On the heels of its recent announcement of a winning judgement against Amazon seller AuKing for misrepresenting the brightness of its budget mini-projector, Epson says it has reached a settlement with Dangbei to drastically revise the claimed brightness of its Mars Pro projector.

Epson says Dangbei has agreed to correct the white brightness spec of the Mars Pro, a 4K laser projector, from the previously stated 3,200 lumens to 1,800 lumens, and that the brand has agreed to use internationally recognized brightness standards (such as ISO21118) moving forward. The suit was first filed in February 2023 in U.S. District Court in California.

As of today's date, the Mars Pro's sales page on both the Dangbei website and on Amazon had been flushed of any reference whatsoever to a brightness spec, though remnants of the projector's promotion at a claimed 3,200 ANSI lumens were still visible at some other online retailers. A lower-resolution version of the projector, the Mars 1080p, is promoted on the Dangbei site as generating "2,100 ISO lumens."

In its statement, Epson America's Mike Isgrig, vice president of consumer sales and marketing, commented that "Dangbei's commitment to use internationally published and accepted standards (such as ISO21118 for white brightness) moving forward for their entire product line will provide accurate white brightness information for consumers to make informed buying decisions."

As previously reported, Epson has been engaged in a years-long campaign to hold projector sellers accountable to their brightness specs and provide an even playing field for all by insisting that manufacturers cite accepted, industry-standard specifications. Unlike some other consumer products whose specs and sales are governed by federally-enforced rules, or where equipment makers voluntarily follow a single standard, the projector industry is essentially unregulated. ANSI lumens, a U.S.-developed standard that uses a 9-point averaged measurement, was widely accepted as the industry standard for many years and is still cited by many manufacturers. The essentially equivalent ISO21118 standard is sanctioned internationally and is favored by Epson for use worldwide.

But in recent years, the industry has seen a growing preponderance of primarily online projector sellers who mislead consumers with ever-higher brightness numbers citing different units such as lux, lamp brightness, or lumens of an unspecified type or measurement technique. Some inflate their numbers by claiming "LED lumens" or "HK lumens" which typically apply an unspecified multiplier to an ANSI or ISO measurement to account for the Helmholtz-Kohlrausch effect, which accounts for the claim that the more highly saturated colors from LED or laser light are perceived as brighter than that from a traditional lamp. In the worst examples, such as with Dangbei and several others Epson has pursued in court, manufacturers simply attach an inflated number to an ANSI or ISO lumen label to give themselves an unfair advantage.

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