Posted on February 24, 2014 By Art Feierman
The Pro Cinema G6900 projector, with 6000 lumens, when paired with the right screen, should handle virtually any home media setup!
This projector is essentially identical to Epson’s commercial Powerlite Pro G6900WU. They may basically the same, but warranty and support differ, favoring the Pro Cinema version, which costs more, but comes with extra goodies, such as the extra year of warranty and support, and a spare lamp.
CLICK HERE for the full-length video summary of the G6900WU projector review.
CLICK HERE for the shorter video overview.
Technically, the Epson Pro Cinema G6900 WU has to be considered a “crossover” projector, in that it has it’s roots on the commercial side. In fact, with only the most minor differences (marketing) it’s the same as Epson’s Powerlite Pro G6900WU.
Note: Please remember, that the screen pictures you see in this review are not captured at resolutions anywhere near as high as this projector’s native resolution (barely one fourth the resolution, unless otherwise noted. (1000 pixels wide, vs 1920).
What Epson was after here, was to introduce some extremely bright projectors that would be suitable for the home use, but not in the “dedicated” home theater, rather for media rooms, living rooms, bonus rooms, or any other place you can think of that is less ideal than a theater.
Claiming 6000 lumens, that’s 15 times more lumens than you need to fill a typical 100 inch diagonal home theater screen in a typical dedicated home theater. A projector calibrated and putting out 400 lumens can handle that. That means we have a ton of extra brightness to tackle a rather dramatic amount of ambient light.
The G6900WU comes with a significant price – $7499 which includes a spare lamp, and one more year of warranty and replacement program (four years total) than the commercial version does.
Good news for those not ready to drop $7500 in their living room or media room: Epson has a white cased Pro Cinema G6550 WU that’s very similar, with a “mere” 5200 lumens for $5999. I’m installing one of those G6550 WU’s that same room, in the next few weeks.
A third Pro Cinema projector, the G4855 is finished in black and claims a still very formidable 4000 lumens and is the lowest cost of these WUXGA/1080p projectors, with a price of $3799!
Shown in the image here, the Epson G6900 with it’s 6000 lumens projects on to a 100″ diagonal high contrast gray screen. That screen is hardly ideal for this room, there are much better choices. None the less, the image holds up very well, despite the bright sunlit day and lots of that brightness pouring into this room from the bi-fold doors on either side.
We will be installing, not the the G6900WU, but the almost as bright (5200 lumens) G6550 WU into this same room, with a better matched motorized screen hanging down from the ceiling just above where the screen is in this picture (but centered, of course).
Epson’s Pro Cinema G6900 WU is, from a hardware standpoint, the same as the Powerlite Pro version. As a result, and so as not to offend the search engines, we did not want to simply duplicate the same Special Features and Hardware Tour pages.
So, for this review we have done things a bit differently. Immediately below find links to those pages on the previously posted Powerlite Pro review. Click to read about them. We’ve set things up so that they will open a new browser window, so that when you are done reading the three Special Features pages and the two Hardware Tour pages, you can just close that window, and resume from here.
The Picture Quality (image quality) and Performance pages of this review on the other hand are a good deal different than for the commercial Powerlite Pro, as we consider how the G6900 WU projector performs in a home environment.
This review will have different review pages for Projector Screen recommendations, Warranty, Summary, and Pros and Cons as well. We are no longer publishing competitors pages as part of our reviews, instead they will be stand alone one on one, or sometimes several on one comparison reviews.
Powerlite Pro G6900 Special Features: Page 1
Powerlite Pro G6900 Hardware Tour: Page 1
Or, if you wish to view those at another time, you can proceed to our Picture Quality section.
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