You’d want a wage bigger than a premiership footballer to afford a TV large enough to cowl a complete wall – however a projector can do the identical job for considerably much less money.
Epson’s EH-LS100 does precisely that, however with out all of the faff of mounting to your ceiling. It’s an ultra-short throw system, y’see, lobbing a large picture onto your wall from just some centimetres away.
It’s additionally one of many first to mix ultra-short throw with a laser mild supply, ditching old-school bulbs for diodes that final for tens of hundreds of hours. Plus it must be brighter, extra vibrant, and with higher distinction in addition.
Or a minimum of, that’s the concept. Does it work in follow? We’ve been glued to Netflix for the previous few weeks to search out out…
DESIGN & BUILD
Epson makes some correctly great-looking projectors – however the LS100 isn’t certainly one of ‘em.
It shares a chassis with fashions aimed extra on the boardroom than the house cinema, and it exhibits. There aren’t any eye-catching colors, contrasting vents or sculpted sides right here, only a massive black field. The distant management is as fundamental as they arrive and wouldn’t look misplaced in a classroom. The onscreen menus are purely practical, too, with no icons or animations to jazz issues up.
At 11kg, it’s not precisely a featherweight, and can take up a good quantity of area in your AV cupboard too.
On the plus aspect, that sturdy construct means you’re unlikely to show the picture to jelly everytime you rise up from the couch for a brand new bag of popcorn.
There are a number of buttons on the aspect panel, however nearly every part is managed by the distant. It won’t be fairly, nevertheless it will get the job performed – or there’s Epson’s smartphone app, which is a little more glam. But provided that you add the non-obligatory Wi-Fi module.
SETUP
Ultra-short throw projectors must be easy to arrange, and the LS100 is not any completely different: simply place it sq. to your wall (or projector display screen when you have one), sharpen the image utilizing the main target lever, and also you’re good to go.
The laser begins up nearly right away, with not one of the warm-up instances you’d get from a bulb-based projector, so it actually appears like turning a TV on and off.
Picture dimension depends upon how far the projector sits out of your wall. At the minimal 6cm, you’ll get a 70in picture, however return 50cm and also you’ll get a large 130in.
Keystone is readily available to appropriate for any angle points, however in the event you’re projecting straight onto a wall you shouldn’t have to mess about with it.
INPUTS, FEATURES & SOUND
The LS100 isn’t left wanting for connections. You get three HDMI inputs (with one supporting MHL), VGA for hooking up a PC, USB for multimedia playback straight from a flash drive, and composite video.
They’re all effectively hidden beneath the projector, although, making it tough to plug issues in with out lifting the entire unit up.
It does have a set of on-board audio system, which might get loud sufficient to fill a medium-sized front room, however sound high quality actually isn’t as much as snuff. There’s no actual bass, and every part simply sounds a bit hole consequently.
You’re significantly better off connecting this to a devoted dwelling theatre if you wish to do justice to your movies, video games and TV exhibits.
Diving into the menus doesn’t reveal a lot in the way in which of hidden options – simply the same old distinction, brightness, sharpness and saturation sliders. There’s additionally Dynamic Contrast, which is finest set to High Speed after which forgotten about.
The one setting value searching down is image mode. In Dynamic, Bright Cinema and Game, the EH-LS100 will get notably noisy. Even with the built-in audio system at full whack, the drone of the cooling followers are tough to disregard.
If you don’t thoughts the brightness hit, it’s value dropping all the way down to Cinema mode. Things are a lot quieter right here, making it perfect for watching common TV.
PICTURE QUALITY
The 0.67in, 3LCD projection pumps out a 16:10, 1920×1200 decision picture – which suggests you get tiny gray borders above and beneath no matter’s being performed. They’re not distracting as soon as your movie or sport begins taking part in, although.
It’s not going to problem even a funds 4K TV for pixel rely, and it doesn’t assist HDR video. (There’s no 3D assist both, however when was the final time that bothered anybody?) However, element and definition are hardly missing when you feed it a top quality supply.
Plug in a Blu-ray participant and every part appears exact and outlined, with not one of the softness you’d anticipate from a lesser projector. Streaming video doesn’t maintain up fairly so effectively, notably in fast-moving scenes, with some blurring and lack of readability, however for essentially the most half it copes very effectively.
Colours are extremely vivid and distinction is excellent, even earlier than you draw the curtains and switch off all of the lights. Laser projection additionally means you don’t have to fret about any DLP-style rainbow results, both. Are photos as clear and vibrant as a top-end TV? No, not fairly – however that is the trade-off for such a colossal display screen dimension.
With a quoted 4000 ANSI lumens most brightness, the EH-LS100 completely pumps out mild. Bright scenes are the place this projector performs finest, with vibrant colors and actual depth to the picture. Want to look at the weekend footie with out sitting at the hours of darkness? This has bought you lined.
Black ranges may all the time be deeper, although, so darker scenes don’t have fairly as a lot punch. For a correctly cinematic really feel, you’ll need to draw the curtains.
Epson EH-LS100 verdict
Not each home has the area for a standard projector, however the LS100 will sit nearly anyplace you possibly can match a TV. It’s shiny sufficient to look at in the course of the day, with out having to attract the curtains first, and the laser mild supply received’t want changing like old-school bulbs do.
On paper, the shortage of 4K decision and HDR must be main negatives – however the shiny image and sheer dimension of the picture it may possibly chuck up make up for it. If you need whiz-bang options like 4K, both be ready to spend an entire lot additional cash, or settle for that you just’re most likely higher off with a TV relatively than a projector.
It’s not quiet – however in the event you’ve bought a good dwelling cinema system to plug it into, it shouldn’t be all that arduous to drown out the fan noise.
For a big-screen expertise that doesn’t want mounting to a ceiling, although, the EH-LS100 completely will get the job performed.
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