Epson EH-LS650 review: Gorgeous 4K images and epic sound | Expert Reviews

But the Epson’s real beauty lies in its image quality. 4K images are bright and clear, and while blacks aren’t as super-dark as on a good DLP projector, they’re still quite inky and there’s plenty of contrast – not to mention no rainbow effect. Best of all, the EH-LS650 delivers a superb performance when it comes to colour and HDR effects. Scenes with bright or highly saturated colours look amazing, producing stunning moments in the neon-lit action scenes of John Wick 3 and the radioactive wastelands of Fallout. Yet it’s also natural. Watch more dramatic scenes in Shogun or Decision to Leave, and there’s no sense that the reds and greens are being pushed too far or that skin tones aren’t really what they should be.

I was so convinced that the EH-LS650 was a master of colour that I was slightly disappointed by its results in my colorimeter tests. I measured 80.1% sRGB coverage and 64.8% DCI-P3 coverage with the picture mode set to Cinema, and these fell to 76% and 61.2% in the Vivid mode. That’s lower than the 79% DCI-P3 coverage achieved by the Hisense PL1 and the XGIMI Aura’s 90% coverage of sRGB. Subjectively, though, I’d say the Epson delivers the warmest, richest and most balanced image of the three, even if the XGIMI is still unbeatable for resolution and crisp detail.

This isn’t a gaming projector as such, and there’s no specific gaming mode, but the vibrant colours, strong contrast and bright HDR highlights did wonders in games like Hellblade II: Senua’s Saga, Shadow of the Tomb Raider and Cyberpunk 2077. I didn’t notice any significant lag between controls and visuals. Epson claims a lag of 20ms, which should be fine for everything bar online twitch shooters and competitive fighting games, and for those you’re better off with a high-refresh monitor than a projector that tops out at 60Hz.

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Epson EH-LS650 review: What could it do better?

While the Android TV setup is as easy as it tends to be with Google’s software, actually focusing and aligning the projector could do with a little work. The all-important focus dial is hidden beneath a flap on the side of the projector, and you either need to use Epson’s smartphone app for automatic geometry and keystone correction, or use a four-point manual setup on the screen. I found both the Hisense PL1 and XGIMI Aura significantly easier to get up and running.

Epson’s settings could also be more intuitive. It took me ages to work out how to move the picture or scale it up and down to fill the screen. There’s a button on the remote control that launches the right menu, but no way to access it through the projector menus in the main UI. I also have to say that it’s tricky to get focus perfect both in the top corners and at the bottom of the image, particularly if you start shifting the image around. That’s not unusual for ultra-short throw models, and I did eventually get good results.