The Optoma GT760 is a portable home entertainment gaming projector with the convenience of a short throw lens. You can set it up anywhere on a coffee table less than 4.5 feet from the wall and get a big bright 120" diagonal picture. If you want a smaller picture, just move the unit closer to the wall. At 2.2 feet it gives you a brilliant 60" image. And its 33 ms input lag is about as fast as it gets, so video gamers will get the best results their talents will allow. If you need fast action and the convenience of portable short throw set-up, the GT760 delivers for about $650.

If you are thinking of a more permanent installation, you can always ceiling mount the GT760. This is a native 720p projector, so it will compress a Blu-ray 1080p signal, but it will display all 720p signals in native format.

The GT760 can produce a very nice picture for $650, but its best picture is not achieved out of the box with the factory preset operating modes. Without some tweaking, colors are low in saturation and contrast is a bit flat. Usually full color images show their best on a projector's Movie or Cinema mode, while Presentation mode is best used for higher brightness data display. In this case, we found the best overall full color image was obtained by selecting Presentation mode and reducing the Brilliant Color setting from 10 down to 1. With this simple adjustment, we got a very pleasing full color image in both gaming and film sources. Colors and contrast were natural and engaging, skin tones were reasonably accurate and certainly natural looking, and there was sufficient shadow detail to avoid any sense of muddiness in the picture.

Gaming operation was responsive, and the images were well saturated. The GT760's brightness overcame ambient light even in sunlit rooms, so if you are one of the many gamers that likes to play with some light in the room, the GT760 has it. For bright rooms, keeping the image diagonal under 60" is recommended, but darkened rooms you can easily go to 120" diagonal which can really add to the gaming experience.

Set-up Considerations

The GT760, like most short-throw projectors, has a fixed focal length with no zoom capability. You can produce a 60" image from 2.2 feet, and a 120" image from 4.4 feet. Which image you choose will depend on personal preference and ambient light. If you watch in the dark, you can go big. If the room is brightly lit, you will want to reduce image size to improve contrast and color saturation.

Vertical keystone correction may be adjusted over a ±40° range, but there is no horizontal keystone correction so you have to make sure the projector is facing the screen squarely.

As with all short-throw projectors, screen flatness can have a noticeable impact on the quality of the image (horizontal and/or vertical waviness) because of the acute projection angle. This may be a problem if you are using a portable tripod screen which doesn't have the rigidity of a framed screen. Focusing is smooth and positive, and the remote control is full-size with clearly marked buttons.

Fan noise is remarkably low for a projector that puts out this much light. Heat being generated by its 190W lamp is exhausted from the GT760 through grates on the right side and front of the projector. This arrangement keeps what fan noise and heat flow there is away from the audience since they will be seated behind this short-throw projector.

Key Features

Lamp Life: The GT760 has an unusually long lamp life specification. Optoma says you can expect 4,500 hours in normal mode, but Eco mode increases lamp life to 6,500 hours with a corresponding reduction in fan noise. This ranks the GT760 at the top of its class for lamp life, and it means a lower cost of ownership. A replacement lamp (Optoma P/N BL-FU190D) is available for $179.

Picture Modes: The GT760 has five Picture Modes: Presentation, Bright, Movie, sRGB, and Blackboard. Each has its own color bias, gamma curve, and color temperature chosen to fit the specific presentation content. There is also one User mode for storing your favorite brightness, contrast, color temperature, and gamma settings (see the earlier caution on User settings).

Audio: While the GT670's 2-watt speaker may not do the trick in a large room, for gaming in a small room it is more than adequate. Even at full volume, there is no rattle or buzz, and dialog and music are faithfully reproduced.

3D Capability: Like many of its DLP-chip contemporaries, the GT760 is full HD 3D ready. Separately priced shutter glasses are required (Optoma P/N BG-ZD301 @ $59 ea.), and 3D operation is initiated in the Display menu. Three 3D formats are accommodated: side-by-side, top and bottom, and frame sequential.

Remote Control and Menus: The remote control is laid out with menu directional keys at the top and special function keys at the bottom including a conveniently color-coded Eco mode key. The GT760 can detect sources automatically, but if you wish to select a particular input, there are direct selection keys for HDMI, VGA, and video sources. Menus have several layers, but they are easy to identify and select.

Image Settings: The GT760 provides a comprehensive Advanced sub-menu of the Image menu where individual color hue, gain, and saturation can be adjusted. It takes a while to adjust all seven color segments, but a little experimentation will provide you with all the flexibility you need to fine-tune the image.

Connectivity: Most standard sources can be accommodated by the GT760. HDMI, audio in and out, and composite/component/S-video all have individual connections, and there is a monitor loop-through connection. Dual VGA connectors simultaneously serve either two computer connections or one computer and a component video source. An RS-232 connection allows for connection to remote monitoring and control equipment.

Maintenance: Like most DLP projectors, there are no air filters to be replaced, but it is recommended that the intake and exhaust ports be vacuumed occasionally to remove dust or lint that might collect near the DLP chip. Lamps are replaced through the top of the GT760, so even ceiling mounted units are easy to service.

Warranty: Optoma offers a one-year warranty on the GT760, and its lamp is warranted for 90 days.

Performance

Brightness and Uniformity: Our test model of the GT760 exceeded its brightness specification by 10% with 3,750 ANSI lumens in Bright mode. Presentation delivered 2,540 lumens while Movie and sRGB modes put up 1,745 and 1,090 lumens, respectively. Brightness uniformity was 70% with the upper right portion of the image slightly brighter but with no discernible hot spots. Eco mode reduced brightness by about 20% in all modes. Unless maximum brightness is a requirement, Eco mode provides a bright image with reduced fan noise.

Image Size and Displacement: The GT760 can put up a 150" diagonal image when placed just 5'5" from the screen. At that image size, the bottom of the image is offset about 10" above the centerline of the lens, and this is a good displacement for tabletop mounting. Since the GT760 has no zoom capability, a different image size will require moving the projector.

Frame delay: Gaming projectors should have no more than a two-frame delay, and the GT760 meets that requirement. Frame delay was 33 msec which is excellent for projectors of this class. That makes for good gaming performance.

Limitations

Resolution: This is an odd thing to list as a limitation. This projector's 1280x720 resolution is a perfectly respectable resolution for the 3400 lumen brightness and short throw feature. However, if you want to spend another $100, if short throw is not a critical concern, you can get the Optoma HD131Xe or HD131xw instead. These are full 1920x1080 resolution projectors which will show 1080p sources like Blu-ray in native format. You lose the short throw feature so you need to move them back from the screen to get the same image size. Also they don't have quite the same light output, but practically speaking they are not that much different after calibrations for optimum video quality. If short throw is not a big deal for you, you end up with a more refined and detail picture for not much more money.

Menu Layering - The GT760 offers many setting options, so its four on-screen menus are heavily layered to keep the menus from looking cluttered. Initial setup requires lots of button pushing, but once you have the image adjusted, menu layering ceases to be a problem.

User Setting: There is an undesirable interaction between the custom User calibration and any of the preset Picture modes. If you are in any preset mode such as Presentation and you adjust any settings, it will default to User mode and wipe out previous settings. We would prefer to see the ability to tweak Presentation mode without defaulting to User mode, and have a separate Reset command that returns Presentation to factory default settings if desired.

Conclusion

If gaming is your thing, the GT760 is an excellent short throw choice if your viewing room real estate is limited and you want a large, bright image. Video images also look good after some tweaks to brightness, contrast, and color saturation levels. Lamp life is long at 6,500 hours in Eco mode, so cost of ownership is lower than most projectors in its class. This is a personal entertainment projector, not one for the conference room, and if that is what you are looking for, the GT760 delivers.

For more detailed specifications and connections, check out our Optoma GT760 projector page.

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