Epson EH-LS650
Sometimes cheaper can be better
The EH-LS650 is the cheaper of two ultra short throw options Epson is currently selling as part of its home theatre projection range. It’s not as bright as the step-up LS800W and it can’t support as large a range of image sizes, topping out at 120in versus the LS800W’S 150in. In most other ways, though, it shares enough heritage and features with its more expensive sibling to potentially make its cheaper price look quite the bargain.
There are lots of non-ultra short throw projectors out there, even a few laser models, that, like the LS650, offer HDR support and 4K playback for substantially less. But, of course, those won’t give you the ‘Tv-like’ experience the LS650 seeks to ape, so aren’t really direct competitors. It’s worth pointing out that Hisense currently sells its impressive PL1 for a remarkably low price, but that model is a whole 1500 lumens less bright, making it less well adapted to bright living room set-ups.
The Epson LS650 boasts a pretty archetypal short throw projector design, where a wide slot at the bottom of a large recessed area of the top edge lets out an image that has been bounced around inside an unusually large chassis by regular affordable projector standards. The rear edge that faces out into the room hosts a built-in 2x10w speaker system adorned in an attractive grilled cover, while the rest of the bodywork of our LS650B sample wears a strokably smooth black finish. The LS650W comes in a crisp-looking white.
Aside from its UST design, the Epson LS650’S headline features are its LCD rather than DLP optics, laser lighting engine, and ability to support 4K and HDR signals. There’s also the impressively potent 3600 lumens of peak brightness it claims to produce. Having 3600 lumens available for getting more value out of HDR sources and combatting potentially high living-room ambient light levels is very promising. Epson backs this high brightness up with a huge claimed 2,500,000:1 contrast ratio – though experience suggests this will prove to be a very optimistic claim that won’t be seen in any remotely ‘real world’ context.
A projector as bright as the LS650 is going to need some pretty robust cooling fans to keep it from burning up. These are claimed to run with a potentially disruptive maximum noise level of 36db, but actually, we seldom feel aware of their presence at normal viewing distances.
The LS650 has the Android TV smart streaming platform built in, while Epson clearly positions the LS650 as a gaming as well as home theatre projector, so it’s good to find it capable of 4K/60HZ graphics and a low – by projector standards – 1080p/60hz input lag time of 27.4ms.
The LS650’S connections comprise two HDMI ports (one with ARC capability), three USB 2.0-A inputs, a remote control input, and built-in wi-fi. There is no support over the HDMIS or streaming services for the premium Dolby Vision and HDR10+ formats of HDR; you can enjoy only regular HDR10 and HLG.
The LS650 keeps set-up relatively straightforward by offering both an automated set-up feature using an app on your phone, or enabling you to tweak the image geometry manually using a simple four-point set-up screen. The only catch with such a basic geometry adjustment is that it is possible to mess the picture’s aspect ratio up if you are not careful.
The built-in 2 x 10W sound system has been designed with renowned audio brand Yamaha, and Epson is sufficiently confident about the speaker performance to provide the option to turn off the projector’s optics so that it can function simply as a standalone smart speaker.
Spectacular bright images
In many ways, the Epson LS650 is an enjoyable watch – especially when you are using it in a room with a bit of ambient light to contend with. That impressive 3600 lumens of brightness helps pictures punch through ambient light while retaining an impressive amount of punch and pop – especially if you’re able to partner the projector with a decent ambient light-rejecting screen.
The brightness also makes images look pretty spectacular in dark rooms, and enables the LS650 to do what projectors typically find so difficult: give at least some credibility to HDR playback. The LS650’S LCD nature means that it does all this, too, without suffering at all with the colourstriping ‘rainbow effect’.
The brightness feeds into engagingly natural-looking colours with HDR material too. The LS650B doesn’t carry a wide colour gamut system, so can’t achieve the same sort of vibrancy we have seen from premium USTS from Leica and AWOL Vision. But actually, the saturations it does serve up feel more balanced in the sense that no tones or primaries appear to have any prominence over the rest. This makes colours feel more relaxing and, thanks to their consistency, immersive to watch.
In fact, we find the LS650’S colours, especially in its Film preset, to be more consistent overall than those of Epson’s step-up LS800. The extra brightness of that more powerful model can start to make tones look a little strained at times.
Although it doesn’t provide a truly native 4K picture, using pixel shifting to
generate a 4K effect, the LS650’S pictures still look in most areas to be crisp and detailed. General clarity isn’t besmirched by excessive noise or difficulties handling natural film grain, either, despite the projector sporting a reasonably powerful video processing engine.
The LS650’S motion processing does a surprisingly good job on its Low setting of taking the edge off judder with 24p sources without either generating lots of unwanted digital side effects or making the image look too processed. Judder without motion processing on is a little more noticeable during 24p viewing than we would ideally like, but it’s certainly not unbearably distracting for the movie purists who refuse to entertain motion processing under any circumstances.
“That impressive 3600 lumens of brightness helps pictures punch through ambient light while retaining an impressive amount of punch and pop”
Subtle dark details
Some recent Epson projectors have struggled with brightness stability when applying some of their image autooptimisation features, but the LS650 holds up well here, with really no noticeable shifting of brightness during dark scenes. There are, though, a couple of significant limitations to its picture performance that mean we can’t give it an unqualified recommendation. First and worst, it doesn’t adapt to proper movie night darkroom viewing very well, chiefly because it can’t deliver dark scenes with remotely convincing black levels. Instead, everything bottoms out into a grey wash that leaves the image looking flat and insipid.
This becomes much less of a problem in ambient light, of course, and helpfully the grey look to dark scenes doesn’t stop the
LS650 from producing decent amounts of subtle detail in dark areas. Also, because it is slightly less bright, the LS650 produces slightly better black levels than its pricier LS800 sibling. It’s still a shame overall, though, that the projector can’t adapt better to dark as well as light room viewing.
The other issue is that while the picture looks sharp across most of its screen area, the top corners can look a little soft and out of focus. There is no focus adjustment to help counter this as you get with AWOL Vision’s LTV-3500 Pro (p14), and nothing we could do with the projector’s physical positioning fully resolved it. It is especially noticeable with high-resolution gaming sources, which is a pity as, for the most part, the LS650 is actually a really fun big-screen gaming display.
The 2 x 10W speakers punch above their weight, with a really pleasantly rounded tone that leaves no place for harshness or thinness. The sound escapes cleanly and effortlessly from the projector’s bodywork, creating a reasonably large soundstage that enjoys some genuine and enjoyable forward impact as well as spreading out to left and right. Vocals are always clear and credible, but at the same time are believably contextualised in the mix.
While it’s a pity the LS650 doesn’t have the black levels to adapt to proper dark room movie nights, its pictures are bright, colourful and consistent enough to represent an affordable alternative to an ultra-large TV in fairly regular living room conditions, while its Yamaha-influenced sound is also great by most TVS’ standards.