Click enlarge, So close. A new remote control for Epson this year. I’m not sure why, as I really liked the last one. (I guess it better matches the more boxy styling of the 6500 UB).

This remote, however, is every bit as nice in terms of functionality. Buttons are well organized, large buttons, with plenty of spacing. the backlight is orange, and reasonably bright.

From the top: On the left side is a large round power button, and to its right, a small button for turning on the backlight. Next comes three rows of two buttons, one for each of the six sources. Below them, are the menu controls the four arrow keys in a circular layout, with an Enter button in the center. Above to the left and right are the Default and the Escape buttons. Directly below the arrow keys a large Menu button, all by itsself.

That takes you to the bottom four rows of two buttons provide direct access to popular menus including user Memory, color controls, Gamma, Color Mode, Aspec ratio, and Sharpness. There’s also a test pattern button and one to blank the screen.

I would have liked one of the buttons to provide direct access to the frame interpolation controls. Too bad, that would have been more useful than the test pattern button.

Epson’s 2.1:1 zoom ratio is the same as the 1080 UB, and the 7500 UB. That’s a little more than most LCD and LCoS projectors, and a lot more than the under $5000 DLP projectors.

For filling a 100 inch diagonal, 16:9 aspect ratio screen, the projector – measured from the front of the lens to the screen – can be as close as 9.8 feet or as far back as 20.9 feet. You can calculate distances for other screen sizes, by starting with those numbers.

Click enlarge, So close. This Epson has plenty of lens shift too! For that same 100 inch screen, the Epson can be placed, (normal or inverted), anywhere from 22.7 inches above the top of the screen surface, all the way down to 22.7 inches below the bottom of the screen surface. That is measured from the center of the lens. There is also a good amount of horizontal lens shift. Using horizontal lens shift will partially limit the range of the vertical lens shift (and vice versa).

The combination of the wide range zoom lens, and excellent lens shift, makes ceiling mounting, or shelf mounting practical in almost any room situattion.