Vivitek Qumi Q7 LED Projector Review - Performance

Posted on April 4, 2014 by Art Feierman

QUMI Q7 LED PROJECTOR PERFORMANCE: Brightness, Eco-mode, Audible Noise, Image Noise

Q7 Color Modes: Measured Brightness

Brightness of Q7 Color Modes
Mode	Lumens
Presentation	390
Bright	739
Game	490
Movie	406
TV	386
SRGB	483
User	393
User1	483

Eco mode (measuring Bright mode) resulted in a drop of only about 13% from full power, which is less than the usual 25% to 30% drop on most projectors. So, know that if you want to reduce audible noise a good bit, you won't have to give up very many lumens.

The Qumi Q7 projector claims 800 lumens, a hefty amount for a solid state projector of its size. How did it stack up to claim? Pretty darn good. Brightest mode, was Bright mode, which managed 739 lumens, or about 92.5% of claim. Most projectors we review come up short of claim, often by a good deal more than 7-8%.

Also note that I measured the Qumi with the zoom lens about in the middle of its very limited 1.1:1 zoom range. By not using the full wide angle - the largest image, we're likely giving up some lumens, but, because the zoom's range is limited, we're probably talking about an extra 10-20 lumens. Perhaps the Q7 can hit 760 lumens at full wide angle. You aren't going to see a 1-3% difference in brightness - too slight, so let's not worry about it.

What is important is that 700+ lumens will carry most rooms especially on smaller screens. Back about 10-12 years ago, when projectors going into schools were 800 - 1000 lumens, everyone was pretty happy. As time passed by, projectors naturally kept getting brighter. When you look and see projectors out there with 2500 to 3500 lumens, that weigh 7-10 pounds try to remember that 10-15 years ago. 2000 lumen was the most common projector brightness used in auditoriums and hotel ballrooms to present to hundreds. (darkened rooms)

Even the modes with the best color produce up to about 500 lumens, not that much less. This is a far cry from the original 10 to 50 lumens of pico and pocket projectors.

Qumi Q7 Handling Ambient Light

On a 60 or 75 inch screen as is typical in a conference room or classroom, the Q7 can do a nice job as long as there is some decent control of lighting.

In this review we show a couple of pairs of images, with and without the rooms window shutters open a good bit. We are projecting a 60" diagonal image on to my 1.3 gain screen, which would be a fairly common level of gain, both in business and at home. We did not use the brightest mode: Bright, but modes putting out between 380 and 483 lumens. And the Qumi still did a respectable job.

Note that the first two image pairs are relatively dark scenes, one pair is of a photo of evening dusk, and the other a very dark looking website page, in other words, tough images if there's ambient light. Then come three images showing the lighting in the room when the images with ambient light where taken. And finally, that same coastline photograph, used in the previous images, with the shutters open as shown. Because it's a nice and bright image, it remains vibrant even with that ambient light. BTW ignore the 4K markings on that coastline scene, the content was 4K, projected on a 4K Sony projector, but the resulting photo of the screen was resized downward, and converted to jpg. It's only 1000 pixels wide, about 1/16th the resolution of the original 4K, which is why it's not really sharp here.

The last image - a news site, using a browser, is a bright image. It was taken with the same ambient light present as the first image. Lesson: Medium and bright images are easy. Dark ones are always more challenge, even if you have thousands of lumens!

Ambient light handling overall? Not bad, in fact, impressive for such compact projector!

❮ ❯

Brightness: Bringing the Qumi Q7 Home

We see the Q7 first as an effective portable projector for non-home uses, but realize that as a truly portable projector, many will want to use it at home. The projector itself should have a lot of appeal to small businesses, consultants, and road warriors in general, that don't need to present to really large audiences - which is to say, most mobile presenters. But that means it's a projector you typically carry with you. So, unless you are the consummate road warrior - that never goes home, you'll get the opportunity to "play" with the Q7 in your home, if you would like to.

For those of you who might be planning to take this LED projector home, keep in mind, that modes like User 1 and sRGB have more brightness than one needs to fill a 100" screen in a typical home theater (dark). In other words, you have the horsepower to use the Q7 as a nice home entertainment projector, for HDTV, Movies, and more, as long as you have some basic lighting control.

On the road or at home, for entertainment (including gaming), consider that at 40 or 50 inches diagonal, this projector is downright impressively bright. Note that 500 lumens on a 50 inch screen is the same brightness as 2000 lumens on a 100" screen, and "back in the day", 2000 lumens was what we used - in the dark - on 300 inch diagonal screens!

Bottom line, you are traveling with it, you might as well try it out for entertainment.

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Qumi Q7 Audible Noise

The menu controls of the projector acknowledge only two fan speeds, but there seem to be three, depending on other settings. More to the point, when the projector is in Bright mode, or fan set to the high setting, the Q7 makes a good bit of noise. The claim is 38 db at max, and 33 in eco mode. How does that translate into real life usage?

At maximum noise the fan pitch is not really high, but it's definitely not low pitched. It certainly isn't overly loud. If you were in a small conference room presenting to perhaps 10 people, you would not have to shout over the fan. In fact you really wouldn't have to raise your voice at all, unless you have a very meek, soft voice, in which case you would need to project louder with or without the projector, just for good presenting purposes to gain your audience's attention.

Should you bring the projector home, know that the 33db claim in eco mode is about the same noise level as some very good home theater projectors in the $2000-$3000 range when they are at full power. So, again, no real issue.

Q7 Image Noise

No issues to comment on here. From a business / education projector use standpoint, the picture looks excellent - noise free. Even Blu-ray (1080p) came through clean, cleaner than some similarly priced home theater and home entertainment projectors in terms of image noise.

I didn't notice any unusual problems with motion artifacts either, which is sometimes a problem with pico / pocket projectors. The Qumi Q7 performed as well on the Silicon Optix test disc that I use, as a couple of recent $2500 - $6000 home theater projectors!

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