Optoma Announces Nine New DLP Projectors

• November 30th, 2007 | Projectors

Wow, it must be Christmas with Optoma announcing a whopping nine new DLP video projectors. That kind of roll-out is something even Apple couldn’t pull off. Nine video projectors announced at once! Of course, you are understandably curious about said DLP projectors. Well, as you might imagine, they range in price, features and lumens. Officially, a “lumen” is a measurement of the amount of perceptible light emitted from a projector. Obviously, the more the lumens the brighter the picture. A quick note about “throws,” or the distance between the projector and the screen: with a small throw, you can do a lot more with less lumens. If you’ve got a big screen or a big room, you’re going to want as many lumens as you can afford to pay for. Of course, even in a small room, more lumens, is better.

The best of the nine new Optoma DLP projectors appears to be the EP761. This is the assumption based on price, features, and it’s abundance of ports. It brings DVI, VGA (two in/one out), composite, S-Video, RS-232 and USBs in the ports department. Meanwhile it ponies up XGA resolution (that’s 1024×768 to you and me), 3200 lumens (reasonable), with a 2,000:1 contrast ratio (pretty cool). All that for just $1299. Not bad.

On the low end, for just $599, Optoma brings us the EP721, which is a perfectly reasonable projector in its own right. It also brings the USB, the VGA DVI and RS232, but leaves us wanting for XGA, instead bringing VGA, which is a reasonable, but underwhelming, 800×600 pixels. Still for the price it’s not bad. You also get a grand-less lumens (2200, instead of the EP761’s 3200) and the same contrast ration as the EP761, as well (2000:1). So if you like what you see, head on over to the Optoma website.