I waited and waited to get my hands on an EP1690 for review. I'm a big fan of the concept that, the time of widescreen portable projectors has come for the business and education community. In addition, I realize that on the home theater side of the industry, there are lots of potential projector buyers out there who can't fully, or sufficiently darken their viewing room, and that means the typical home theater projector just won't be bright enough. I had hoped to include the EP1690 in the recent business projector comparison review, but couldn't get one out of Optoma, so subsituted the Mitsubishi HD4000, a competing product, that, by nature of its similarities will be mentioned a number of times. Finally an Optoma dealer - Projection Guys, lent me one for several days, so that I could do this review. My thanks to them. So, what is the EP1690? it's first and foremost a very bright, medium sized portable, widescreen projector. It's light enough and small enough to carry around frequently. Many may prefer something smaller and under 6 pounds, but, so far, there are no widescreen projectors that are significantly smaller and lighter than Optoma's EP1690 projector. With a claimed 2500 lumens, it is also far brighter than the typical under $2000, or even under $5000 home theater projector, so we will look closely at using it as an alternative to dedicated home theater projectors in the home.