Projector Reviews

I used Portrait Displays' Calman software to profile the LS800 and see the effect of various controls. But due to the lack of calibration controls, I did not perform a calibration on the projector. I hesitate to put an exact number on the brightness measurements because there's a margin of error involved with USTs that's not the case with long-throw projectors.

The peak brightness in Dynamic picture mode is about 4000 ANSI lumens. The green cast makes Dynamic a poor choice for regular viewing, but it is tolerable if the goal is maximum brightness. Peak on-screen luminance was an amazing 180 nits on the 120-inch UST screen.

Vivid mode uses a cool color temperature by default, 8018 K. This mode produced approximately 2700 ANSI lumens in its default setting and slightly more (2875 lumens) when the Color Temperature setting was set to 12 rather than 11. Peak luminance for the 120-inch UST screen tops out at 114 nits. The delta E of 7.6 and gamma of 2.47 could be better, but subjectively, what's on screen looks good and for TV owners who use and enjoy Standard mode, it is familiar.

Cinema mode puts out a still impressive 2600 ANSI lumens, which is why I chose to use it for almost all viewing. You still get over 100 nits brightness on the 120-inch UST screen! But in this mode, the color temperature is 7150K, the delta E error is a much lower 4.7, and the gamma measures 2.27, which are in the ballpark for really good color. It's the brightest out-of-the-box, color-accurate mode I've seen on a UST. In this mode, I measured 3500:1 contrast off the screen.

A small tweak to Cinema mode, changing the Color Temperature setting to 8 (instead of 9), tightens things up even more at the cost of a few lumens. The temperature drops to a close-to-ideal 6738K, delta E drops to 4.3, and the gamma becomes 2.23. The contrast drops a teeny bit, to 3100:1, and lumens drop just a touch, to around 2500. It's a toss-up whether to use this setting or the default.

Natural also outputs about 2600 ANSI lumens, but the color temperature is a too warm for my taste at 6150K. Adjusting the Color temperature slider adversely affected the color accuracy. It is technically very accurate, the delta E measurement of 3.1 attests to that. But in my opinion, the mode simply does not look as compelling as the slightly cooler Cinema.

The HDMI 3 game mode is bright, with good color. It too nets you about 2600 ANSI lumens, just like Cinema and Natural. Color temperature measures 6285K, the grayscale delta E is 4.3 and the gamma is 2.3, all really good. Contrast is 3000:1. Input lag was super low in 1080p 120 Hz mode, dipping as low as 9.8 milliseconds and generally sticking around 10 milliseconds. In 1080p at 60 Hz the lag goes up to 19.6 milliseconds. With 4K 60 Hz, my meter registered 18.9 milliseconds of lag.

With HDR material, I measured 79% DCI/P3 coverage, but Epson makes no specific claims for wide color gamut coverage on the LS800.

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