Classroom Projector Report 2013: Mitsubishi WL7200

Mitsubishi WL7200 Projector

I like to give Mike, the "heavy metal" (high brightness) projectors to review, as we typically only have a couple or three in the Education report each year, as most of what schools buy are lower cost projectors.  Best that one person review all of them, rather than splitting them up.

Schools and school districts do have use for some high brightness projectors.  It might be in a multi-purpose room, or small auditorium, or there might even be a need for a projector like this in a larger classroom, although really, the Mitsubishi WL7200 is far more likely to be popular in university classrooms serving up content to 60 or 400 students, rather than the usual 20-35 students in a K-12 classroom.

This is a WXGA (1280x800) resolution projector, the most common resolution for widescreen projectors.  Widescreen explains the W in the name.  The L is for LCD.  Mitsubishi primarily builds DLP projectors, but they do have a few impressive LCD projectors in the lineup, and certainly this is one of them.  It was an easy Hot Product award according to Mike.

This projector is bright, measuring within a couple of percent of it's 5500 lumen claim, but the real news ties to being LCD, rather than DLP.  No projector offers great color at its brightest, but generally LCD projectors don't have to come down very far in brightness to have very good color, and it's not much further down to great.  DLP's often lose more than 50% of brightness to get to very good color, so if great color or very good color and brightness are both things you must have, this Mitsubishi WL7200 projector is a great choice.  As an example, the best mode of the WL7200 still measured over 4100 lumens, a drop of less than 25%.  That's far brighter than the "best" mode of most of the competition.