Ricoh WUL6690 is a powerful laser projector with 9,600 ANSI lumens brightness and WUXGA resolution (1920 x 1200). It uses a single-chip DLP system and costs about $8,500.This projector has a long-throw lens that can create images up to 300 inches wide. It’s designed for medium to large spaces like lecture halls, conference rooms, and similar venues. You can also pair two units to make an even bigger image.
The WUL6690 offers electronic lens shift, zoom, and focus. It also includes advanced geometric correction tools such as corner adjustment and multipoint warping, making it easy to project on uneven or curved surfaces.
This model is part of Ricoh’s new High-End series of projectors, which, along with their Lightweight series, mark Ricoh’s entry into the US laser projector market. These projectors are aimed at businesses, healthcare, government, schools, hospitality, and retail sectors.
| Ricoh PJ-WUL6690 | |
|---|---|
| Price | $8,500 MSRP |
| Imager Type | 1DLP (0.67″ DMD) |
| Displayed Resolution | WUXGA (1,920×1,200) |
| Brightness (Manufacturer Claim) | 9,600 ANSI Lumens |
| Light Source Type | Blue Laser Phosphor |
| Contrast Ratio | 3,800,000:1 Dynamic Contrast |
| Zoom Lens Ratio | 1.6X |
| Lens Shift | 0~55 degrees horizontally 0~25 degrees vertically |
| Light Source Life | 20,000 hours |
| Sound System | Stereo (10 watt x2) |
| Weight | 29.7 lbs (13.5 kg) |
| Warranty | 3-year limited warranty |
OVERVIEW
The Ricoh WUL6690 is perfect for colleges, churches, conferences, and other big or small venues.
Ricoh has a long history in the projector business, making products for schools and companies worldwide. The WUL6690 is their top model in a new line of laser projectors, marking Ricoh’s first step into the US professional laser projector market. Ricoh believes this market is a big opportunity and aims to deliver projectors with great performance, quality, and reliability to meet many customers’ needs.
At the core of the WUL6690 is Ricoh’s multi-module laser light source. It uses several laser diodes to create the light beam. If one diode fails, the others keep working, so the projector’s brightness stays steady. This means fewer interruptions during important presentations. The laser shows sharp and clear images even in bright rooms, making it great for lecture halls and conference rooms.
This laser is also very reliable, with a life of up to 20,000 hours, which is impressive for professional projectors that often run for long hours.
The projector can show over 97% of the Rec.709 color range. Ricoh’s special NCE natural gain technology, advanced RGB settings, and adjustable gamma options help produce natural, lifelike colors that suit any environment.
The Ricoh WUL6690 uses a high-quality WUXGA (1920 x 1200) DLP chip for clear, widescreen HD images. This 0.67-inch Texas Instruments chip shows a native WUXGA image without distortion or pixel shifting.
Ricoh knows dust can shorten a projector’s life, so they built a special sealed enclosure for the light engine. This makes the projector dustproof with an IP5X rating, protecting it even in very dusty places—great for rental use.
The WUL6690 has a motorized lens with focus, zoom, and lens shift controls, making it easy to adjust after installation.
It also offers many image adjustment options like ±30° keystone correction (horizontal and vertical), four-corner and six-point correction, and grid correction. These help project onto curved surfaces like spheres or arc screens, all controlled remotely.
You can place two projectors side by side to create one big, nearly seamless image using built-in image correction—no extra hardware or software needed.
Ricoh provides free projector management software for Windows and Mac to control and monitor up to 100 Ricoh projectors on a network. It shows real-time status and alerts to help manage the devices easily.
The WUL6690 isn’t a 4K projector, but it accepts 4K signals and displays them in WUXGA. It supports HDR content like HDR10 and HLG, which shows more colors and better detail in dark and bright areas.
It’s also 3D-capable, working with 3D Blu-ray players, broadcasts, and game consoles. This feature is great for classrooms, design, engineering, and other technical uses, helping to boost engagement and learning.
| Ricoh WUL66XX Series Model Comparison | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Model | WUL6670 | WUL6680 | WUL6690 |
| Price | $4,975 MSRP | $6,875 MSRP | $8,500 MSRP |
| Imager Type | 1DLP (0.67″ DMD) | 1DLP (0.67″ DMD) | 1DLP (0.67″ DMD) |
| Displayed Resolution | WUXGA (1,920×1,200) | WUXGA (1,920×1,200) | WUXGA (1,920×1,200) |
| Brightness (Manufacturer Claim) | 7,200 ANSI Lumens | 8,500 ANSI Lumens | 9,600 ANSI Lumens |
| Noise(standard/ eco) | 30dB/25dB | 34dB/27dB | 36dB/27dB |
| Contrast Ratio | 3,800,000:1 Dynamic Contrast | 3,800,000:1 Dynamic Contrast | 3,800,000:1 Dynamic Contrast |
| Zoom Lens Ratio | 1.25X | 1.6X | 1.6X |
| Lens Shift | 0~55 degrees horizontally 0~25 degrees vertically | 0~55 degrees horizontally 0~25 degrees vertically | 0~55 degrees horizontally 0~25 degrees vertically |
| Light Source Life | 20,000 hours | 20,000 hours | 20,000 hours |
| Sound System | Stereo (10 watt x2) | Stereo (10 watt x2) | Stereo (10 watt x2) |
Ricoh’s new High-Brightness series has three projectors, mainly differing in brightness and lens options. Here’s a quick look at the Ricoh PJ WUL6690.
Key Features:
Bright blue laser phosphor light source
9,600 lumens brightness (manufacturer-rated)
Long-lasting light source with 20,000 hours of consistent performance
Can run 24/7 without issues
WUXGA resolution (1920 x 1200)
Uses a 0.67” 1-chip DLP micromirror device
Fast 4-segment RGBY color wheel for vibrant colors
Very high dynamic contrast (3,380,000:1)
1.6x long throw zoom lens with remote-controlled zoom, focus, and lens shift
Can be installed at any angle, including upside down or on its side
Supports full HD 3D content with single or multiple projectors
HDBaseT connection sends video, audio, network, and control over one cable
Picture-in-Picture and Picture-by-Picture modes for better virtual meetings
Special DICOM-DIM mode for viewing medical images like X-rays
Size: 19.1” x 14.8” x 5.9” (486 x 376 x 150 mm)
Weight: 29.7 lbs (13.5 kg)
Comes with a 3-year limited warranty or 20,000 hours of use, whichever comes first
Hardware Notes:
The PJ WUL6690 and others in this series can be installed in any position—ceiling, floor, or portrait mode—giving you great flexibility for different setups.
CHASSIS
The PJ WUL6690 has a typical professional projector design. It measures 19.1” x 14.8” x 5.9” (486 x 376 x 150 mm) and weighs 29.7 lbs (13.5 kg) with the lens attached. When placed on a table, the lens sits right in the center of the front panel. On the upper left of the front panel, there’s an IR sensor and three LED lights. Air is pulled in through vents on the right side and bottom, and it’s pushed out through vents on the left side.
INPUTS AND CONNECTIONS
This projector has a full set of inputs and connections, all located on its back panel.
On the bottom, there are five threaded mounting points for Ricoh or other compatible mounts. It also has four adjustable feet, making it easy to level the projector perfectly.
The WUL6690 has a control panel on the back that lets you easily use its electronic features. You can turn the power on/off, navigate the menu, and quickly adjust Lens Shift, Zoom, Focus, and Keystone with just one button.
REMOTE CONTROL
The WUL6690 remote has many buttons arranged in sections. At the top are the POWER and STANDBY buttons. Below that are the keypad and buttons for STATUS and ID. The middle has the usual navigation controls, with AUTO, INPUT, MENU, and EXIT buttons around the D-Pad. The bottom section has one-touch buttons for PICTURE, BRIGHTNESS, CONTRAST, and TEST PATTERN. There are also buttons to adjust LENS SHIFT, FOCUS, KEYSTONE, and ZOOM.
The remote doesn’t have volume buttons, so you need to change volume through the projector’s menu. But you can set one USER button to control volume if you want.
LENS
The projector’s lens delivers sharp focus from corner to corner with no color distortion or bright spots. This is important because it can project images up to 300 inches wide.
The WUL6690 has a high-quality 1.6X motorized lens that lets you adjust focus, zoom, and lens shift remotely. The lens can move horizontally up to 55 degrees and vertically up to 25 degrees. This means you don’t have to move the whole projector to line up the image on the screen.
A handy feature is that you can save and recall up to five different lens settings, including focus and zoom.
The projector can also show two images at once using picture-in-picture or picture-by-picture from two different sources.
Ricoh says the projector can throw an image between 30 and 300 inches diagonally.
MENUS
The Ricoh WUL6690 uses a familiar, professional menu design. Main categories are on the left, with sub-menus on the right. Navigating the menu is easy, giving quick access to common and advanced settings.
The menu layout is simple and user-friendly. It responds quickly with little delay when you press buttons.
PERFORMANCE
COLOR
The projector offers several preset color modes that you can easily pick using the Picture button on the remote. The options include BRIGHT, STANDARD, VIVID, NATURAL, BLENDING, and DICOM-SIM.
STANDARD is best for SDR content in rooms with some ambient light.
BRIGHT works well in very bright rooms, especially for text, images, and graphs.
NATURAL gives the most accurate colors for watching SDR movies or videos.
VIVID boosts colors, good for spaces with lots of light.
BLENDING helps when combining two projectors to create one big image by smoothing the overlap.
DICOM-SIM is designed for medical images like X-rays, great for teaching but not for actual medical diagnosis.
All modes can be customized, and your settings stay saved unless you reset the projector. The changes between modes are noticeable but gradual.
Most presets have a warm tone, and blacks and shadows may show a slight green tint, common with many professional DLP projectors.
For rooms with controlled lighting, STANDARD, NATURAL, and HDR modes look best. BRIGHT is for very bright areas.
Out of the box, the projector delivers clear, sharp images for presentations and graphics. It can also handle entertainment content well, but it’s mainly made for business and education, not home theaters.
In short:
BRIGHT: Use in very bright rooms, colors look cool and less vivid.
STANDARD: Balanced brightness and color.
VIVID: Colors pop, good for rooms with some light.
NATURAL: Most color-accurate, great for movies.
BLENDING: For combining images from two projectors smoothly.
DICOM-SIM: For medical training and education use.
DICOM-SIM is for learning only, not for professional medical diagnosis.
HIGH DYNAMIC RANGE
HDR (High Dynamic Range) mode can boost a projector’s contrast, brightness, and color depth. It helps show darker blacks and brighter highlights than SDR, giving a wider range of tones. The Ricoh WUL6690 supports HDR10 and HLG formats, and users can adjust picture settings while in HDR mode for the best image.
However, the projector’s HDR mode doesn’t show much deeper blacks compared to its NATURAL SDR mode. I actually prefer using the SDR modes.
You can get darker blacks in both HDR and SDR by switching to ECO mode and lowering brightness and contrast. But doing this may cause loss of detail in dark areas and make blacks look crushed.
For example, in the movie The Joker, the dark shadows on Joaquin Phoenix’s shirt lose detail when trying to get deeper blacks. But the projector shows bright highlights, like the Joker’s white makeup, very well.
In Spider-Man: Far From Home, the WUL6690 does a great job showing both dark details in the spider suit and bright highlights in the sky and clouds.
TEXT AND PRESENTATION
All the demo content came from my computer through the HDMI connection. The text was clear and easy to read, even smaller fonts. The STANDARD mode gave the best balance of color, brightness, and contrast, but all modes worked well for presentations and documents with graphics. Spreadsheets looked good too and should still be clear even on the biggest 300-inch screen.
The WUL6690 can accept a 4K signal, but I didn’t notice much difference between 4K and Full HD on this projector. It likely supports 4K and HDR to work well with other 4K HDR devices in mixed setups.
This projector shows presentations and graphics beautifully, even with some ambient light. It also has a special DICOM simulation mode for medical images like X-rays, CT scans, and MRIs. This mode gives good contrast and detail with low noise, making it useful for medical schools, conferences, and training.
DICOM simulation is not meant to replace doctors reading real medical films but is perfect for teaching and training healthcare workers.
BRIGHTNESS
| Ricoh WUl6690 Preset Picture Modes Brigtness Ratings | |
|---|---|
| Mode | Calculated ANSI Lumens |
| BRIGHT | 9996 |
| STANDARD | 8564 |
| VIVID | 5122 |
| NATURAL | 6946 |
| BLENDING | 8886 |
| DICOM-SIM | 7521 |
| HDR | 5549 |
The Ricoh WUL6690 is the brightest of Ricoh’s three new High-Quality series projectors, with 9,600 lumens. It’s great for rental companies, auditoriums, and hotel ballrooms—perfect for large spaces or places with lots of ambient light.
The projector’s brightness is its standout feature. It shows a very clear WUXGA image with no visible hotspots, giving even and bright light across the whole screen, even in the corners.
BLACK LEVEL AND SHADOW DETAIL
Business projectors like the WUL6690 focus on brightness because they’re used in many places where you can’t control the lighting. When there’s a lot of ambient light, black levels usually look lighter.
The WUL6690 can’t show deep blacks like a home theater projector, but that’s okay for the spaces it’s meant for. The blacks look more like dark gray, which is normal for a very bright DLP projector. The screen you use can also affect how blacks look.
Ricoh lets you adjust brightness, contrast, and color temperature to improve the picture for classrooms, conference rooms, or lecture halls. The black levels and warm colors are good enough for art shows or museums.
There’s a contrast-enhancing mode, but it only makes a small difference, mainly with presentations, not movies. I got better results by adjusting the laser output and tweaking brightness and contrast manually in the menu.
SUMMARY
The Ricoh WUL6690 is a great business and professional projector. It offers strong features and performance that match other projectors in its class. With a price around $8,500, it’s a good deal for a native WUXGA (1920 x 1200) Laser DLP projector.
One of its best features is brightness. It can actually go beyond the rated 9,600 lumens, making it great for places with lots of uncontrolled light. This brightness helps it show clear images even in big or bright rooms.
The projector’s colors look good right out of the box for presentations and graphics but could be better for movies or TV. Luckily, it has several picture modes and a powerful color management system (CMS). You can adjust color space, gamma, and black levels to match your room or content.
The preset colors are warmer and more natural than many bright laser projectors, which often have overly bright or oversaturated colors. Even in VIVID mode, colors are a bit muted, like the pale green skin of Gamora in Guardians of the Galaxy. But you can easily tweak the colors for more saturation if needed.
Black level settings work well for presentations but don’t improve much for movies. You can make blacks darker by lowering light output and adjusting brightness and contrast, but this may lose some detail in dark areas.
The lens is excellent, with a 1.6x motorized zoom and a throw ratio of 1.25-2.0. It can project up to a 300-inch image with sharp focus and no distortion.
The laser light source lasts up to 20,000 hours in normal mode. Ricoh also includes Constant Power and Constant Brightness features to keep the image brightness steady as the laser ages.
For connectivity, the WUL6690 supports HDBaseT and RS-232, and works with AMX, Crestron RoomView, and Extron IPLink. This makes it easy to control multiple projectors remotely.
COMPETITION
OPTOMA ZU920TST ($11,999 MSRP)
The Optoma ZU920TST offers 9,800 lumens with 4K and HDR support. It has a dust-resistant IP5X optical engine for 24/7 use and up to 30,000 hours of maintenance-free performance in Eco mode. Features include motorized zoom, focus, full motorized lens shift, and built-in dual 10W speakers. Its high brightness, color accuracy, quiet operation, and short-throw lens make it great for digital signage, edge-blending, projection mapping, simulation, and immersive setups. It also has HDBaseT and LAN control options. The Optoma is very similar to the Ricoh WUL6690 but costs more, making the Ricoh a better value at $8,500. Both support 18Gbps HDMI 2.0 for 4K@60fps and HDR content, which is a nice feature for a professional projector.
Panasonic PT-MZ880 ($7,999 MSRP)
The Panasonic PT-MZ880 is an 8,000-lumen 3LCD laser projector with native WUXGA (1920 x 1200) resolution. It offers features like Dynamic Contrast and Daylight View Basic to improve detail in bright rooms. Ricoh’s WUL6690 is brighter at 9,600 lumens. The Panasonic is very flexible with many interchangeable lenses, including an ultra-short-throw option, making it easy to install in various settings. It has three HDMI inputs supporting 4K@60fps and a DIGITAL LINK/HDBaseT port. Priced aggressively at $7,999, Panasonic calls it balanced, flexible, and reliable — ideal for classrooms, boardrooms, auditoriums, and houses of worship. Both projectors have similar features, but Ricoh’s higher brightness may justify the $500 higher price.
PROS
Competitive price at $8,500 MSRP
Actual brightness exceeds rated 9,600 lumens by 396 lumens
Laser light source lasts up to 20,000 hours in normal mode
Enclosed light engine means no filter replacement needed
Excellent 1.6X zoom lens with sharp focus and even brightness
Geometric correction, warping, and blending make setup easier
360-degree and portrait mode for flexible installations
Supports simple and advanced stacking
Can run 24/7
Backlit remote works well in dark rooms
Quick resume (fast power on/off)
Compatible with RS232, AMX, Crestron RoomView, and Extron IPLink
CONS
HDR support is convenient but shows little improvement over SDR
Blacks appear more gray than true black
Darker colors have a slight green tint
RICOH WUL6690 – SPECIFICATIONS
| Full Specifications | |
|---|---|
| Projector Model | Ricoh WUL6690 |
| Price (MSRP) | $8,500 |
| Imager Type | 1DLP (0.67″ DMD) |
| Displayed Resolution | WUXGA (1,920×1,200) |
| Native Resolution | WUXGA (1,920×1,200) |
| Brightness (Manufacturer Claim) | 9,600 ANSI Lumens |
| Light Source Type | Blue Laser Phosphor |
| Light Source Life | 20,000 Hrs (normal mode) |
| Contrast Ratio | 3,800,000:1 Dynamic Contrast |
| Zoom Lens Ratio | 1.6X |
| Power Zoom/Focus | Yes |
| Lens Shift | 0~55 degrees horizontally and 0~25 degrees vertically |
| Interchangeable Lens | No |
| Ultra-Short Throw | No |
| Native Aspect Ratio | 16:10 |
| HDTV/4K | Input |
| DVI or HDMI | HDMI |
| 3D | Yes |
| Blu-Ray 3D | Yes |
| Speakers | No |
| Noise Level (-dB) | 27/36 dB |
| Low Lag Gaming | No |
| Smart Functionality | No |
| Business | Yes |
| Classroom | Yes |
| Portable | No |
| Special Features | HDR, Extron, PJ Link, AMX, TelNET, Web Server |
| Networking | Yes |
| Dimensions (L x W x H) | 19.1” x 14.8” x 5.9” inches (486 x 376 x 150mm) |
| Weight | 29.7 lbs (13.5 kg) |
| Warranty | 3 Year Limited |