Review: Epson EB-1775W Projector

Digital video projectors come in many shapes and sizes.

There are those huge, water-cooled monsters that are increasingly being used in commercial cinemas; smaller, but still big models that project images on to big screens at shows and conventions; and then smaller models that are to be used at home, in the office, or between the two.

The 'between the two' or portable projectors have, as technology has improved, become smaller, lighter and easier to use. So easy, in fact, that some even do virtually everything, barring giving the actual presentation - although based on the model under review, this isn't far off, either.

Said model is the Epson EB-1775W, which apart from being small - it measured in at 210mm wide, 292mm deep and only 44mm high - was light at 1.7kg, delivered great light output (3 000 lumen), making it good to use in even relatively bright surroundings, and it offered WXGA resolution and contrast too.

As far as specifications go, the two that are important to me, are size and brightness.

While not much bigger than some LED lamp projectors, particularly when one adds in the separate power supplies that these often use, the Epson 1775 delivers around 10 times the light output.

To put this in perspective, the brightest LED projector I've used had 300 lumens of light output. On the LED projectors side is the fact that their lamps - or LEDs - usually have a life of around 20 000 hours. The Epson 1775 only has a rated lamp life of 4 000 hours.

Let's now move on to the best part of the Epson 1775, and this is how easy it is to connect to almost anything.

It has the usual array of inputs, including a video in, computer in, and even an HDMI port. There are even USB 2.0 ports that let the user read information from a memory stick, or connect the projector directly to a laptop USB. Epson supplies some nifty software that makes USB connection plug and play simple.

And then the user gets the little Epson's ace up its sleeve.

This ace is a wireless dongle that is fitted to the projector, and this wireless connectivity means that a user can run presentations either directly from a WiFi-enabled laptop or through a wireless network in a building.

I'll admit that I never tried the Epson 1775 in an office environment, but I did test its wireless capabilities using my laptop as a source. Once set up, one uses some supplied software and an ID dongle. During set up, the projector recognised my laptop as a source and I could be up and presenting within minutes of unpacking the projector and laptop. The only cable that I would have to remember to pack, as long as the batter in my laptop was charged, was the power cable for the projector.

The Epson 1775 had another trick up its sleeve, and this was one button set up. Point it at a screen, press its screen-fit button and the 1775 would set keystone, focus the on screen image, and yes, even fit the image to the screen in use.

Being a bright little monster, I could get a nice, big image and one with good colour quality too, even in relatively bright rooms.

For road warriors who are out of the office a lot, and do a lot of presentations, I can think of few better projectors to use. This is why the Epson gets a 9 out of 10. It would have scored more if it was a little more affordable.

When used as a home theatre projector, the Epson 1775 fares pretty well too, although here the auto set-up features didn't work quite as well. The projector wanted to fit the on screen image by height, and I wanted to set it for width.

While you could use any of its inputs, in theatre mode, the best to use was HDMI, as this gave the best combination of colour quality, and motion control. Movement was just a little jittery with USB, and wireless connections. Not using the projectors wireless capabilities here meant that all they did was add to the cost, but not performance.

As an all rounder, the little Epson EB 1775 fared well. It constantly delivered good colour quality and bright images. In movie mode, it was good to watch with decent resolution, and as would be expected as this was its main purpose, when looked at as a portable projector, it was a star.

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