Epson EH-TW6600 review

The TW6600 is 3D-ready, shipping with a single pair of active 3D glasses. We’d recommended watching 3D films with the lights off, as the glasses tended to produce a fair amount of extra flicker in harsh lighting conditions, which created quite a strain on our eyes. You get plenty of options to adjust the 3D to your liking, though, including 3D brightness to counter the dark glasses, 3D depth and the diagonal screen size to help balance out any crosstalk. We found the default depth to be a little too strong in Avatar, so we changed it to -2. This also helped eliminate the very slightly amount of crosstalk on the Na’vi subtitles we noticed. Otherwise, we were very pleased with the TW6600’s 3D capabilities.

Sound quality from the rear 2x10W stereo speakers was surprisingly good too. Bass was lacking, but this is to be expected. Serious home cinema enthusiasts will want to use a proper surround-sound setup to get the best audio experience; though the ability to move it around the house, or take it to a friend’s even, without having to worry about the audio is a very handy feature.

Running costs aren’t astronomical either, as replacement lamps can be bought for £82 at time of writing. This brings total running costs to just 2p per hour for the standard lamp brightness and 1p per hour on Eco mode.

We’re big fans of the EH-TW6600’s new look, and its sheer convenience. The bright lamp means you can use it in almost all lighting conditions and those built-in speakers could come in handy too. It’s most attractive feature though is the large amount of lens shift available. It’s rare to see this on a projector under £1,400, though the old-but-still-good Epson EH-TW3200 is an alternative.

The only thing the TW6600 is missing is any kind of frame interpolation, which is available on the cheaper Optoma HD50 – although that uses DLP projection which inevitably creates a small rainbow effect from the colour wheel. Right now, we also think the wireless version of the TW6600 is too expensive, as you can get the vastly superior Sony VPL-HW40ES for almost the same price. If you value the added benefit of lens shift, then the TW6600 is a good choice, but otherwise we’d say the Optoma HD50 was the better buy – as long as you don’t mind the potential rainbow effect.