x the camera is unable to focus clearly on the object. This proved true for objects on the working surface as well as those held closer and, with the camera rotated to look sideways, further away.

Using the Genee-Vision 6100 with any motion proved another concern. With slow movements, the motion is blurry but acceptable. With faster movements, such as writing or demonstrating how to use a protractor, the blurring is obvious and distracting. This was also true for video clips that were recorded using the software. With no memory card slot, saving images or video is only possible with the Genee Toolbar software on the included CD.

On the plus side, the Genee-Vision 6100 is very simple to set up. Connecting the unit to the projector is straightforward and the unit is ready for use within minutes. The controls are also well labelled and easy to access.

In addition to the arms, which provide normal lighting, the working surface can be back-lit. This could be useful for showing translucent objects – for example, an orange piece of acrylic appeared more accurately when the back-light was used. One downside of the panel is that it limits you to objects of just over A4 landscape-size. This is fine for single pages, but is something to consider when viewing larger textbooks.

The big issue with the Genee-Vision 6100 is image quality. Thanks to the low resolution, it’s nowhere near as good as it needs to be. Combine that with its relatively high cost and this unit can be safely overlooked.