Sound+Image

Ultra Short Throw Projector of the Year

TVs & VIDEO

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Ultra-short-throw projectors are going great guns — a projector sitting on a bench to deliver a large-screen ‘TV-like’ experience. As a consequenc­e the ultra-short-throw is rapidly evolving. If it’s going to work like a TV, shouldn’t it have speakers? Shouldn’t it be smart, like a TV? Yes it should. So here comes Epson, a company which declares itself the world no.1 in projection (on the reasonable basis that it has been declared so by Futuresour­ce Consulting and others for the last 17 consecutiv­e years), with the EH-LS500, originally revealed in 2019 but only recently launched here in Australia.

The first surprise is the price. Other USTs arrived above $10k (last year’s winner in this category from Hisense had an RRP of $19,999, and is currently $11,999), while the LS500 is $5499 standalone, or comes bundled with a 100/120-inch ambient-light-rejecting screen for $6599/$7199 (recommende­d since a good screen improves image quality in just about every way). And in stop-press news (see p10), Epson has just released an EH-LS300 at $3999.

As with the Epson projector two pages back, the LS500 employs its 4K Pro UHD system, delivering an image something less than 4K but with all its benefits of high Dynamic Range, colour gamut and so on. And here you get a smart interface, since one of the three HDMI inputs is pre-populated with an Android smart stick, accessing streaming services and with Chromecast onboard.

The image is bright — 4000 lumens of both white and colour laser light— still not as bright as a TV under ambient light, so that it comes to life best after dark, when you can best enjoy its smooth and well-coloured results, with fine upscaling of 1920 × 1080 material, even of 576p DVDs. Still more pleasingly it was devoid of judder — a huge advantage over some of the DLP projectors we’ve found locked to 60Hz, so creating motion judder on 50Hz material.

There are speakers built in, but we thought them pretty awful — connect a sound system.

For a 100-inch image the projector lens needs to be 65cm from the screen, 74cm for a 120-inch image, 82cm for 130 inches. So go measure your bench depth to see if you can accommodat­e the Epson. Then imagine the image size up there on the big screen. Tempting, no? More info: www.epson.com.au

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