Epson Pro EX9220 – Is It A Serious Upgrade?

The Epson Pro EX9220 projector offers 1080p+ resolution, a multitude of connectivity including wireless, and provides comprehensive performance. It uses E-TORL lamp technology for greater lamp life and much cheaper replacement bulbs compared to competing options. Epson is a very well-known brand, in fact they’re actually the #1 selling projector manufacturer worldwide. They have a long history of expertise in this field, but is the EX9220 the right fit for you?

Epson Pro EX9220 ProjectorOverall, the technical design is more akin to an old-school projector, in that it uses a replaceable bulb system. You probably have a lot of questions and need a lot of answers. Hopefully I can help with that by systematically going through every aspect and provide information on each topic. Not everyone knows what all these tech terms mean or how they may affect a projector’s performance or functionality. Just review the following article to better understand what this model is all about and what the pros and cons may be.

Luminosity

I assume the reason you want a projector is to watch movies or play video games on a 100″+ screen. That’s pretty appealing to practically everyone. The problem with projectors though, is that ambient light will easily dilute the brightness of your image, making it difficult to see what’s going on. Having a higher brightness rating allows the machine to be used during the day when there’s some ambient light coming from curtains, blinds, and that sort of thing.

EX9220 Screen SizeThe EX9220 has a brightness rating of 3,600 lumens in equal white light and color light output. This will provide you with a bright enough picture to be used while there’s a little ambient light in your room. Of course, it’ll look best during the evening when lighting is at a minimum, that should be obvious. Also note that not all “lumen” ratings are the same and there are different techniques used to measure this number.

It’s definitely nice not being so restricted when you can even use your purchase. Do you want to always have to ask friends and family if they want to come down into your dungeon basement? No probably not, maybe you’d want to have an outdoor movie showing as well, which you’d be able to do with this model. Luminosity is easily one of the most important factors when choosing a projector.

Contrast Ratio

Another thing that’s pretty sweet is when your image has some vibrant colors to it. You don’t want an image that looks faded like a black and white movie. That’s why the contrast ratio is important and something you should pay attention to. This model has a very impressive 15,000:1 ratio that will have colors really popping on the screen.

The contrast also helps darker colors have a better tone and not look washed out. If you happen to be a gamer playing something very colorful like Mario, or watch a lot of animated movies, you’ll see this benefit from the high contrast versus a low contrast model. Basically what you should know, brightness lets you see the image and contrast gives that image color saturation.

Resolution

Clarity is determined by two aspects of a projector: the native resolution and the focus. This model provides a 1920×1200 internal resolution, which is enough to handle true 1080p content in Full HD. You could also hook your computer up to the projector to have your entire screen in HD on your wall. If you play Steam games or other services this could be a big plus.

EX9220 Focus WheelSome people either forget or just don’t realize that, after setting up your projector you need to align it and use a focus wheel to get a clear picture. When you find the perfect spot for your projector, and turn it on, you should adjust the focus wheel until text and images become sharp. You’ll need to do this every time you move the machine to a new area because the distance to the wall will change. Some projectors do have an autofocus feature but this model does not, so be aware you have to make this adjustment.

Flexible Connections

Hooray, you have a pretty bright projector with HD resolution and vibrant colors, but what kind of devices can you plug into it? This is really where functionality starts coming into play. The Epson EX9220 has 2 HDMI ports to handle most devices in today’s world. This includes popular streaming sticks or boxes you may have like the Apple TV, Roku, or Fire Stick. It also handles modern gaming consoles, even the upcoming XBOX Series X and PlayStation 5 would be supported. The port will be used for many more things that have HDMI too: laptops, desktops, Blu-ray players, and cable boxes. It’s a lot, and it’s a good thing there are 2 of these ports so you won’t have to swap devices so often.

You can wirelessly mirror your smart devices such as smartphones, tablets, and laptops via Miracast. If you have a bunch of videos or photos on your phone that you want to play for people around you, just connect to the projector and wirelessly share your screen. This includes Android and Windows computers while iOS will use their proprietary AirPlay service to share. It’s great for gatherings and could be a feature you use frequently if you take a lot of photos and videos. Also, if you love using cables for some reason, you can also share your phone screens with an MHL cable as well.

If you have a USB hard drive or flash drives around the house you can fill them with photos and videos to playback directly on the projector. There’s a slideshow mode that will cycle through the photos you have loaded in a folder on the drive. You could even just leave a hard drive plugged in to always have a movie collection attached to the machine.

Ancient Connections

For a little old-school flavor there’s composite input on the machine. Yes it literally has a red, white, and yellow composite port for legacy media. This could be for something like old gaming consoles, camcorders, or DVD players. It’s a bit odd to have on an HD system but it just makes the projector even more versatile. If this is something that interests you, then I’m sure you can hardly contain yourself right now.

EX9220 Connectivity

If ancient tech is your thing there’s a computer VGA port too, ah memories. So, let’s say you have an old computer and want to use it to playback videos you have on it. Just plug in a VGA cable between the computer and the projector and you’ll have a mirrored image of your desktop. To get sound at the same time you’d need to use the white and red audio ports or something to output them together.

Audio

There’s a bit of good and bad news with just about every projector when discussing the audio department. There really isn’t much space to put large speakers in them unfortunately. This also depends on the specific person, as certain people have higher audio standards. The ones that are installed do a fine job at outputting music or sound effects but won’t come close to giving you loud, rumbling, sound. It’s only rated at 2-watts after all.

For that rumbling sound, as one option, you would need to add a home theater between the media device and the projector using HDMI ARC. If you already have a sound system then you can probably route the machine through everything and figure all that out. It’s a bit technical but perhaps the Epson support could help or I’m sure there are plenty of YouTube guides out there. You might also be able to use an audio extractor accessory such as this one: J-Tech Audio Extractor. This would extract the HDMI signal and convert it into a 2-channel or 5.1-channel audio output for your speakers.

Summary

Native resolution: 1920×1200 (Full HD)
Lamp brightness: 3,600 lumens
Contrast ratio: 15,000:1
Connectivity: 2 HDMI, USB-A, USB-B, VGA, Composite, AUX Audio, Micro SD, Bluetooth, WiFi
LED lamp life: ECO-10,000~ hours / Normal-6,000~ hours
Built-in 2-watt speaker
Noise: ECO-28db / Normal-37db
Dimensions: 11.9″ x 9.9″ x 3.6″
Includes: VGA cable, USB cable, remote control, soft carrying case, WiFi module
Wireless streaming capable
MHL cable support
Model: Epson EX9220

Conclusion

Well, the Epson Pro EX9220 projector has some really nice modern and legacy features. There’s a good amount of brightness, contrast, and HD resolution that will provide you with a crisp picture. The two HDMI ports and wireless screen sharing will cover most of your modern devices while the RCA composite ports are great if you have a lot of old content you want to still enjoy. I guess the downside is that in order to get external audio you need to either route stuff through your home theater or use an audio extractor accessory. This might be a minor thing to some and it’s possible you’d be perfectly fine with the internal audio. At least there are some simple options available to improve it so you can have a full movie theater experience.

EX9220 Top ViewI should mention that this model uses E-TORL lamp technology. This gives up to 50% more lamp life compared to competing projectors with replaceable bulbs. Also, the bulbs can cost up to $150 less according to the Epson company. Being able to get a replacement bulb for such a low amount helps make this a smarter buy than some alternatives. Normally having to buy those replacement lamps can really add up over the years depending on your usage, so saving on bulb cost should be really appealing in the long-term.

Like always, and with everything in life, you’ll need to be the one to decide whether this has what you want. Ask yourself if you would use the various features and if the performance is what you’re looking for. Do you want a projector you can use outdoors? Is the wireless screen sharing important? Hopefully you now have a bit more information and understand a few more terms and quirks about this model.

Epson Pro EX9220 Offers

Do you love seeing the latest prices and offers for something you’re interested in? Click the following links to view the most up-to-date prices. Info on Amazon can change quickly so be sure to add the projector to your shopping cart. This way you’ll be able to see a complete cost that includes any taxes or discounts.

Click Here for Epson EX9220 Projector Offers

There’s also a “renewed” model available for a lower cost compared to retail, if you’d want to consider that I’ll add a link for that as well.

Click Here for Epson EX9220 Projector Offers (Renewed)

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