Epson 7550c; Smart Projector Lamp

One summer, many years ago, I walking downtown and I passed by an audio visual store called Elmo’s Elec-Express. I mucked around a bit and found myself in the projector section staring at a projector that looked like a VCR from the 1980’s.

It wasn’t brand new when I bought it but the Epson Powerlite 7550C was still a little on the expensive side. You may be able to get one for quite cheap, and this could be a great deal for those new to the projector market.

Originally sold at a whopping $8000 US, I ended up paying around $4000 US. The reason why it was so expensive is the lumens that it was able to offer, sitting at 1000 ANSI it rivals some mid-grade models today. Lumens, as we are realizing, isn’t always the best way to measure a machine. However, back in the day, it was all about the lumens and everybody bragged.

The 7500C’s contrast definitely is not something to be bragging about since it produces a ratio of 300:1 but once again I reiterate, the projectors of 1999-2000 really couldn’t offer much more. The 7550C did make some huge strides in the image department though, employing an XGA quality display producing 1024x768p of high-end resolution bursting flavour!

The screen size was also huge for its time offering a maxed out size of nearly 20 feet wide. The lumens are responsible for this and what is really quite incredible is that Epson managed to engineer this with the use of a 120W projector lamp. You were still saving a lot of energy and your projector lamp could last for over 2000 hours. This is the genius behind the 7550C, the cost of replacing the projector lamp was reduced essentially because t would last for such a long time.

Strangely enough, the 7550Cdoes produce a fair amount of noise with 42db despite the fact that its projector lamp is not a major consumer. Perhaps the engineering of the interior was not sufficient enough to keep the projector lamp cool; therefore its fan has to work overtime.

Overall, the Epson 7550C is a strong projector with pretty darn good image quality, and at the price you can pay for it now, you might as well check it out.