The Ricoh UHL3660 is a 4K Ultra Short-Throw (UST) laser projector with a resolution of 3840 x 2160 and a brightness of 6,500 lumens. It uses DLP technology and can project a big image from just inches away — between 80 and 160 inches diagonally. It costs around $6,000.
This model combines Ricoh’s professional projector features with the convenience of 4K UST. With a very short throw ratio of 0.24, it can create an 85-inch image from less than an inch away or a 160-inch image from under 15 inches.
The UHL3660 is very bright, offering 6,500 lumens and true 4K resolution, which makes images sharp and colorful. Its OptiBright laser engine delivers clear, vibrant colors covering 87.8% of the DCI-P3 color space, so it works well even in rooms with a lot of ambient light.
Ricoh designed this projector for flexible installation. It can be mounted normally, in portrait mode, or rotated 360 degrees, making it easy to set up in tricky spaces. It also has tools for keystone correction and geometric adjustments, so it can project properly on uneven or oddly shaped surfaces.
Built for heavy use, the UHL3660 can run 24/7 and has a long-lasting laser light source rated for 40,000 hours in LONG LIFE mode. It is also dust-proof with an IP6X rating, suitable for indoor venues, covered outdoor areas, stores, conference rooms, and museums.
This is currently Ricoh’s only 4K ultra-short throw projector, offering impressive brightness, flexibility, and durability.
Pros
Very bright with 6,500 ANSI lumens
Uses a 0.65-inch DLP panel
Covers 87.8% of the DCI-P3 color range
Good HDR image quality
High-quality Ricoh lenses
Strong build and sleek design
Cons
Fan noise can be loud at 36 dB
Limited WiFi features
No ultrawide (21:9) mode for web meetings
Small bright spot in the upper right corner
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OVERVIEW
The Ricoh UHL3660 is the company’s first professional 4K Ultra Short Throw high-brightness projector.
Ricoh, with its long experience in the projector market, brings its expertise to the UHL3660. This ultra-short throw model is unique in Ricoh’s 2025 lineup of eight professional projectors because it’s the only one with 4K resolution. That means it shows nearly four times more detail than the other projectors, making it perfect for big screens with high-resolution content.
Like the rest of Ricoh’s 2025 professional models, the UHL3660 is designed for a wide range of business and education users, focusing on top specs, great picture quality, and reliability.
The Ricoh UHL3660 uses a 0.65-inch DLP chip that delivers top brightness and vibrant colors.
It features Ricoh’s OptiBright technology, which combines two laser light sources with phosphor wheels. This setup creates a powerful, ultra-bright laser beam. By combining light from two high-power lasers, the UHL3660 reaches 6,500 lumens, making it easy to see clear, bright images even in well-lit rooms like lecture halls, boardrooms, museums, or stores.
Besides being very bright, the dual-laser system also improves image stability and reliability. If one laser fails, the projector keeps working with slightly less brightness, so your presentation won’t be interrupted. The lasers last a long time — up to 20,000 hours running constantly, or 40,000 hours in a lower-power mode.
The UHL3660 also offers a strong 5,000,000:1 contrast ratio. While it doesn’t focus mainly on deep blacks like some cinema projectors, it still performs better than many professional projectors in its class.
Ricoh focused on brightness and vivid colors when designing the UHL3660. It can show up to 1.07 billion colors, making images look lifelike, especially in rooms with a lot of ambient light. While it’s not perfect for home theater color accuracy, it has more than enough color quality for classrooms, boardrooms, trade shows, and events.
The UHL3660 supports HDR, which gives it a wider brightness range than projectors without HDR. This improves contrast and shows more detail in both dark and bright scenes. HDR also helps make colors more accurate and vibrant, which is important for presentations and videos where true colors matter.
With HDR, the projector can reach higher peak brightness than with standard content, keeping images clear even in bright rooms. Besides showing HDR movies, it can display specially made HDR content for education, retail, events, and museums—helping visuals stand out exactly when and where you need them.
The UHL3660 uses a large 0.65-inch Texas Instruments DLP chip with a native resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels. By shifting the image in four directions, it creates a sharp 4K UHD (3840 x 2160) picture in a 16:9 ratio. This bigger chip gathers more light than the smaller 0.47-inch chips found in many home theater ultra-short throw projectors and some competing professional models. The larger size also helps improve black levels and detail in dark scenes compared to projectors with smaller chips.
Professional projectors are used in many places, from indoor convention centers to outdoor areas, where dust and debris can harm the device and shorten its lifespan.
To protect against this, Ricoh built the UHL3660’s light engine inside a sealed enclosure. This gives it an IP6X dustproof rating, meaning it’s fully protected even in very dusty environments. This feature is especially helpful for rental companies that use projectors in tough conditions.
In professional video work for trade shows and events, saving time means saving money. The Ricoh UHL3660 is designed to help with fast setup and easy installation. It can be installed at any angle—ceiling, floor, or wall—thanks to its 360-degree mounting ability.
The projector works well with existing AV systems, supporting Ricoh and third-party controls. Its very short throw ratio of 0.24 lets it project a big 160-inch image from less than 15 inches away. This is perfect for conference rooms, classrooms, and digital signs because it stops shadows from people walking in front of the projector, making full use of the screen space.
The UHL3660 shows sharp, bright 4K UHD images with HDR for clear details and accurate colors. It supports 16:9, 16:10, and 4:3 screen ratios. It connects easily with HDMI 2.0 and HDBaseT for stable signals, and you can also share content wirelessly using Miracast on Windows and Android devices.
Ricoh offers a free management tool to control and monitor up to 100 projectors remotely. It uses PJLink protocols so network admins can check projector status and get alerts.
For bigger displays, two UHL3660 projectors can be combined easily. Built-in image correction makes multi-projector setups simple, with no extra hardware or special software needed.
HARDWARE
CHASSIS
The Ricoh UHL3660 is an ultra-short throw projector that’s a bit bigger and heavier than typical home theater models, but not by much. This makes sense because it has two laser light sources with phosphor wheels and a strong cooling system to support its bright 6,500 lumens. I’ll talk about noise later, but it’s quieter than some home projectors I’ve tested.
The projector measures about 20.9 inches wide, 18.5 inches deep, and 5.5 inches tall (530 x 470 x 139 mm) and weighs 25.4 lbs (11.5 kg). Compared to the Nexigo Aurora Pro, a home ultra-short throw projector I recently reviewed, the Ricoh is slightly narrower and a bit deeper, but only three pounds heavier.
Like most ultra-short throw projectors, the lens and sensor are on the top. The front panel, facing the audience, has air intake and exhaust vents. There are three indicator lights on the front and top that are easy to see. Right next to these lights is a full control panel so technicians can set up and adjust the projector without needing a remote.
On the left side, there’s another air intake and a built-in three-speaker sound system. The bottom has five threaded mounting points that work with Ricoh and other mounting setups. It also has two adjustable feet that can extend up to 20 mm and tilt up to 3 degrees.
All the input and output ports on the UHL3660 are on the right side. This side also has a second cooling exhaust vent. The ports include two RJ45 network connectors, two micro USB service ports, two USB Type-A ports (one powers external HDMI devices), a nine-pin RS-232 port, two HDMI 2.0 inputs, and one HDMI 2.0 output.
The projector has built-in WiFi, but its features are limited. Like many professional projectors, it mainly uses IP connections for remote control. However, it supports wireless screen mirroring through Miracast. Ricoh also added a covered compartment under the projector to safely hold external devices like digital signage modules, Amazon Fire Stick, Roku, or Google TV sticks. This keeps these devices hidden and protected instead of hanging outside.
The UHL3660 remote has many buttons divided into sections. The top has POWER, ECO mode, and input buttons, including WIFI and HDBaseT. The middle has navigation controls and quick access buttons for INPUT, AV MUTE, PICTURE, and MENU around the D-pad. The bottom section is a number pad, with each button also giving fast access to common functions like VOLUME, FOCUS, MAGNIFY, ASPECT, and DISTORTION (image shape). It’s nice that Ricoh included volume controls on the remote.
The projector’s lens offers sharp focus from corner to corner, which is important since it can project images up to 160 inches wide. This even focus also helps when using multiple projectors side by side, making the image overlap look smooth and clean.
The lens has a very short 0.24 throw ratio and can project images from 85 to 160 inches. Ricoh provides several tools to help align the image, including a geometry adjustment feature with four-corner and six-point grid options. There’s even a fine-tuning tool that lets installers adjust up to 2,000 points on the image. This helps project images onto round or square objects, not just flat screens.
These tools are made for advanced installers. For simpler setups, Ricoh also offers basic keystone adjustments: up to 5 degrees up, 20 degrees down, and 15 degrees left or right. These quick tools save time and money by making setup faster and easier.
Ricoh has made focus adjustment easy—you can control it using the remote, the control panel on top of the projector, or through Ricoh’s software and other management tools.
The UHL3660 has a professional, user-friendly menu. Main options are listed on the left side, with detailed settings shown on the right. The menu is simple to navigate, giving quick access to both common and advanced settings.
The menu system is well organized and easy to understand. It responds quickly when you press buttons on the remote or control panel, with almost no delay.
PERFORMANCE
COLOR REPRODUCTION
We don’t usually expect great color from professional projectors because they focus more on brightness. These projectors are often used in places with tricky lighting, like rooms with lots of fluorescent lights. So, when I say the Ricoh UHL3660 has good color, that really means something compared to other professional projectors.
The UHL3660 covers about 87% of the DCI-P3 color range, which is pretty good for this kind of projector. It’s not the best choice for a home theater, but it works well for places like houses of worship or stores wanting bright, eye-catching digital signs. Ricoh’s Natural Color Enhancer (NCE) technology helps a lot with the color. Turn off NCE, and the colors look more like a typical professional projector. This is a big improvement from their older models.
Overall, the image looks natural with no greenish-blue tint that some professional projectors have—except in the BRIGHT mode. The projector has five picture modes:
BRIGHT: For very bright rooms with lots of light. The colors are dull and cool. Use this mode only when needed.
STANDARD: A good balance of brightness and color, great for classrooms or offices.
VIVID: Makes colors pop, good for places with some ambient light. It made my presentation look lively without being too much.
NATURAL: The most accurate color mode, great for HDR and color-critical content. This mode is warmer and closest to a “cinema” mode for a professional projector.
DICOM SIM: Designed for showing medical images like X-rays and scans in schools or conferences. It’s not for diagnosis but perfect for teaching.
Out of the box, the UHL3660 looks great for presentations and graphics. It can also handle entertainment content well. Using the built-in calibration tools can make the image even sharper. This projector is made mainly for business and education, not as a home theater device.
BRIGHTNESS
The Ricoh UHL3660 is the company’s first ultra-short-throw 4K projector in its new lineup. Like other Ricoh models, it’s very bright and can easily project images larger than the recommended maximum of 160 inches.
Its brightness is one of the best features, along with its 4K resolution and ultra-short-throw design. The image was clear during testing, especially with 4K content. Out of the box, brightness was even, except for a small hotspot in the upper right corner. I only noticed this with very bright white images and it wasn’t visible with normal content.
Ricoh says the UHL3660 can reach 6,500 lumens max. To test this, I used the BRIGHT mode and measured brightness a little off-center. The projector actually measured 6,973 ANSI lumens, which is even brighter than Ricoh’s rating—pretty impressive.
Here are the measured brightness levels for each picture mode:
BRIGHT: 6973 lumens
STANDARD: 6649 lumens
NATURAL: 6046 lumens
VIVID: 6437 lumens
DICOM-SIM: 6049 lumens
BLACK LEVEL AND SHADOW DETAIL
The Ricoh UHL3660 doesn’t show deep blacks and fine shadow details like a home theater projector. Even in ECO mode with lower brightness, blacks look more like dark grays. But for a professional projector with 6,500 lumens, its black levels and dark area details are still impressive.
Most business users won’t worry much about perfect black depth. If they do, they might be pleasantly surprised by what the UHL3660 offers for its class. For example, a modern art museum could use this projector to highlight digital exhibits without hesitation.
Business projectors like this one focus on fighting ambient light by being very bright. At 6,500 lumens, the UHL3660 definitely does that well.
Because it’s an ultra-short throw projector, you can also use it with an ambient light rejecting (ALR) screen. This setup helps improve black levels without losing brightness. This projector has plenty of brightness to spare.
The slightly gray blacks are expected for a very bright DLP projector using a large 0.65-inch DLP chip, which helps improve black performance.
Ricoh also lets you adjust brightness, contrast, and color temperature to get the best picture for different settings like classrooms, boardrooms, or lecture halls.
HIGH DYNAMIC RANGE
The Ricoh UHL3660 has an HDR mode that boosts contrast, brightness, and color depth. HDR shows deeper blacks and brighter highlights than standard images, making the picture more vivid and immersive.
You can adjust the main picture settings even while using HDR, so you can fine-tune the image to your liking and the type of content you’re showing. The UHL3660 supports HDR10 and HLG formats, so it works with many HDR sources.
When showing HDR content, the projector improved black levels and dark details, creating a richer, more detailed image. This was especially clear in the NATURAL picture mode, which seems to be optimized for HDR content.
TEXT AND PRESENTATIONS
For this review, I connected my computer to the Ricoh UHL3660 using HDMI. The text on the screen was always clear and easy to read, even with small fonts.
All the projector’s preset picture modes have the sharpness set low, which surprised me because the image still looked sharp. I didn’t need to change the factory sharpness settings, even when using the largest recommended screen size. On a 100-inch screen, I could still read text clearly from 25 feet away.
Of all the picture modes, STANDARD gave the best balance of color, brightness, and contrast for everyday use. But every mode handled presentations well, including slides, graphics, and spreadsheets, making the projector great for big screens up to 160 inches or more.
SOUND
The Ricoh UHL3660 has built-in sound with two 3W stereo speakers and a 5W subwoofer. This setup is loud enough to fill most meeting rooms, boardrooms, or classrooms. For bigger spaces that need stronger sound, an external audio system is better.
In testing, the speakers delivered clear sound at most volume levels, with only a little distortion at the very highest volume. The 5W subwoofer helped produce decent mid-bass. This built-in sound works well for presentations, digital signs, or lectures in medium-sized rooms but might not be enough for large venues or places needing high-quality audio.
The projector’s cooling fan makes some noise, especially when running hard, but it’s not too distracting in most professional settings. Ricoh rates the noise at 36 dB in NORMAL mode and quieter 27 dB in ECO mode, which is fairly low for a professional projector and similar to some consumer models.
SUMMARY
The Ricoh UHL3660 is not the only ultra-short throw (UST) projector in the professional market, but it stands out in several ways. In my tests, it was even brighter than Ricoh’s rated 6,500 lumens, making it strong enough to show bright, colorful images even in rooms with a lot of ambient light.
This projector uses a large 0.65-inch 4K DLP chip with a native resolution of 1920×1080 pixels. Ricoh uses Texas Instruments’ four-way shifting technology (XPR) to create a full 4K image. This gives it a big advantage over many competitors that use smaller, lower-resolution sensors capped at 1920×1200 pixels (WUXGA).
Some brands offer 4K with smaller 0.47-inch chips, but the UHL3660’s bigger 0.65-inch chip has several benefits: better contrast and deeper blacks, bigger mirrors that reduce the “screen door effect” (the grid you sometimes see on big images), and improved light handling that fully uses the bright laser light source. The larger chip also helps spread heat better, making the projector more durable—especially for heavy, 24/7 use.
Right now, no other 4K ultra-short throw projector combines this tech and brightness for around $6,000. Ricoh might not be using secret tech here, so expect similar models to appear soon, but for now, the UHL3660 is a unique offering from a trusted brand.
With its big 0.65-inch chip, super bright 6,500-lumen laser, and true 4K resolution in a UST design, the Ricoh UHL3660 is a strong choice for professional use.
Its color accuracy is good right out of the box, and Ricoh’s Natural Color Enhancer helps it show nearly 88% of the DCI-P3 color range. There are five preset picture modes that deliver great image quality for a bright professional projector. The projector also has an advanced color management system to fine-tune things like wall color correction, gamma, and black levels.
The UHL3660 offers many connection options: two HDMI 2.0 ports, HDBaseT for long cable runs, wired and wireless LAN for easy network control, and ports for audio, RS-232C, and remote control. This makes it easy to connect and control in various AV setups.
Although the built-in WiFi mainly supports Miracast and control features, the projector can also safely house external devices like streaming sticks or digital signage players in a special compartment at the bottom.
Overall, the Ricoh UHL3660 is a compelling professional 4K ultra-short throw projector with excellent image quality. Its compact design is perfect for tight spaces needing a large, bright display.
While $6,000 might seem like a lot, the UHL3660’s brightness, resolution, color, and contrast give it clear advantages over many competitors. It’s a great choice for businesses and schools looking for a versatile, powerful projector.
If you’re thinking about buying this projector, please consider using the link in the article. Projector Reviews earns a small commission from sales at no extra cost to you.
PROS
Competitive price at $6,000 MSRP
Brighter than Ricoh’s rated 6,500 ANSI lumens
Laser light source lasts up to 20,000 hours in NORMAL mode
Enclosed light engine means no filter changes needed
Excellent Ricoh lens with digital focus control via remote, control panel, or IP
Fast setup with geometric correction, warping, and blending tools
360-degree rotation with PORTRAIT mode for flexible setups
Easy side-by-side setups with image blending
Can run 24/7
Quick Resume feature for fast power on/off
Compatible with RS232, AMX, Crestron RoomView, and Extron IPLink
CONS
No 3D support
WiFi only supports Miracast
Remote control has no backlight
Noticeable hotspot in the upper right when showing white images
JVC DLA-NZ500 – SPECIFICATIONS