If the first three things that your organization looks for in a small-to-medium venue projector are price, price, and price, then Sharp's XP-P721Q-W is at least a thousand dollars less than the competition yet can put more than 7,000 lumens on-screen in supersharp 4K resolution. Its low light loss 1.6X zoom lens puts others in its class to shame, and the projector has surprisingly good color balance in its top brightness modes.

The P721Q-W's price tag is more than a good deal with the projector delivering just about all the expected technological goodies along with a couple unexpected ones. Throw in Sharp's five year warranty, and the P721Q-W looks like a winner for churches, schools, corporate offices and museums looking to squeeze the most lumens out of the dollar.

Features

Think of Sharp's XP P721Q-W as a crossover projector that emphasizes economy over size, weight, and top brightness. Able to fill the screen in a mid-sized lecture hall, church, or auditorium, it lacks interchangeable lenses that are required equipment on the next class up, but the XP P721Q-W's 1.6X zoom lens offers efficiency and flexibility during set up.

At 19.1 x 7.3 x 17.0 inches (WHD) and 32 pounds, the XP P721Q-W has four adjustable feet and a generous seven attachment points underneath, although it works fine using the four outer ones. It's at home in a projection booth, shelf, or on a ceiling. The company's basic mounting hardware mates well but the P721Q-W worked fine with my generic ceiling hardware.

Inside, its two fans and crossflow cooling pattern allow the P721Q-W to be aimed at any angle, including straight down or up without overheating. It requires 39 inches of clearance all around for cooling air and hit a peak of only 82.5 degrees Fahrenheit during heavy use.

With a sealed optical module, the P721Q-W will never need a lamp or dust filter change, making it close to maintenance free. It's rated to last 20,000 hours, which can be extended by 10,000 hours in the low power Eco mode. The projector's light flow is typical for phosphor laser projectors today with a blue laser sending part of its output to a phosphor wheel that converts the beam to yellow light that is broken into red and green streams. All three rays are combined at the projector's four segment color wheel, where Sharp engineers have performed some extra magic with the company's Advanced Sequence Management technology. Here, the wheel is selectively sped up or slowed down to further customize the color balance. The final light stream is bounced off TI's 0.65 Digital Light Processing (DLP) imaging array and out the P721Q-W's lens.

Its imaging target is based on HD resolution at an aspect ratio of 16:9, although it also can project in 4:3, 16:10, and the Microsoft's Teams-oriented 21:9 ultra-wide video conferencing format to show more faces. It shows UHD resolution thanks to some ingenious pixel shifting technology that precisely moves the DLP target up-down and right-left 60 times a second. This action limits the video to 60 Hz while other pixel shifting technologies can handle 120 Hz streams.

The projector may lack swappable lenses, but its 1.6X zoom lens allows more light to flow to the screen. It unfortunately zooms in to the right rather than to the center, potentially making for awkward set-up moments. The P721Q-W's image shifting can compensate by moving the image up to 25 percent right-to-left or 55 percent up-down. There's also conventional keystone correction, but the projector cannot show two streams at once using the picture-in-picture format.

In addition to contrast enhancements, the projector can take advantage of HDR-encoded programming that boosts color and highlights. It uses the Hybrid Log Gamma (HLG) technique, and the effect is adjustable. Plus, the P721Q-W can take advantage of programming that streams at 120 or 240 Hz, but only in HD resolution.

The projector's back has a good variety of digital video connections, starting with a pair of HDMI inputs and HDBase T networked video. In addition to an old-school RS-232 serial port, the P721Q-W has the luxury of both USB-B and -A ports for service and powering an accessory like a streaming module.

What's missing? There are no legacy analog inputs, a video-out circuit, or Wi-Fi. The P721Q-W's wired 100Mbps Ethernet port can connect to the building's networking infrastructure. The projector also can connect third-party control technology via software from Crestron, PJ-Link, and AMX, and the P721Q-W offers access to its internal user interface from across the room or country via a web browser. Once connected, establish a password and then type the projector's IP address and its choices are made available to you.

Once online, the P721Q-W's interface appears crowded and requires zooming the browser out to 33 percent to fit it all in, making the items too small to easily read. A better bet is to use 50 or 67 percent and do a bit of scrolling up and down. In addition to turning the projector on or off, the Main page has provisions for changing the source and shifting the image around on screen.

Down below, there's a world of adjustments that competitors ignore, including setting the lighting mode and using its 3D abilities. There are also areas for tweaking the P721Q-W's warping and color correction.

At first glance, the projector's physical seven-key control panel appears simple. Look a little closer, and you will see that there are direct links for using the image shift, zoom lens, and focus. Happily, it's backlit in blue.

The remote control has even more to offer with 36 keys, although some don't do anything and are reserved for other projectors. The available actions range from the expected (volume, lens shutter, and source input) to the happily unexpected (test patterns, status, and a numeric keypad). It uses AAA batteries and had a 32-foot range that can be extended using a 3.5 millimeter audio jumper cable.

The P721Q-W has a built-in 20-watt speaker that is good enough for a mid-sized classroom or conference venue. Better for spoken word material, like a video conference or remote lesson, than music, there's an audio-out headphone jack for an external sound system.

With a five year warranty, the XP-721Q-W offers excellent protection. Others charge several hundred dollars (or more) for this coverage. The company's support site has downloads of the latest firmware, manuals and a great throw calculator.

Performance

With a start-up time of 42.6 seconds, the P721Q-W may not be the fastest to put an image on-screen and might be frustrating for use in a busy classroom or conference room where every minute counts. It took 24.4 seconds for it to cool down and shut itself off. The projector never got above 82.5 degrees Fahrenheit.

Color Modes. Like most of its peers, the P721Q-W has several display modes aimed at projecting different material, including the top-performing High Bright setting. There are also modes ranging from Presentation for slides to Cinema for videos and movies to Dicom Sim for medical scans.

No surprise, the High Bright mode was the best for lighting up a room. That said, the sRGB setting was best for color reproduction. The P721Q-W doesn't have a Game mode that lowers its video latency but its latency is low enough for hosting a gaming tournament at a school or church.

Presentation Viewing. To start, the High Bright configuration pumps out 7,690 ANSI lumens, which is seven percent over the projector's 7,200 lumen rating and perfect for a lights-on, shades-up slide show. Its color balance was remarkably good with only a small amount of excess green and blue tones that can make the output of many of its competitors look ghostly. In a pinch, it might be OK for things like viewing videos and gaming in a well-lit environment.

By contrast, the Presentation mode shows a more naturalistic balance and offers an excellent compromise at 7,006 ANSI lumens, just under its brightness spec. The projector's specialty Dicom Sim mode renders high contrast medical scans for a medical school, hospital, or nursing program at 6,496 ANSI lumens.

For overall balance, the sRGB mode was the winner with only a small brightness penalty at 7,073 ANSI lumens, but more brightness than in Presentation mode. It showed flesh tones quite well in addition to naturalistic colors in photos and paintings.

Video Viewing. The projector's Cinema mode brings the output down to 5,678 ANSI lumens with a much warmer feel. It's aimed at use in a darkened room and should be fine for a church's movie night, previewing a company's web video or a museum's film nook.

Using the HDR capabilities really brightened up watching the BBC's A Perfect Planet DVD. It literally shined during the Lake Natron scenes where the shoreline salt flats were dappled in white, gray, and salmon splotches. The output showed up well and came into its own visually with the flying flamingoes popping on-screen.

The projector's Eco setting lowered its output to a peak of 4,317 ANSI lumens in High Bright mode, a decline of 44 percent. The power use dropped accordingly by 46 percent. The other modes were in accord with this reduction at 3,383 lumens (Presentation), 3,181 lumens (Cinema), 3,899 lumens (sRGB) and 3,624 lumens (Dicom Sim).

Regardless of the mode selected, the P721Q-W was fast on the draw with a measured latency time of 22.2 milliseconds versus 60ms for most of the competition. This should be fast enough for simulations and even a church or school's digital gaming team.

Conclusion

With an ultra-wide 1.6X zoom lens, 4K imaging, and nearly 8,000 lumens at the ready, the Sharp XP-P721Q-W sets the pace for small venue projectors on a tight budget. For the price, its closest competitor is Optoma's $8,000 ZU920TST, which closely follows the P721Q-W spec for spec, but without its option to upshift the projector's resolution to 4K levels. For many organizations, the $1,500 price difference could be the difference between getting the projector and putting it into next year's budget.

Still, the P721Q-W delivers years of maintenance-free laser operations as well as a five-year warranty. It may lack a Wi-Fi option or a video-out port, but these are minor next to the P721Q-W's assortment of abilities and features. With surprisingly good color balance, the P721Q-W is a bright bargain for a school's lecture hall, business's conference room or a house of worship.

For more detailed specifications and connections, check out our Sharp XP-P721Q-W projector page.

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