Epson Powerlite Pro L1505, L1500 Projector Review – Hardware and Menus

Epson L Series Remote Control

This seems to be a new remote control in Epson’s line-up.  It works with all the new L series laser projectors including the L1500 and L1505 being reviewed here.  It also works with the Epson G7905 and other projectors in the new G7000 series.

The new remote seems to herald in new command codes as well.  I immediately noticed that I could not turn on or off, bring up the menus an Epson home theater projshoector (5030UB) which worked fine with previous business remote controls, including the G6000 series. (I own a G6550.)  No matter.

Other than being slightly narrower and a tiny bit shorter, it might be a touch lighter.  The buttons have as much space between them as the previous remote, but that’s due to slightly smaller buttons combined with a smaller overall area.

The overall layout is very similar to many previous Epson backlit remotes. It is organized into 5 sections.  At the top, is power and sources, that’s followed by a features area, where a button gives you direct access to features that would take several steps if locating through the menu system.  Next comes the navigation area for working those menus.  Below that a small group I’ll call direct control for remote mousing volume, digital zoom and AV/Mute. Also, something new – Lens Memory! And finally the numeric keypad area (which offers three User areas, when not using the keypad features.

I’m not going to run through all the buttons – as you can read them in this image, rather I just want to point out a few features.

In the top section you will note that one input is for HDBaseT (HDMI over CAT cable), another is for (3G) SDI – a live video camera feed over coaxial. There’s also a source button for the local area network (these projectors can “present over IP.”

The second section, in addition to usual things like Color Mode or Aspect Ratio, also serves up three buttons for the lens (Zoom, Focus, Lens Shift) and also Split Screen, and Test Patterns.

Navigation is the same as on other backlit remotes Epson remotes.

The 3 user settings are also labeled 1, 2, 3, on the keypad.  For convenience, and as an example, I set User 3 to take me right to the sub-menu for engaging pixel shifting and Full HD, or WUXGA+ (4K) processing.

I’ve been using this menu for a while now.  Backlight is good – sort of gold/pale yellow, could be a touch brighter, but definitely “bright enough”  Backlit keys are easy to read.  I normally complement Epson a lot on their back lit remotes, while finding more issues with their smaller remotes for smaller business and education projectors.  This one’s a good one!

L1500, L1505 Menus

The menus shown in this section represent only a small number of all the menus and sub-menus.  These show a couple of the main menus, some networking, etc.  If you would really like to see a much larger, mostly complete set of menus, I refer you to our forthcoming review of the Epson Powerlite Pro G7905.  That lamp based projector’s menus are almost identical to the L series, except for things relating to being lamp based rather than laser based.