After focussing in recent months on expanding its lifestyle projector offering, Epson has now announced no less than three new projector’s focused squarely at the serious home cinema market.

The LS5000, LS6000 and LS7500 are designed to join Epson’s flagship LS11000 home cinema model. Each new model combines a three-chip LCD optical system with laser lighting, 4K/UHD resolutions and high dynamic range playback, while their optical engines have been optimized for movie playback in dark room settings. This includes establishing contrast-friendly peak brightness levels across the new projectors of between 2,500 and 3,500 lumens rather than the much higher brightness figures now associated with more lifestyle-oriented projectors aimed at general living room conditions.

In fact, Epson claims contrast ratios for its new projectors of between 800,000:1 and 1,000,000:1 – outstanding figures for the projector world provided the dynamic contrast techniques required to achieve them are able to do their thing without leaving images looking unstable.

All three projectors support high dynamic range content in the HDR10 and HLG formats, with the HDR10 playback boosted by Epson’s Automatic HDR Scene Correction system (essentially Epson’s take on dynamic tone mapping technology) to help the projectors continually adapt images to make the most of each model’s specific imaging capabilities.

The projectors feature some helpful flexible installation features, including +/- 21% of horizontal and +/-59% of vertical optical image shift plus, in the LS7500’s case, a short-throw lens that allows the projector to deliver images up to 300 inches across when placed significantly closer to the wall than most projectors would be able to get.

Since the LS5000, LS6000 and LS7500 are LCD projectors, you don’t have to worry about the "rainbow effect" color striping issue that can affect rival DLP-type projectors. Epson is also keen to point out that using LCD projection means that white luminance and color luminance are essentially the same, rather than color luminance being reduced by the color wheel mechanism required in consumer DLP projectors.

The 4K capabilities of Epson’s new projector depend on pixel-shifting techniques rather than being delivered by a genuine 3840x2160 roster of pixels, but this is the case with the vast majority of mainstream consumer projectors and doesn’t have to mean that images can’t still look very close to true 4K.

While the new Home Cinema LS5000, LS6000 and LS7500 projectors are first and foremost aimed at movie fans, they’re also potentially handy big-screen gaming displays. Certainly their two HDMI ports can take in 4K resolutions at 120Hz frame rates, and the projectors are able to automatically switch into their fastest response time modes when a game source is detected. Epson claims that the new projectors can get the time it takes them to render images received at their HDMI ports down to under 20ms – an impressive result for the projector world.

While none of Epson’s new projectors carry their own built-in speaker systems (since home theater set ups generally use powerful external surround sound speaker arrangements), they do, unusually, carry integrated Bluetooth 6.0 support so that you can easily connect wireless headphones to them for personal late night two-channel movie viewing sessions.

Also worth noting on the audio front is that one of the HDMIs on each projector supports eARC, so that you can send soundtracks through the projector to eARC compatible soundbars and AV receivers.

The key differences between the three new Epson home cinema projector models, finally, are as follows:

Recommended launch price: $2,699.99

Maximum claimed brightness: 3,500 lumens

Claimed contrast ratio: 1,000,000:1

Lens: Precision Short Throw Epson Cinema Lens

Recommended launch price: $2,199.99

Maximum claimed brightness: 3,400 lumens

Claimed contrast ratio: 800,000:1

Lens: Multi-element precision lens structure for extra clarity and edge-to-edge focus uniformity

Recommended launch price: $1,999.99

Maximum claimed brightness: 2,500 lumens

Claimed contrast ratio: 800,000:1

Lens: Multi-element precision lens structure for extra clarity and edge-to-edge focus uniformity

All three of Epson’s new Home Cinema projectors will be available by the end of September, and each will ship with a two-year limited warranty that includes full unit replacement and free technical support.

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