- Review
- Specifications
- Images
- Side By Side Comparison
- Customize
- Learning Center
Acer has been in the business of giving the general public the best possible technology since 1976 when they first appeared on the radar. One of their main missions is to provide the world with eco-friendly products that still perform as well as products that aren't as green. The Acer H7530D is proof that a product with a small carbon footprint can still top of the charts in overall performance. The Acer H7530D is one of just a few DLP projector TVs designed by this company for home entertainment. As Acer states, one of their goals is to produce user-friendly products with a sophisticated and intuitive design; we believe this product meets their goals perfectly and have consequently awarded them our TopTenREVIEWS Gold Award. While they do focus a lot of their efforts on business and educational products, it is nice to see that they still keep their home users in mind.
Projectors come in all sorts of shapes and sizes and are used for specific tasks based on their lens type, brightness and a variety of other features. The Acer H7530D DLP projector TV is designed for home use because of their smaller size (slightly larger than a lunchbox) and type of lens used. The lens is designed to project an image from across the room, which is perfect for mounting on the ceiling or placing on a table or platform in the back of a home theater room. The amount of sound a projector produces can be a deciding factor for some, but if you plan to hook it up to a strong stereo system it probably isn't important. The Acer H7530D produces about 30 decibels of sound, which is about as quiet as a whisper, so that might be something to keep in mind.
This DLP projector TV uses a 230 watt lamp, which is perfect for its size and what it is intended to do. The lamp life is about 4,000 hours when used in economy mode (which means the image quality will suffer slightly) and around 2,500 hours when used in standard mode. We would like to have seen the standard mode lamp life increased since most will only use this mode for watching movies or TV. However, you can replace the bulb with little effort, so the shorter life should not be a huge issue for most users.
The most important thing to look at when comparing DLP projector TVs is the overall image quality. Much like a TV in your living room, a projector requires a high contrast ratio, good aspect ratio and a variety of other features that improve the overall image quality. Acer has been in the business of creating high-quality electronics for quite some time and knows exactly how to produce the best picture possible. The Acer H7530D has one of the highest contrast ratios at 4,000:1 which is very good for DLP projectors at this price range. The higher the contrast ratio the better the darkest darks will appear and lightest whites will appear when watching movies, playing games or anything else you plan on using this projector for.
The brightness level at 2000 lumens is going to provide a good picture whether you’re in a home theater room or simply using DLP projector TVs to show your friends slides of your last big family trip. The lower the brightness level the better image you will get when there is less ambient light to interfere with the picture, this is normally right around 800-1000 lumens. If you plan on using this projector for business or other purposes, the picture may wash out slightly if the room is not completely dark, which is very common for most projectors that don’t have a brightness level well above 2,000 lumens.
The Acer H7530D has a somewhat smaller throw ratio, which basically means you will need to place (or mount) the projector at the appropriate distance from the screen or the image will not be in focus. Luckily for our generation, most projectors have a zoom, which allows you to adjust the image as long as it is within the throw distance. For this DLP projector TV you will want to place it about 12 to 15 feet away from the screen for the best picture. The image can be displayed from 37 inches in size up to 300 inches; keep in mind that if the image is too large it will not come across as clear. Another thing to look at is the keystone correction; the 15 degree correction on the Acer H7530D allows you to have the projector 15 degrees higher or lower than the center of the screen without having a distorted image. We would like to have seen a slightly larger degree of correction for some situations but found that it was good enough for most people.
What you’re going to be using DLP projector TV for will determine how important this area is and what connections are needed. The one very nice thing about the H7530D is that it has all of the basic and more advanced connection types for just about any computer, Blu-ray player or other device you wish to hook up. We would like to have seen more than one HDMI slot, which would allow for multiple devices to be accessible at the same time, but we're glad that it at least has one. It does have three component video inputs, which is quite a bit for any projector. All of the connections are located on the back side of this DLP projector TV and are spread out for easy access and connectivity.