Optoma GT720

Throw (1.00)

The Optoma GT720 has a very short throw and no zoom lens, making it a not-terribly-flexible projector. You need to position it just so in order to fit it correctly to your screen. An 80-inch screen requires a distance of just 67 inches (5 ft, 7 in).

Ignore the second row of values in the chart below. Because there’s no zoom lens on the Optoma GT720, the wide angle and telephoto are the same.

	Optoma GT720 Required Distance for Screen Size
	64-inch screen	80-inch screen	100-inch screen	120-inch screen	140-inch screen
Wide Angle	4ft 5in	5ft 7in	6ft 11in	8ft 4in	9ft 9in
Telephoto	4ft 5in	5ft 7in	6ft 11in	8ft 4in	9ft 9in

Screen Brightness

The screen brightness produced by the Optoma GT720 falls off rather quickly as you move the projector further back from the screen. It’s the same for any projector, but these numbers in the chart below should give you some idea of whether the Optoma GT720 is right for your particular room layout.

	Optoma GT720 Projector brightness
64-inch screen	2424 lux
80-inch screen	1551 lux
100-inch screen	993 lux
120-inch screen	689 lux
140-inch screen	507 lux

Still not sure whether the Optoma GT720 is right for you? This chart below should simplify it a little.

	Optoma GT720 Screen Visibility for Screen Size and Room Brightness
	64-inch screen	80-inch screen	100-inch screen	120-inch screen	140-inch screen
Darkened Room	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Dimly Lit Room	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Moderate Lighting	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	No
Bright Lighting	Yes	Yes	No	No	No

In an ideal world, projector manufacturers might hope that you do all your movie watching and video game playing in a dark room, where their projectors do the best job. Of course, this is not usually the case. A projector’s abilities are greatly diminished by ambient light, and the Optoma GT720 has a hard time with even moderate ambient lighting in some cases.

	Ambient Light Performance Comparisons
	Optoma GT720	Canon LV-8310	Optoma HD66	Epson Home Cinema 705HD
Darkened Room (10 lux)
Dimly Lit Room (15 lux)
Moderate Lighting (500 lux)
Bright Lighting (1500 lux)

Screen Materials

You won’t always have a dedicated projector screen or perfectly white wall to project onto. For just such a reason, we check projectors’ images against a grey painted wall, a beige painted wall, wood paneling, and a dry-erase board. We saw the expected color shifts, and unfortunately there’s no easy way to correct the colors. The menu offers an option for correcting colors to a black board surface, but no other type of surface.

Optical Issues (9.50)

There were virtually no optical issues with the Optoma GT720’s performance. In this test, we look for ghosting, color aberrations, or barrel distortion from the lens. We saw none of these problems.

Image Sharpness

Video Processing (0.00)

The Optoma GT720 has no video processing options. There are several “modes,” described on the next page, but these are one-size-fits-all settings that leave no room for other tweaks.

Formats

The Optoma GT720 has a native WXGA resolution (1280 × 800), but can display a resolution as high as UXGA (1600 × 1200). That means that 1080i and 1080p (1920 × 1080) HD video formats are being downscaled for display. This may be significant for gamers, because our testing showed that the Optoma GT720 is really terrible at rescaling 1080i and 1080p, which are the most popular resolutions for modern game systems.

Read Reviews of Comparison Products
Canon LV-8310	Optoma HD66	Epson PowerLite Home Cinema 705HD