Epson EH-TW7200 review

Epson’s latest three-LCD home cinema projector has just about everything you could want from a mid-range model, including a high 1,920×1,080 resolution, active 3D support, and vertical and horizontal lens shift. Even better, its 2,000 lumens of light output means you shouldn’t need to draw the curtains every time you want to watch a film.

With a substantial 466x 395mm footprint, the EH-TW7200 is a large projector, and almost twice the size as some competing models, so you may struggle to fit it on a coffee table or bookshelf. The large lens is centrally mounted, and exhaust fins on either side of the EH-TW7200 expel hot air, which is ideal if you’ll be putting it on a shelf or in a cupboard, as you won’t have to worry about accidentally obstructing the flow of air.

All the inputs are located at the back of the projector. The EH-TW7200 has two HDMI inputs, as well as S-video, component and composite video for legacy equipment, a USB service port, remote trigger and an RS-232 port for linking the projector to a home automation. Like many other home cinema projectors, the EH-TW7200 doesn’t have integrated speakers. That means you’ll need to wire it through an AV amplifier in order to hear sound because there are no audio outputs or pass-through connections on the main unit.

Although the EH-TW7200 is a high-end projector, it doesn’t include any kind of electronic lens control; instead, you have to adjust zoom, focus and lens shift using the manual dials on the projector itself. Thanks to a 2.1x optical zoom, getting the EH-TW7200 to fill our projector screen was a painless process. All three dials were firm and stayed in place as soon as we let go, so you won’t constantly need to readjust focus. There’s an option for digital keystone in the settings menus, but it should be avoided if at all possible because it degrades picture quality compared to placing the projector directly perpendicular to your wall or screen.

Apart from lens control, everything can be controlled using Epson’s rather chunky remote control. It’s backlit, which is great for making adjustments once you’ve settled down to watch a film, and has buttons to switch between inputs or enable the more advanced image processing modes quickly. There are also buttons to navigate the onscreen menu on the projector itself, in case you happen to misplace the remote.

Epson’s three-LCD projection system won’t suffer from the rainbow effect that plagues DLP projectors, and it also produces the same bright images regardless of content, so colours look just as bright as whites. The EH-TW7200 is rated at 2,000 lumens, which is bright enough to use in moderate daylight, but naturally you’ll get the best results when watching in the dark.