At $4,999, the Epson EpiqVision Ultra LS500 4K Pro-UHD Laser Projection TV looks like a poor bargain versus the BenQ V7050i ($3,499) or the Optoma CinemaX P2 ($5,799 list, but $3,299 at most retailers). But Epson’s home projector isn’t as overpriced as it seems. Fully $1,000 of its cost is for its bundled ambient light rejection (ALR) screen, something you’ll want for any ultra short throw (UST) projector like this one (more on that shortly). The LS500 also boasts the highest brightness of the three, and it’s the only one free of rainbow artifacts, the stray flashes of red, green, and blue that some viewers find distracting. Add good color accuracy and contrast, a color management system for calibration, and more, and the EpiqVision earns an Editors’ Choice award for mainstream 4K UST laser projectors (even if, as we’ll explain, it doesn’t technically deliver 3,840 by 2,160 pixels).
You’re Gonna Need a Screen
In addition to the version of the LS500 tested here, which includes a 100-inch diagonal screen with a 16:9 aspect ratio, you can buy the projector with a 120-inch screen for $5,999, or alone for $3,999 (as the Epson EpiqVision Ultra LS500 4K Pro-UHD Laser Projector). All three variations come in either white or black.
Getting one with the screen is worth the extra cost, because if you want to take the best advantage of any UST projector in a room with ambient light, you’ll need an appropriate ALR screen. The only reason to consider the model without one is if you already have a screen in mind that you prefer. Epson says the projector lens is suitable for a screen as large as 130 inches.
The viewing angle for the supplied 100-inch screen is 170 degrees, which covers the entire range from which you’re likely to look. Its gain is 0.6. Any gain lower than 1.0 translates to a darker image than you’d get from a white screen, but the loss of brightness is due to the screen’s gray color. The latter gives you a much darker black than you’d get from a white screen, which boosts contrast, particularly in a room with ambient light.
The LS500’s rated brightness is 4,000 lumens, which when paired with a 0.6 gain screen gives you the same the image brightness as a 2,400-lumen projector would using a 1.0 gain screen. But when you combine the improved contrast from the gray color with ALR technology (which keeps overhead lights or skylights from washing out the image), you wind up with a much better-looking picture than you’d get from a white screen and higher brightness. For this review, I ran all my viewing tests with the bundled screen.
Setting Up the LS500: Help (Probably) Wanted
As is usual with screen setup, you need to stretch out the screen material on a frame. Epson provides excellent instructions for assembling and mounting it, including a detailed video online. You’re well advised to watch it before deciding whether to do the job yourself or hire someone, particularly if you’ve never set up a screen before. Since the screen weighs 24.3 pounds and measures 88 by 50 by 1.2 inches fully assembled, you’ll at the very least want a second person to help move it into place.
The projector itself measures 9 by 18 by 14.7 inches (including its feet) and weighs 20.9 pounds. Like most 4K UST laser models, it uses a laser-phosphor light source, rated for a 20,000-hour lifetime at full power. You can dial down the power setting from 100% to 65% in increments of 5. Lower settings will likely extend the light source’s lifetime, but Epson doesn’t provide estimates.
For creating the image, the light source is paired with three 1080p LCD chips and an approach to pixel shifting that doubles the number of pixels per frame on screen. This gives the image only half as many actual pixels as a full 4K (3,840 by 2,160) image, but when you compare Epson’s 4K Pro-UHD projectors side by side with DLP projectors that put a full 4K array of pixels on screen, there’s little to no difference in apparent detail. In some cases, Epson’s approach actually provides better resolution in the sense of ability to resolve detail.
A big part of the reason Epson’s design works so well is that there are limits to human visual acuity that make it hard to spot any difference at normal viewing distances. The Pro-UHD technology also takes advantage of other factors including contrast, lens quality, and digital color and image processing.
Keep in mind, too, that using a separate imaging chip for each primary color guarantees that the LS500 can’t show rainbow artifacts. This won’t matter to users who don’t notice the RGB flashes, but it can be essential for those who are sensitive to them.
Setting up the LS500 itself is simple. Install the included Epson Android TV version 10 dongle, plug in the power cord, optionally connect by HDMI to one or more video devices, and connect the dongle to your network via Wi-Fi. Unfortunately, the level of Android TV integration doesn’t extend to letting you use the projector’s Ethernet port for a network connection. However, it lets you control both the projector and dongle menus with a single remote. The projector also comes with a second remote specifically for the dongle, should you ever decide to move it to another display.
Unlike most of the UST 4K laser projectors we’ve reviewed, the LS500 doesn’t have automatic or manual powered focus. However, the focus control is on the side facing away from the screen, hidden under a magnetically attached front panel cover, which helps make focusing easy. Welcome conveniences include three HDMI 2.0b ports, including two on the side facing the screen and one behind the front panel cover for the Android TV dongle. And if Netflix is one of your go-to streaming destinations, you’ll be pleased that Epson’s is one of the very few Android TV dongles that includes a Netflix app by default.
As I said, the EpiqVision’s brightness of 4,000 ANSI lumens is more than enough to light up the 100-inch ALR screen bundled with the projector, as well as larger screens, in a family room with moderate ambient light.
The built-in stereo sound system contains a pair of 10-watt speakers and delivers quite usable audio quality at volumes suitable for a large family room. But if you’re spending this much on a projector, you’ll probably want to take advantage of the ARC support or 3.5mm stereo output to connect an external sound system.
Looks Good With Defaults; Also Lets You Calibrate
The LS500 offers four predefined color modes for SDR, HDR, and 3D input and lets you customize each one. It also offers 10 memory positions for easy retrieval of customizations for different sources or different lighting conditions. Settings include a frame interpolation option for smoothing motion, though the last is available only for 1080p input, and only if you turn off 4K enhancement, which you may well consider adds more to the picture quality.
For 1080p SDR input, most people will judge all four of the color modes’ default settings acceptable without a second thought, including Bright, which (as is typical for any projector’s brightest mode) delivered the least-accurate color. The Cinema mode produced the best color accuracy in my tests, but Bright Cinema was close behind and delivered a touch better shadow detail, making it my preferred choice. Either would be a good starting point for a professional calibration if you want to pay for one, but even at the default settings, Bright Cinema’s color accuracy, contrast, shadow detail, and black level in dark scenes were more than adequate by most viewers’ standards, both in a dark room and with ambient light.
With 4K HDR10 input, the Epson switches to HDR mode automatically and adds an HDR10 setting, which is the equivalent of what many projectors label as HDR brightness. The best level for the HDR10 setting can vary with room brightness and from one HDR disc or other source to the next. Epson’s version of the setting has an advantage over most projectors in offering 16 levels to choose from for finer tuning. In my comparisons of 1080p SDR and 4K HDR versions of the same movies on disc, the 4K HDR versions offered both the expected improvement in resolution and slightly better color accuracy. Note, too, that the LS500 supports HLG HDR as well.
For Full HD 3D, which the projector supports with standard RF 3D glasses, I didn’t see any crosstalk in my tests, and 3D-related motion artifacts were at the low end of what’s typical for current projectors. As usual for Epson models, the 3D modes’ brightness surpassed that of most projectors’ 2D modes, which gives the LS500 a big edge over the competition for 3D viewing in ambient light.
For gamers, the LS500 offers a much shorter lag time than most of its competitors. Using a Bodnar meter, I measured 1080p/60Hz input with 4K enhancement off at 27.2ms to 27.5ms, depending on color mode. For 4K/60Hz input, the range was 20.9ms to 21.2ms, a few milliseconds longer than Epson’s published specs but still snappy enough for all but the most hardcore gamers.
Lots to Like, Little to Complain About
You can quibble with some minor issues in the EpiqVision Ultra LS500’s design. If you prefer wired connections to Wi-Fi, you might wish the Android TV were fully integrated so you could use the projector’s LAN port to connect. If you value frame interpolation, you might wish it weren’t so limited. But the Epson delivers good picture quality and is the least expensive 4K UST laser projector at this writing that’s impervious to rainbow artifacts.
If those artifacts aren’t an issue for you, you might want to consider the abovementioned Optoma CinemaX P2 or BenQ V7050i. Between them, the BenQ takes better advantage of HDR, particularly in dark scenes, while the Optoma delivers better out-of-box color accuracy, higher brightness for 3D, and a more robust sound system. But all three of these projectors deliver roughly comparable picture quality (as long as you don’t mind the P2’s and V7050i’s rainbow artifacts), while the LS500 is brightest for 2D and even more so for 3D, while also being rainbow-artifact-free. The combination makes it our Editors’ Choice winner for this mainstream class of 4K UST laser projectors.
