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EPSON POWERLITE L730U 7000 LUMEN 3LCD LASER PROJECTOR REVIEW - PERFORMANCE

Posted on October 19, 2022 by Philip Boyle

COLOR

The out-of-the-box color on the L730U is excellent! The PowerLite L730U's brightest mode is DYNAMIC. This preset performance hierarchy is consistent with other Epson projectors I've reviewed.

DYNAMIC: This is the projector's brightest mode and is best for projecting in a bright space. It maintains acceptable color even though the projector outputs light at its most luminous levels and is excellent for areas with high amounts of ambient light sources.

PRESENTATION: This mode is best for venues that benefit from dynamic colors, making smaller items such as text pop.

CINEMA: This mode is best for movies and other entertainment-style content projected in a dark venue.

sRGB: This mode is best for standard sRGB computer displays. sRGB is the most color-accurate mode on this projector.

BLACKBOARD: Designed to use when projecting onto a regular green chalkboard or colored surface, the overall purplish overtones in this mode are for these specific surfaces.

DICOM-SIM: This mode enables users to display content using an advanced grayscale level.
MULTI-PROJECTION: This mode reduces the color tone difference between images created with more than one projector. It helps those images appear seamless.

TEXT AND PRESENTATIONS

The Epson PowerLite L730U projects sharp text and slide presentations in good detail. Presenting multiple documents or web pages simultaneously at WUXGA (1,920 x 1,200) resolution on a big screen should be helpful in many business and education applications.

Even though this projector is not 4K resolution, it does display content like presentations with lots of detail. Apple Keynote slide presentations, Microsoft PowerPoint slide presentations, and other infographic-type materials look excellent.

Epson also points out that the L730U works well in Digital Signage or Display applications at retail locations.

BLACK LEVEL AND SHADOW DETAIL

The Epson PowerLite L730U has a manufacturer's contrast claim of 2,500,000:1. Contrast refers to black-level performance, or "how black" the blacks look. I expected this projector's black-level performance to fall between the two Epson projectors I most recently reviewed. By clicking on their links, you can see my reviews of the Epson PowerLite 805F and the Epson EB-PU1008W. Compared to these two projectors, my findings surprised me. The PowerLite L730U has far more in common with the EB-PU1008 than its ultra-short-throw cousin, the 805F, at least regarding hardware and performance. I don't want to jump to my summary, so I'll stick with L730U's black level and shadow detail performance for now.

Typically, business and education projectors are not known for their deep black levels and detail, but Epson made noticeable efforts in these areas on the L730U. Black levels are better than the recent Epson projectors I've reviewed.

BRIGHTNESS

The brightness of the L730U is excellent, with good uniformity and no visible hot spots on the screen. This projector's performance is on par with the high quality of light output found on much more expensive Epson laser-based projectors. The high-quality lens Epson uses on the L730U and how it makes the most of the light the laser light source provides help with uniformity.

Epson claims a brightness of 7,000 lumens for the PowerLite L730U. I measured its brightest mode, DYNAMIC, at full wide-angle. 

I took 3-4 readings about 15-20% out from the center of the lens. That gives a pretty good approximation of ANSI lumens unless a projector's brightness rolls off excessively at the edges, which this projector does not do.

Epson PowerLite L730U's brightest picture preset is DYNAMIC.

Epson PowerLite L730U's brightest lamp source setting is NORMAL.

How close did the PowerLite L730U come to hitting its target of 7,000 lumens?

According to my testing, the Epson PowerLite L730U produces 7,382 ANSI lumens of brightness. This is 382 lumens brighter than the manufacturer’s rated 7,000 lumens of brightness.

The chart below shows my measurements of the projector's out-of-the-box picture modes.

PRESET PICTURE MODE ANSI LUMENS MEASURMENT
DYNAMIC 7,382
PRESENTATION 6,029
CINEMA 5,343
sRGB 4,542
DICOM-SIM 5,255
MULTI-PROJECTION 6,016

AUDIO QUALITY

The PowerLite L730U offers a 10-watt built-in monoaural speaker. The L730U does not have an extended audio dynamic range but gets loud enough for a large classroom or boardroom.

AUDIBLE NOISE

The Epson PowerLite L730U is a reasonably quiet projector sitting below the screen and running in ECO mode, which is 27 dB. When the projector runs at full power, the manufacturer's rated noise level increases to 38 dB. You can still hear it, but it isn't distracting.

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