Epson Powerlite W6 Projector - Image Quality

Posted on October 4, 2013 by Art Feierman

The Powerlite W6 is easy to set up. It fires up quickly and between the zoom and the three height adjustments mentioned in the Physical Tour, it’s easy to size and square the picture to the screen. I should mention that t here is an auto keystone feature that is enabled by default. If you are presenting small text or detailed line drawings, I would recommend turning it off before you adjust the position of the projector, as it will cause some image degradation

Epson Powerlite W6 Overall Color & Picture Quality

Ideally, you would not want to use any keystoning at all as it can have a detrimental effect on the image quality. However, if you are limited in your ability to position the projector due to space restrictions, then turning the auto-keystoning back on, after you’ve done all you can to align the projector, will give you a properly proportioned image with minimal reduction in picture quality. Most people doing Powerpoint type presentations (large type used) will likely leave it on.

To start with its most likely use for computer presentations, I connected the W6 to my laptop via the analog VGA connection and fed it at its native resolution (1280 x 800). As we’ve come to expect from Epson LCD projectors, the W6 displayed a nice clean image with well-saturated colors. Photographic images look crisp and clean, with accurate colors. Greens leaned slightly toward yellow and reds and blues were a bit oversaturated, but these are minor quibbles at best.

I then switched to the HDMI input (again fed from my laptop) and the picture and text quality remained very good, even when downscaling 1920 x 1080 resolution. Colors were also slightly more vibrant than with the analog VGA connection.

As we’ve seen on other Epson projectors, there is a movable electronic zoom that allows the user to zoom in on a particular section of the screen. This can be very handy for pointing out details in photos or charts.

Epson Powerlite W6: Video Performance

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As I mentioned in the Overview, with the exception of a few menu differences, the Powerlite W6 appears to be virtually identical to Epson’s Powerlite Home Cinema 700 projector, which we had in for review at the same time. Because of that, I expected the W6 to perform better with video sources than most multimedia projectors. The W6 did not disappoint.

Starting with the W6 in Theater mode and connecting it via HDMI to the new Oppo Blu-ray player, the W6 provided a very pleasing picture with most DVDs or Blu-ray disks. While blacks are still more of a dark gray, it’s only in a movie with a majority of dark scenes ( The Dark Knight comes to mind) where the W6 falls short as a low cost home theater projector. Also, for TV or video viewing in a room with minimal light control, the extra brightness of the W6 provides a much better image than one would typically see with home theater projectors.