Epson EH-TW3500

With its background firmly entrenched in all things to do with printing, Epson is a company that knows a thing or several about reproducing images. It has subsequently applied this pixel-reproducing know-how to front projection for quite some time now and lays claim to the world's first LCD video imaging projector launched back in 1989. Fast forward some 21 years and Epson has a multitude of models on offer, with this, the EH-TW3500, being one of the most affordable full-HD home theater projectors thus far.

Design And Features

The EH-TW3500 is a big beastie and needs either a solid ceiling mount or a large coffeetable to accommodate it. Once that's been taken care of, the EH-TW3500 offers a massive amount of 1080p home theater projection for a S$3,388 price tag.

Its projection system is based on Crystal Clear Fine's 3LCD technology which uses three individual LCD panels as opposed to a single chip design. Said benefits are supposedly no more "rainbow effect" (color breakup) and higher color light output (CLO), a relatively new method of measuring color in a similar vein as light output (ANSI lumens) is measured. As always, take such specs purely as a guideline, not gospel, as there are many ways companies come by these figures. The proof's always in the pudding, not on paper.

The specs impress--a dynamic contrast ratio of 36,000:1 with both CLO and normal brightness rated at 1,800 lumens. These figures stack up to the competition at this price, but do they translate to fancy-looking, bright and colorful pixels? Another figure to be aware of is the lamp life which is rated at 4,000 hours (normal).

One of the beauties of this projector is its flexibility with positioning, thanks mainly to its 2.1x optical zoom and horizontal/vertical lens shift. Keystone correction is a thing of the past with these features, and sure enough, it's a breeze to accurately fill the screen as we quickly found out. There's no need to adjust the elevation feet, or mess around with software settings. It's more a case of simply pointing and shooting with this Epson.

Finally, a decent remote accompanies the projector and its big backlit buttons are perfectly tactile in the darkest of rooms.

Performance

Set atop a coffeetable, the Epson did not take long to get up and running. Taking a look in its setup configuration, we found it necessary to make a few amendments from the default norm before we were truly happy with the image quality. It's best to stick with Epson's Natural color mode when calibrating the picture and we also found the x.v.Color mode the more natural-looking. Once you scratch the surface of the myriad of adjustments, it can get a bit daunting, so use a calibration DVD or Blu-ray to help. Or best of all, allow a professional to calibrate the projector for you--it's well worth it.

We also played around with the Epson's Auto Iris setting (which incidentally doesn't apply in x.v.Color mode) and generally preferred the image quality in Normal mode. To our eyes this served up the best blacks (deep and reasonably solid), and the darker CGI scenes of Terminator Salvation looked impressively textured, rich and well-defined. Here, too, plenty of shadow detail retrieval was clearly evident and during the initial Skynet battle scenes, the Epson had no problem with contrast and dark tone levels. We did notice a little bit of edge blurring with rapid horizontal movement, but it was never distracting and you probably wouldn't even notice if you weren't looking for it.

The EH-TW3500 is bright enough to handle some ambient room light, and if you do want to use it in a less than dark room, switching the Auto-Iris to High or using Dynamic mode will help with these situations. Fan noise gets a bit louder when the projector is operated brighter, but even so it's hardly noticeable. In quieter operation the Epson's super-silent.

Flesh tones and the Epson's color palette were also both well-rendered. We loved the color balance it achieved with HD content; it has that ability to reproduce 1080p hues with real vibrancy. Casino Royale Blu-ray, for example, never once looked overcooked or oversaturated as we've seen from less capable projectors. Color tones here were natural and well-balanced. Closeups of 007's rugged features looked realistic and suitably cool; never too warm or flat. Such scenes had plenty of visual punch--just what you'd expect from a decent LCD projector such as this.

It dishes up plenty of detail also, both from standard- and high-definition content. We fed it some upconverted DVD and it still managed to look alive and dynamic, though not to the same extent as with 1080p HD material, but impressively watchable nonetheless. It's perhaps too nice a projector for gaming, especially if you go the trouble of having it properly calibrated, but if little Johnny insists on plugging in a console, he'll be blown away playing on a screen this good.

Finally, the remote proved simple but effective and we never experienced any abnormalities while the Epson was projecting.

Conclusion

For S$3,388, the Epson is a lot of impressive HD projection for the money. It pays to calibrate things properly, which will reward the viewer with sumptuous, bright and highly involving images. At this price level, it's decidedly competitive.