Get the Bigger Picture

EPSON EPIQVISION LS800 4K UST LASER PROJECTOR

-  Mark Henninger

THE ULTRA-SHORT-THROW projector category is where all the action is these days when it comes to home entertainment projection. You'll find name-brand TV makers and companies you've never heard of battling it out for a spot in your living room. But here's the thing: A UST can do both TV and home theater. In some ways, it's a whole new animal.

The Epson LS800 is an update to the company's LS500 UST. It has the same brightness specs, but it's a total reimagining of how the parts are packaged. Whereas the LS500 had a periscope-style lens and sat further from the wall than competing USTS, the LS800 sits remarkably close to the wall. The result is a new model that impresses with both its picture quality and ergonomics.

FEATURES AND SETUP

The 4000 ANSI lumen brightness and 0.16:1 throw ratio are perhaps the two most notable features. But the LS800 is also different from most UST projectors because it uses a threechip RGB LCD instead of a single-chip DLP as the imager, so it's free of the "rainbow effect" artifacts that can pop up with DLP projection.

This projector uses a laser-phosphor light source, which limits its color gamut in comparison to some triple-laser RGB USTS. But it exhibits none of the laser speckle artifacts that are often a visible distraction with triple-laser models. Another advantage of the three-LCD design is that when compared to DLP USTS, it has extremely low input latency (under 20 milliseconds at 4K 60 Hz) making it ideal for gaming.

The native resolution of the 3-LCD imager is 1080p, but Epson uses a two-way pixel shifting technique it calls 4K PRO-UHD to put more pixels on the screen. It's a tried-and-true process that does put more resolution on screen, but it's not native 4K.