Epson EH-TW7200 review

IMAGE QUALITY

Out of the box, the EH-TW7200 produced startlingly good Full HD images that were exceptionally vibrant bright with colours, but at the same time looked natural even before we’d started adjusting the presets. Darker scenes were a real highlight, and showed an abundance of detail not normally present in projectors at this price. We typically see slightly washed out images and a lack of shadow detail, but there was none of that here. Even with calibration, images will never be as black as on a plasma TV, or even some of the best LED models, but almost nothing gets lost as long as you’ve dimmed the lights.

The claimed contrast ratio of 120,000:1 is achieved with a dynamic iris system, which you can toggle off if you notice it adjusting during darker scenes. For the most part we couldn’t spot it on the normal setting and it works silently, so we left it enabled to get a slight visual boost.

There are only four 2D picture presets: Dynamic, Living room, Natural and Cinema. Two more, 3D Dynamic and 3D Cinema, are dedicated to 3D content, but there’s no user mode for more advanced calibration. We opted to use the Cinema preset as a base line, which thankfully doesn’t lock you out of the more advanced image processing options such as auto iris, colour temperature, gamma, RGBCMY colour and skin tone adjustment. There’s also a noise reduction slider and a Super-resolution toggle which intelligently sharpens the picture to give the impression of added detail; we didn’t need to adjust sharpness or enable noise reduction as images looked clean and precise to begin with, although we did appreciate the illusion of added detail with Super-resolution enabled. It works without generating unwanted artefacts or exaggerating film grain.

3D video is just as impressive, thanks to an almost complete absence of crosstalk. Even once we’d donned the active shutter glasses colours were rich and images were bright, albeit slightly dimmer than when watching in 2D mode. The only noticeable downside was the handling of fast panning, which causes the image to judder. There’s no frame creation mode to smooth this over, although it is really only present in certain scenes. One pair of active 3D glasses is included in the box, but each new additional pair will cost around £65 (ELPGS03 from www.savastore.com).

In its Eco mode, which is activated out of the box, the EH-TW7200 is very quiet; we could happily sit a few feet away and enjoy a film without it becoming a distraction. However, we found it necessary to disable Eco mode to squeeze every last bit of light for 3D video, upon which the noise increased significantly. It’s not deafening, but easily noticeable and rather irritating.

CONCLUSION

At around £1,800, the EH-TW7200 is in an interesting position between entry-level DLP projectors and much more expensive high-end models. You would need to spend almost £1,000 more to get a model with advanced features like frame creation or electronic lens control, while the slightly cheaper DLP models can’t compete in terms of picture quality. If your home cinema budget is less than £2,000, this is one of the best projectors that money will buy.