Epson MovieMate 60 - Review Summary

Epson MovieMate 60: Bottom Line

It certainly is both a fun product and one that provides really good value. Before you go out and buy one more 40" LCDTV for another room, perhaps one of these MovieMate 60's is in order. Afterall, it certainly costs no more than the average 40" LCDTV at the time I write this (12/09). For that matter it draws about the same amount of electricity, so just think, you can have a picture on your wall the size of 8 or 10 LCDTVs combined, and be one whole lot greener per square foot of picture size. The extremely long life lamp, combined with its low cost

❮ ❯

You can set it up in a minute, so it works great of your situation doesn't allow for anything permanent.

Take it outside in the summer evenings, haul it to a friend's place.

The MovieMate 60 is plug and play! All you need is a disc to put into the internal DVD player. Or a CD if you prefer some music!

Set it up in the kitchen or family room, shine it on a wall and plug in your camera's memory card, through the USB port. You can view the photos in style with a large projected image.

Run a cable from your satellite or cable box, and you can watch all your programming on as large a screen as you have space for, and your room allows.

The MovieMate 60's brightness is impressive. It can hold its own with just about any home theater projector we've reviewed, because it was designed for situations with, shall we say, a wide variety of lighting scenarios. We measured 1696 lumens at its brightest, and that's right up there.

In its best movie mode it's still exceptionally bright, at over 1200 lumens measured.

It's most impressive on a 100 inch diagonal screen for a good football game, even with a fair amount of light in the room.

Ok, you've got the idea. Next: Overall picture quality is pretty good. It's not for serious enthusiasts, but the vast majority of people who have never seen a MovieMate 60, are going to be impressed.

The one basic drawback is the resolution. It's not HD res, although it can show all HD content. In all fairness, resolution is still higher than standard DVD. The MovieMate 60's resolution falls between SD-DVD and 720p HDTV resolution. Actually the only higher resolution all-in-one around is the Epson MovieMate 72. I'm just spoiled, watching 1080p content and projectors all day long. The teenager of the house tells me not to worry about its resolution, that most people will just think it's great.

She is wise! I even set it up one evening in the testing room (there's no sound in there for projectors I'm testing), pulled up a chair and watched a good portion of Iron Man on it, just relying on the MovieMate's internal speakers for sound. Not bad! Not bad at all. Once I remembered not to be a video snob, the viewing experience worked out just fine.

The MovieMate 60 surely is a great stocking stuffer this holiday season - who wouldn't have fun with one of these.