Setting up a shoddy old projector next to the Hills Hoist for a backyard movie night with a white sheet as a screen is a part of Aussie culture. The catchily-named EF-100, Epson’s new portable laser projector, is here to make that experience a bit fancier and significantly more expensive at $1699.
At 210mm x 270mm x 88mm and 2.7kg it’s extremely portable. As long as you have access to a power point, and the courage to transport your projector there, you can use this thing anywhere.
The Epson EF-100 is small and light enough to be portable, although it still needs to be plugged into a wall.
It’s also extremely easy to set up. Once it's plugged in it just needs some kind of HMDI video source, and it’s even got a USB port built in to power a device such as a Google Chromecast. It has a built-in 5W speaker, but if you’ve spent $1699 on a projector you can probably also spring for quality speakers or headphones (there's a 3.5mm jack and Bluetooth).
The throw distance is reasonable; to get a 60-inch (1.5-metre) display you'll need to set the unit 1.8-metres from the screen. The WXGA resolution is comparable to HD, so you probably don’t want to sit closer than 2.5m to that 60-inch screen anyway. The maximum screen size is 150 inches (3.8 metres), but you'll need a lot of room to make it work.
What I was really impressed with was the brightness of the screen. In a reasonably dark room, with some daylight coming through the side of the curtains, I could enjoy Supergirl perfectly. But it was watching Legends of Tomorrow with the curtains open, on an admittedly cloudy winter’s day, that made this projector seem completely worth its high price; the show still looked great. At 2000 lumens, this thing is bright. Bright enough to make me concerned about the cleanliness of the wardrobe door I was projecting it on.
Even the colours looked great in the bright room. Sure, there was definitely a lot details missing from darker scenes, but it was still far better than you’d ever expect from a portable projector. Epson claims a dynamic contrast ratio in excess of 2,500,000:1.
Because this is a laser projector there’s no expensive bulb to replace, just an air filter every few years, which significantly lowers the barrier to entry.
Sit the unit two metres from the wall and you’ll get an image size roughly equivalent to a 65-inch TV.Credit: Supplied
It also runs really quietly, with a quoted max fan volume of 29db, which falls somewhere between “rustling leaves” and “quiet rural area” on the comparable noise scale. Or, if you find it hard to picture quiet rustling leaves, it’s about one 16th as loud as a vacuum cleaner, which is not very loud at all.
The problem is that at that price, for most people this would need to be a TV replacement. If you have the money it is perfect for watching a movie on the veranda in summer, or in a blanket fort with the kids in winter. But $1700 for a projector that isn’t even Full HD is a big ask at a time when you can get a good 4K HDR OLED 55-inch TV for a little bit extra. You can even get a decent 65-inch LCD set for less than $1000. This projector might make a good TV replacement for people who don’t watch TV very often, or are very mobile, but that’s about it.
However, if money is just enough of an object that 4K projectors aren't an option, but not so much of an object that you can afford having a good TV and a portable projector, this is absolutely the one to buy.
Source: Read Full Article