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Epson Home Cinema 710HD Projector - Performance

Posted on June 25, 2012 by Art Feierman

Epson Home Cinema 710HD Brightness

As is normally the case, I spent only a brief time with the Epson Home Cinema 710HD projector before Mike picked it up to measure and calibrate it.  When it comes to brightness, the 710HD definitely performs being one of the brightest home projectors we've played with in the last year.

 

HC 710HD Lumen Output at 100 IRE (center position on zoom):

 

Lumen Output at various modes at 100 IRE:

Dynamic 2513@6898
Living Room
1767@8856
Theatre
1698@7205
Game
1781@8813
 1781@8813

There's not a whole lot of difference in brightness between three of the modes, and by any home projector measure, even the dimmest -Theater is more lumens than all but a few projectors can output in their brightest modes.  That is, we have a genuine light canon here, one that is geared to be a great match for less than ideal rooms - like that livingroom or bonus room, or maybe even a spare bedroom.  I'm talking rooms not optimized like a "home theater" cave would be. Of particular note, relating especially to all the images I've dropped into this review, is that we did most of the photos with ambient light coming in through my room's mostly opened shutters, with the Home Cinema 710 HD set to Livingroom.  It's not that it's brighter than Theatre mode, as it is not significantly so.  The warmer 8,000+ range color balance tends to cut through the ambient light a lot better than the warmer Theater mode.  Images in the review are mostly shot in one or the other.  We did also do a number of Dyanmic mode images, and will typically indicate which those are.

Effect of zoom on lumen output:

Since the HC 710HD has only a 1.2:1 zoom - that is, only a 20% difference in image size from wide angle to zoom, we measureat mid-point on the zoom, which in this case, due to the limited zoom range, means only a slight difference in brightness:

 

Effect of Zoom on Lumen Output (Dynamic Mode):

Zoom out (wide) 2553
Mid-zoom 2513
Zoom in (tele 2435

As you can see, the drop in brightness from widest angle (projector closest to the screen) to telephoto, is less than 4%, which is essentially, barely detectable.   All else being equal, if someone was showing your 2553 lumens on the screen, and you closed your eyes for 5 seconds, and when you reopened them, if the brightness was down to 2435 lumens, there is virtually 0 chance you would notice any change at all.

HC 710HD Eco-Mode vs. Full Power

Lumen Output of ECO Lamp setting (Dynamic Mode):

1960 lumens

Dropping to Eco-mode costs you about 22% of brightness.  The trade off, for when you don't need every last lumen, should translate into two benefits.  The first, is a much quieter projector, going from louder than most at full power, to quieter than many far more expensive dedicated home theater projectors, when they are running at full power.

The other benefit, besides a quieter projector is an expected extra 1000 hours of lamp life for running in the "Eco" - low power mode.

Epson Home Cinema 710HD Color Balance

Even in theatre mode, the Epson 710HD projector is just a bit cool, that is, a little thin on reds, but it is slight.  Calibrating the Epson projector gets you about half way from this starting point, to where you want to be - which is all numbers around 6500K.

All considered, Theatre mode produces a very nice, and reasonably well balanced grayscale balance (color balance).  That is, Red, Green, and Blue are all in the right proportions for the most part, without any glaring issues such as too strong greens.  Calibrated, this projector is even better when it comes to color.

Theatre Mode (Lamp high, Auto Iris off)

30 IRE 7646
50 IRE 7262
80 IRE 6948
100 IRE 7205

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