Mitsubishi HC6800 - Performance

Posted on May 29, 2010 by Art Feierman

Mitsubishi HC6800 Brightness

The Mitsubishi HC6800 is one of the brighter 1080p home theater projectors out there. Immediately below are the measured lumens of each of the preset modes, (and also the color temperature they produced at 100 IRE) (white)

Mitsubishi HC6800 Projector - Uncalibrated

Lumen Output at various Color Temps at 100 IRE
Medium	687 @ 6583K
High Brightness	946 @ 7864K
Cool	573 @ 9459K
Warm	652 @ 5937K

After doing our calibration of "best" mode, we measured: 578 lumens

Brightest mode - High Brightness, cannot be calibrated, and remains 946 lumens.

The Effect of zoom lens positioning on brightness

Using Warm Temp setting
Zoom out (closest position - wide-angle)	739 lumens
Mid-zoom	687 lumens
Zoom in (furthest from the screen - tele)	608 lumens

The 18% drop from wide angle to telephoto lens settings should be consistent in any mode.

The Effect of low lamp (eco) mode on brightness


Low lamp power, Medium Temp mode	471 lumens
High lamp power, Medium Temp mode	687 lumens

Click to enlarge. So close. That translates into a drop of approximately 31% when going from full, to low power lamp setting. That's a slightly bigger drop than average. Most home theater projectors lose about 20% - 25% of their brightness going to low power. Perhaps the larger than typical drop partially explains the jump from 2000 hours lamp life at full power to 4000 at low (eco) power, as most others go from 2000 to 3000 when dropping down in power.