Epson’s $2,399 Pro Cinema 4050 4K Pro-UHD Projector promises, and delivers, image quality that will satisfy most video enthusiasts for traditional home theater settings, plus sufficient brightness—2,400 lumens—to stand up to ambient light in a family room. It also offers a substantial lens shift to adjust image position, and lens memory to switch easily between different zoom and shift settings (more on that below). It’s not cheap, but it’s the most affordable model in Epson’s Pro Cinema line with 4K resolution—technically, resolution that’s visually equivalent to genuine 4K. (We’ll come back to that shortly, as well.) The 4050’s mix of image quality, brightness, and features makes it our new Editors’ Choice pick for a midprice home theater projector suitable for 4K content.
True Resolution, Versus Resolving Detail
Like the $4,999 Epson EpiqVision Ultra LS500 4K reviewed here in December 2021, the Pro Cinema 4050 is built around Epson’s 4K Pro-UHD technology, which uses three 1080p LCD imaging chips and pixel-shifting technology that doubles the number of pixels per frame. Although this technically puts only half as many pixels on screen as a true 4K (3,840-by-2,160-pixel) image, side-by-side comparisons show little or no discernible difference. And in those cases where you can see a difference, Epson’s lower pixel count sometimes delivers a better ability to resolve detail.
One reason for this counterintuitive result is that limits to human visual acuity make it hard to detect any difference between the two levels of resolution at normal viewing distances. Another is that Pro-UHD technology takes advantage of other factors that also affect the ability to resolve detail, including contrast and lens quality. The 4050 is a standard-throw projector built around a high-quality, 15-element glass lens.
Keep in mind, also, that because it uses a separate imaging chip for each primary color, the Pro Cinema 4050 doesn’t show rainbow artifacts. If you don’t easily see these flashes of red, green, and blue, that may not matter much. But if you or anyone you watch with is sensitive to rainbow artifacts and finds them distracting, you might consider that aspect of the 4050 an essential selling point.
Sophisticated Setup Features
Another notable feature of the 4050 is its large shift range, which lets you move the image to match the screen position. The horizontal lens shift is nearly half a screen width (47.1%) left or right of the centered position, while the vertical shift is nearly a full screen height (96.3%) up or down. Combined with a much larger than typical 2.1x zoom, this lets you position the projector just about anywhere you can find room for it, whether inverted in a ceiling mount or in the back of the room on a bookshelf, and either centered horizontally or offset to one side.
Also helping with setup is that focus, zoom, and lens shift are powered, controlled by commands from the remote, and easy to adjust without overshooting the size, position, or sharpest focus.
You can store up to 10 sets of focus, zoom, and lens shift settings, then reposition and refocus the lens simply by choosing a set. The most common need for this is in setups that include a Cinemascope format screen (2.35:1 or 2.4:1 aspect ratio) and what’s called a constant image height (CIH) setup. Assuming you’re watching a 2.4:1 aspect ratio movie using a standard projector lens, the image will project in letterbox format, with black bars above and below the movie. On a 16:9 screen, the only way to see the movie at full width is to keep the image small enough so the black bars are visible also. But if you use a 2:4:1 screen, you can set the lens so the movie fills the screen, with the black bars falling above and below it.
However, if you set up your projector in this way, the upper and lower portions of 16:9 movies will also fall above and below the screen, obliging you to resize the image and refocus to fill the screen from top to bottom, giving you a constant image height. Storing the lens settings for both aspect ratios lets you switch between them in a snap.
For all this to work well, you need a powered lens mechanism that’s precise enough to hit the right settings for focus, zoom, and shift every time, and that is heavy-duty enough to maintain that precision with repeated use. That mechanism, along with the lens itself, is partly responsible both for the Epson’s price and for its hefty proportions—7.6 by 20.5 by 17.7 inches (HWD) and 24.7 pounds.
Note also that the 4050 is a light cannon by traditional home theater standards. Going by Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) recommendations, 2,400 lumens is bright enough to light up a 220-inch, 1.0-gain, 16:9 screen in a dark room. In moderately bright ambient light in a family room, it’s suitable for a 120-inch image, especially when paired with an ambient light rejecting (ALR) screen. (For more on screens, see our article on choosing the right screen for your projector.)
The Pro Cinema 4050 doesn’t offer onboard audio. As with most home theater projectors in this price range and above, the assumption is that you’ll want to use a high-quality external audio system.
Great SDR Out of the Box, But HDR Needs Minor Tweaking
The 4050 offers six predefined color modes for both SDR and HDR10 input. (There’s no support for HLG HDR.) Viewing 1080p SDR material, I didn’t spot any color errors in any of the modes except Dynamic, the brightest, and even there colors were accurate enough that I wouldn’t have noticed they were off target if I weren’t so familiar with the images in our test suite. All the modes also delivered satisfyingly dark blacks along with good contrast, shadow detail, and sense of three-dimensionality. My favorite choice was Bright Cinema, which offered better color accuracy than the brightest mode and better contrast in dark scenes than the lower brightness modes.
For 4K HDR10 input, the projector’s Digital Cinema color mode supports the wider color gamut that’s one of the advantages for 4K HDR. (Epson rates the mode at 100% of the DCI-P3 gamut.) Here again, the projector delivered good color accuracy, contrast, shadow detail, and sense of three-dimensionality, though in this case I had to tweak the settings to get a suitably bright image.
Like almost all HDR projectors, the 4050 offers an HDR setting, dubbed Dynamic Range in this case. It’s necessary because the best level varies from one HDR source to another and with room brightness. The default setting yielded a disappointingly dark image in my tests. After trying all the options, I settled on Auto (Bright) for the best image quality, but you’ll want to experiment and, as is typical for 4K projectors, you may have to change it for individual movies or other material.
Other settings you might want to tinker with include the auto-iris, which helps make dark scenes darker by adjusting the iris based on the content of individual scenes, and frame interpolation (FI) for smoothing motion. Note that FI is available only for 1080p input, and even then only if you turn off 4K enhancement, which you may well consider adds more to the picture quality. For those who want to pay for a professional calibration to tune colors for their room and screen, there’s also a color management system.
For full HD 3D, the 4050 offers two modes: 3D Dynamic, which is the brighter of the two, and 3D Cinema, which offers better color accuracy. In my tests, 3D reduced brightness as it invariably does, but not as much so as with most other projectors. I didn’t see any crosstalk, and 3D-related motion artifacts were at the low end of the scale. I tested with Epson’s proprietary glasses, but the company says standard RF 3D glasses will work as well.
The projector’s input lag times are suitable for all but the most serious gamers. I measured lag using a Bodnar meter at 27ms for 1080p and 21ms for 4K (both at 60Hz).
Top-Tier Image Quality, Loads of Features
For those who insist on the highest level of image quality available in its price range, or who need its sophisticated setup features, the Epson Pro Cinema 4050 is a formidable contender. Epson sells a nearly identical model, the Home Cinema 4010, for less ($1,999.99), but the 4050 is the better deal—it comes with a spare lamp, a $330 extra for the 4010; a three-year instead of two-year warranty (the cheaper projector’s third year is a $200 upgrade); and a ceiling mount kit and cable cover.
If you’re seeking a TV replacement for your family room, you’ll want to consider ultra-short-throw as well as standard-throw models, including Epson’s EpiqVision Ultra LS500, the BenQ V7050i, and the Optoma CinemaX P2. But the Pro Cinema 4050’s combination of image quality, brightness, and features makes it a good choice for family rooms as well as home theaters, and our Editors’ Choice pick for a moderately expensive 4K home theater projector.
