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The US$1,500 Epson EH-TW7000 projector offers a 4K home cinema experience similar to that of much bigger, pricier models. Photo: Epson

Review | Epson EH-TW7000 home cinema projector review: super bright lamp puts others in the shade

  • With a 3,000 lumen lamp and wireless connectivity, the Epson EH-TW7000 is easy to set up and can be watched in daylight
  • The only downside is a slight lack of contrast, resulting in black tones looking more like grey

Are you ready to replace your TV with a projector? The Epson EH-TW7000 (US$1,500) – known as the Home Cinema 3200 in the United States – provides a convincing argument to make the switch.

You can forget the usual worries about whether the image will be bright enough in daylight, and where the audio will come from; this model has a 3,000 lumen lamp and a wireless connection to a Bluetooth sound bar or speaker.

Design and hardware

An engine-powered, three-LCD light projector that will go for 5,000 hours without a new lamp, the EH-TW7000 is no mould-breaker. Measuring 410mm‎ by 310mm by 157mm, it has a bright white plastic chassis. Weighing 6.6kg, it’s easy enough to move around and set up.

The EH-TW7000 is sold as a 4K-capable device. Photo: Epson

At its rear are a couple of HDMI inputs and a stereo mini-jack for hooking up to any speaker. However, it’s what the EH-TW7000 does without cables that’s part of its appeal.

Resolution and features

Although it’s sold as a 4K-capable device, the EH-TW7000 is technically not 4K at all. In fact, it’s got only a full HD chip inside that allows it to project two images that each measure 1,920 x 1,080 pixels. This is part of a pixel-shifting technique called E-shift, which projects both of those full HD images simultaneously, creating an enhanced image that Epson calls 4K.

That may sound like a cheat (and its “4K PRO-UHD” name misleading), but in practice, it works very well. Besides, natively 4K projectors – mostly from Sony, Optoma, JVC, and Epson itself – are far larger and pricier, and not as bright as the EH-TW7000.
There are no inbuilt apps – so no Netflix – but the HDMI slots on the back can accept smart dongles like the Amazon Fire TV stick and Google Chromecast, which convert the EH-TW7000 into a smart device.
The EH-TW7000 is easy to use and you don’t need to watch it in the dark. Photo: Epson

As well as supporting 4K resolution from services such as Netflix, games consoles and 4K Blu-ray players, the EH-TW7000 also handles HDR (for more dynamic range, in practice meaning brighter highlights), Hybrid Log Gamma (HLG, a new standard for HDR) and 10-bit colour processing (more shades each of red, green, and blue).

Performance

Despite only having a full HD chip, the EH-TW7000 consistently supplies impressively colourful, bright and detailed images. They don’t show quite as much detail as a native 4K image – 3,840 x 2,160 pixels – but in screen sizes of anything under 100 inches, they are certainly sharper than those projected by full HD counterparts.

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It’s also noticeably brighter than most, easily dealing with anything other than direct sunlight on the screen. Its “dynamic cinema” mode is useful in bright conditions, with the more muted cinema ideal for watching in a dark space. However, the trade-off is that contrast is middling, with some greys where you might see jet-black on a high-end projector or an OLED TV.

What I liked most about the EH-TW7000 was its easy set-up and its kindness to less-than-perfect video and TV. Set down on a coffee table, it’s possible to create an image around 80 inches in diameter from about three metres away thanks to a manual 1.62 optical zoom dial around the lens.

Even more impressive is that you can get the image dead-on to a screen using clever manual lens shift levers above the lens, which in practice means you can place the projector way off centre. That flexibility extends into beaming old, soft standard definition TV and video.

The back of the EH-TW7000.

Episodes of TV sitcoms, poor quality footage from YouTube, and pretty much anything else you can think of throwing at the EH-TW7000 consistently look very watchable.

Conclusion

With good-looking standard definition video and great-looking 4K, the only aspects of the EH-TW7000 that are slightly lacking are contrast and black levels. No matter, because with such ease of use – its bright lamp, clever lens-shift levers and helpful wireless audio options – the EH-TW7000 is good value, serious projector that’s perfect for both permanent and occasional use when you want to have a big screen experience … without investing in the 50kg of glass and metal of a similarly capable TV.

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