Epson EX7240 Pro Portable Projector Review - Hardware Tour

Posted on December 7, 2015 by Art Feierman

Epson EX7240 Pro Projector - Hardware Tour: Appearance, Connector Panel, Control Pad, Lens Adjustments, Remote Control

Appearance

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The Epson EX7240 Pro, while larger than pico and pocket projectors, is still a compact portable model that could easily be moved between conference rooms or used on-the-road by business travelers. The supplied carrying case is large enough to hold the projector, remote and cables. It is a well built portable business projector packaged in an attractive black case.

As seen in the 1st gallery photo above, the projector’s lens is positioned toward the right side of the projector’s front panel (when the projector is placed on a table and viewed from the front). The front panel also includes a cooling exhaust vent toward the left side of the front panel, a IR receiver for the remote control located to the right of the lens and along the bottom edge there is a button to release an adjustment foot that drops out from the bottom panel.

The air inlet is on the right side of the projector, as seen in the 2nd gallery photo above, and the air filter is located behind this grill. The air filter needs to be periodically cleaned or replaced.

The rear panel has the input connectors, the single audio speaker and a second IR receiver for the remote control. The connector panel is discussed in some detail below.

The top panel has the lens adjustments and control pad. These are discussed in sections below.

The bottom panel of the projector (not shown in the above gallery) includes a pop-out front foot for adjusting the tilt of the projector when sitting on a table. There are also threaded holes in the bottom of the case that can be used for a permanent installation where the projector can be mounted in the inverted position using a ceiling mount (extra cost optional accessory).

Connector Panel

All of the EX7240 Pro input and output connectors are located on the rear panel of the projector. Connections are provided for (from left to right as shown in the photo above):

AC Power
USB-A input
USB-B input
Stereo Audio inputs
S-Video and Composite Video inputs
Computer Analog (VGA style) input
HDMI input with MHL support
IR receiver window for the remote control

Control Pad

The buttons for the basic projector functions are located to the rear of the top panel as shown in the photo above. Going from left to right and top to bottom for each group, there are buttons for:

Power on/off
Home (accesses source selection, projector help information, and other features)
Source Search (to search for an active input signal source)
Menu (to display the on-screen top level menu)
Vertical Keystone + adjustment*
Esc (to return to the previous menu)
Audio volume down*
Enter button*
Audio volume up*
Vertical Keystone - adjustment*

* these buttons do double duty to also serve as 4-way menu navigation buttons

There are also status lights to lower-left of the control pad.

Lens Adjustments

Toward the front of the projector’s top panel are the controls (see photo above) for the lens focus and zoom (mechanical controls). To the rear of those is a slider control for the horizontal keystone adjustment and to the front of the lens focus/zoom controls there is a mechanical tab that is used to slide the lens cover open or closed. When the lens cover is closed the projector goes into A/V Mute mode, if the projector is still tuned on.

Remote Control

The EX7240 Pro is supplied with a fairly compact remote control measuring approximately 5.6 x 1.8 x 1.0 inches. The remote is neither backlighted nor glow-in-the-dark, making it somewhat difficult to operate in a darken room.

The group of buttons toward the top of the remote include the power on/off button and buttons for input source selection.

Below that is a numeric keypad with four of those buttons doing double duty for ”Auto” (automatically adjusts position, tracking a sync settings for analog signals), “Aspect” ratio, “Color Mode” and to display the MHL menu.

Below the numeric keypad are the buttons to display and navigate the projector’s menus. Also there is a “Pointer” button which displays an on-screen pointer that can be moved using the navigation buttons.

Below the navigation buttons are pairs of keys to (1) “Page” thru presentation slides, (2) electronic “Zoom” (i.e., to enlarge a portion of the image), and (3) an audio “Volume” control.

Finally at the bottom of the remote there are three buttons for (1) “A/V Mute” which turns off the picture and sound and places the projector in a lower power mode, (2) "Split" to display two images from two input sources in a split screen mode, (3) “Freeze” which freezes the current image being displayed, and (4) “Home” which displays projector and other information.