Epson EB-X11 review

The Epson EB-X11 is designed for the education sector, and it’s pretty specialised. It’s amazingly bright, with a 2,600 lumens lamp, and has a 1,024×768 resolution, so it’s more suited to presentations than HD films. It has some advanced features too, such as a USB connection that can send both video and audio to the projector and let you use the projector’s remote control to control your PC’s cursor.

The projector has VGA, composite and S-video inputs, with separate phono plugs for audio. There’s no 3.5mm audio input, however. You can also connect your PC or laptop via the USB Type B port, which prompts you to install a USB Display driver which provides both audio and video, and lets you use the remote control’s mouse features. It’s awkward to control your PC this way, however – we’d much rather use a wireless mouse.

You can also plug USB flash drives or external disks directly into the EB-X11’s USB host port, but it can only display pictures this way – it supports JPEG, BMP, GIF and PNG files. There’s no multimedia player and no support for Microsoft Office files, so unless you convert your presentation into an image slideshow, you’ll need to attach your computer.

It supports both mirror and inverse images, so it can be ceiling mounted or used with a translucent screen in a rear projection configuration. The zoom allows some freedom to choose screen size: at seven feet, we could project an image that measured between 59in and 70in diagonally. There’s a small plastic foot on a ratchet at the front of the EB-X11 for height adjustment.

The projector has automatic vertical keystone correction, for when the projector is too high or too low relative to the screen’s centre line, and a slider behind the lens that lets you adjust horizontal keystone manually. This has a notch at its mid-point so you can reset it easily. It’s worth noting that keystone correction distorts the image, thus reducing clarity, so if at all possible you should position the projector square-on to your screen manually.