Epson PowerLite Home Cinema 710HD

Despite its name, the LCD-based, 720p Epson PowerLite Home Cinema 710HD is not a home theater projector, which, by definition, would mean it was intended for a traditional home theater with theater-dark lighting. Instead, like the BenQ EP5920 , it's clearly meant as a home entertainment projector, suitable for either replacing the HDTV in your family room or supplementing it when you want a really big picture to watch movies or sports, for example. It can also do that job well enough to make it Editors' Choice.

There's no bright line (pun unavoidable) between home entertainment and home theater projectors, and some, like the Epson PowerLite Home Cinema 3010e can fill either role. However, most consumer projectors, including the 710HD, are definitively one or the other.

One of the requirements for a home entertainment projector is that it has to be bright enough to stand up to a fair amount of ambient light. Another is that it must include a built-in sound system, much like a TV. It also helps, but isn't absolutely essential, if the projector is small and light enough so you can stow it away when you're not using it if you want to, or take it with you to a friend's house as needed.

The 710HD fits all of these requirements, with a 2,800 lumen brightness rating, a surprisingly loud sound system for the 2-watt speaker, and a 5.1 pound weight. The 2,800 lumen rating, in particular, is far brighter than you'd need for a typical home-theater size screen in theater-dark lighting, and more than enough for a suitably large image in a well-lit family room.

Basics and Setup

The back panel on the 710HD offers only one HDMI port for connecting to an HD image source like a Blu-ray player, cable box, or the equivalent. However, it also offers a VGA port that, in addition to being able to connect to a computer, can connect to a component video source. More important, unlike most projectors that support component video through a VGA port, the 710HD comes with an appropriate adapter, so you can use it easily with an HD video source. You'll also find composite and S-Video ports as well as a set of RCA phono plugs for stereo audio input.

Setup is standard. Simply plug in the appropriate cables, turn everything on, and adjust the zoom and focus. The 1.2x manual zoom offers some welcome flexibility in how far you can put the projector from the screen for a given size image.

Brightness, Image Quality, and Rainbows

The maximum size image for comfortable viewing in a room with ambient light will obviously depend on how bright that room is. You may also need a brighter image in daytime, particularly if you have a lot of windows in the room. That said, 2,800 lumens is a lot. With its brightest color preset, the projector was easily bright enough for an 80-inch diagonal image to stand up to full daylight streaming through the windows in my family room without having to draw any shades. At nighttime, I was able to cut back to lower light levels, using the projector's Eco mode as well as other color presets.

As you might expect, the 710HD's image quality isn't a match for home theater projectors like the Home Cinema 3010e, much less the more expensive Editors' Choice Epson PowerLite Home Cinema 8700 UB . However, when I connected it to FIOS to watch TV at a variety of resolutions, the quality was better overall than many, if not most, TVs can manage.

In my tests with DVDs, Blu-ray discs, and FIOS input, I saw little to complain about. The image was less crisp than a 1080p projector can offer, but that's expected for the 720p resolution, and many people don't notice that difference in any case.

The projector did a good job with skin tones, a moderately good job with shadow detail (maintaining details based on shading in dark areas), and I didn't see any motion artifacts or posterization (shading changing suddenly where it should change gradually). I also saw very little noise for such a low price model, thanks to a noise reduction feature, which is on by default. Color quality varies, depending on the color preset you use, but color was generally well within an acceptable range.

One other important issue is the complete lack of rainbow artifacts, with light areas breaking up into little red-green-blue rainbows. These can be a problem for DLP projectors because of the way they produce color. However, the artifacts are absolutely ruled out with LCD projectors like the 710HD. This will be particularly good news to anyone who sees these artifacts easily.

Audio and Other Issues
The 710HD's sound system is more capable than you might expect from the 2-watt mono speaker, with reasonably high-quality sound and enough volume to fill a small room. However, it's not as loud as my HDTV. If you want stereo or more volume, you'll have to use an external sound system. And note that there's no audio output on the 710HD, which means you'll have to bypass it rather than control the sound through the projector.

Also very much worth mention is a long lamp life?at 4,000 hours in Normal mode or 5,000 hours in Eco mode?paired with a low replacement cost, at $200 per lamp. That's long enough to run the projector more than 3.5 hours a day every day for three years in the brightest mode, or nearly 3.5 hours a day for four years in Eco mode, before needing a new lamp.

If you won't be satisfied with anything less than 1080p resolution, this is obviously the wrong projector to get. But then you'll have to pay more. If 720p resolution will do, the Epson PowerLite Home Cinema 710HD's balance of price, brightness, image quality, connectivity, and built-in sound system, will be hard to beat for watching a large image in a fairly bright room. That's easily enough to make it Editors' Choice.

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