Epson PowerLite Home Cinema 730HD 720p 3LCD Projector

While summer days are great for playing ball, riding trikes and gardening, summer evenings are ideal for outdoor family movie nights! Portable and capable of displaying large, gorgeous widescreen images, the Epson PowerLite Home Cinema 730HD 720p 3LCD Projector

makes showing movies in the backyard easier than ever.

The first thing I noticed about the PowerLite 730HD Projector is how compact it is. Only 11.7” x 9.2” x 3.1” and 5.3 lbs, it’s a breeze to move and convenient to store. Of course, my next thought was, “How good could such a small projector be?” Curious, I immediately plugged it in, connected it to my laptop and was amazed by the quality and size of the picture produced by this little projector. It really is as good as many projectors that are double its size! If you want to get technical, this projector packs 3000 lumens of both color and white brightness and makes use of 3LCD, 3-chip technology. This leads to brighter and more accurate colors. Even in the middle of the day, the picture from the PowerLite 730HD is still quite brilliant and visible. While a screen can enhance the sharpness of the picture, it’s not a must. Keeping it simple, we typically project against a blank wall.

Should the evening air get too brisk, it’s easy to disconnect the PowerLite 730HD and move your setup indoors. We often transition to our bedroom and let the kids climb into bed with us to continue the fun. I love how simple it is to just prop the projector up on our hamper and run Netflix off our laptop. Even with the projector set up to the side of the room, it’s easy to get a great, perfectly sized and proportioned image with an easily adjustable manual zoom lens, auto keystone correction in the vertical direction and a slide bar for correcting in the horizontal direction. Four color modes provide versatility, allowing you to optimize for your environment, whether it be indoor, outdoor, in high or low light. A special Game mode even caters to those wanting to enhance their video game experience. Selections can be made directly on the projector or through the accompanying remote control.

With an internal speaker and HDMI connectivity, the PowerLite 730HD supplements the visual experience with decent audio. Unfortunately, it doesn’t have an audio output to add external speakers directly to the projector, but you can always connect speakers to your video source, if you’d like to give the audio a boost. As we tend to use a VGA cable to connect to a laptop, we just run audio off our computer or plug a set of speakers into our laptop’s headphone jack. Additional input terminals include RCA, S Video and USB.

When the show is done, we unplug everything and tuck the projector back into a cabinet. This is such an improvement over the always-present television set that previously dominated our living space. Of course, if you’re looking for a more permanent setup, the PowerLite 730HD has the versatility to be front, rear or ceiling mounted.

For home use, the PowerLite 730HD is a great buy at $649. Just note that you’re getting 720p resolution and are limited to 2D projection, which is perfectly great for most family use. If you’re looking for a more features, take a look at the full family of Epson projectors at www.epson.com

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We’ve been thrilled with the performance and versatility of the PowerLite 730HD. Highly recommended for anyone looking to amp up their home viewing experience whether indoors or out!