Projector Lamp Introduction: Metal Halide vs UHP vs UHE vs Xenon
There are various projector lamps in the projector market, mainly including Metal Halide lamp, Ultra High Efficiency (UHE) lamp, Ultra High Pressure (UHP) mercury lamp, and Xenon lamp.
It gets the name from the metal halide that fills the lamp, which has the advantage of low replacement cost. When the lamp is lit, the voltage at both ends of the lamp is generally about 60V, the gas pressure inside the lamp is high and the filament is in half melting state, so the temperature is as high as 1000 degrees.
Therefore, the lamp requires good heat dissipation capacity, which is generally applied to the LCD projector with large size.
However, the service life of a metal halogen lamp is just 2000 hours, and the brightness of the metal halide lamp will obviously decay gradually. The image brightness will get bad after 1000-hours of service.
UHE is short for Ultra High Efficiency. This kind of lamp has high energy efficiency and a moderate price. The price of a UHE lamp is about $200- $250. The most prominent feature is long life, whose life generally reaches more than 3,000 hours. More importantly, the brightness almost does not decay after 2,000-hour use.
This kind of lamp is widely used in mainstream projector brands, such as the Epson projector.
UHP refers to Ultra High Performance, also known as UHP mercury lamp. It has a long life, usually 6000 hours, even 12000 hours.
The brightness will not decrease after 4000-hour use. The lamp is a patented technology developed by Philips that instantly turns off when it fails.
Compared with the UHE lamp, the UHP lamp not only can produce a large amount of light under the same power consumption, and can effectively suppress the occurrence of flicker, but also has a smaller shape, less brightness attenuation, and longer life.
Xenon lamp gets its light from electric arc derived from the positive and negative electrode discharge. Its price is relatively expensive due to high technology.
Nowadays, this kind of lamp is used in some high-end projectors or cinema projectors. Xenon lamps have a spectrum closest to natural light and can provide superior colors to other sources.
Compared with other lamps discussed above, the xenon lamp has the advantage of being able to be switched on and off at any time.