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The Epson Home Cinema 640 3LCD Projector ($359.99) is a solid choice as a home-entertainment projector if you’re on a tight budget, don’t need 3D support, and don’t mind having a lower resolution than typical models. Rated at 3,200 lumens, it can throw an image that’s big enough to dwarf any similarly priced HDTV, and bright enough stand up to ambient light in a family room. Even if you already have a top-quality home-theater projector for watching movies, you might want the 640 as a second projector that you can move from room to room or set up in your backyard to watch movies outdoors on a summer night.
The key reason for the 640’s low price is its low 800-by-600 resolution. Like most TVs today, most home-entertainment projectors—including the Epson PowerLite Home Cinema 730HD ($890.00 at Amazon)(Opens in a new window) , which is our Editors’ Choice budget-priced 2D home-entertainment projector, and the Epson PowerLite Home Cinema 750HD ($1,495.00 at Amazon)(Opens in a new window) , our top pick for a budget 3D home-entertainment model—deliver at least 720p (1,280-by-720) native resolution. And most of those, including the BenQ TH670 ($1,239.98 at Amazon)(Opens in a new window) , offer full HD (1,920-by-1,080) resolution.
Quite simply, the 640’s 800-by-600 resolution can’t show the same level of detail that you’d see with 720p, much less 1080p. But it still offers substantially higher resolution than standard-definition television (SDTV), which everyone found acceptable before HDTV and is still the resolution you get with non-HD channels.
Basics and Setup
At 3.1 by 11.6 by 9 inches (HWD) and 5 pounds 5 ounces, the 640 is small and lightweight enough to move from room to room easily, or—if you don’t have a place to set it up permanently—store it away when you’re not using it.
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Setup is standard, with manual focus, but no optical zoom. There is a digital zoom that lets you adjust the image size without moving the projector. However, that’s best avoided, since a digital zoom can introduce artifacts with some images.
Image inputs are all on the back, with one HDMI port, one VGA port for a PC or component video, and both S-video and composite video ports. In addition, there are a USB Type A connector for reading files directly from a USB memory key, and a USB Type B connector for connecting to a PC for direct USB display. There’s also a Wi-Fi icon near the USB Type A port that suggests you can plug in a Wi-Fi dongle, but according to Epson that’s only because the 640 uses the same case as other models that support Wi-Fi. The 640 itself doesn’t.
Brightness
Using the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) recommendations, 3,200 lumens is bright enough in theater-dark lighting for a 208- to 282-inch image (measured diagonally), assuming a 1.0-gain screen. For moderate ambient light, the size drops to 138 inches.
One important issue to keep in mind is that these numbers are the measurements for the 640’s full 4:3 native aspect ratio. When you’re watching a widescreen, 16:9 movie or TV show, the image will cover only a portion of the screen. The appropriate sizes for the 16:9 image will be 191 to 259 inches in theater-dark lighting and 127 inches with moderate ambient light. For darker rooms or smaller screen sizes, you can adjust the 640’s brightness by switching to Eco mode, choosing one of the lower-brightness preset modes, or both.
Image Quality
The level of image detail with 1080p input is appropriately crisp for the 640’s native resolution, putting it a step up from standard-definition 480p, but a big step down from 720p HD. Typically for a model with this resolution, I would also expect to see the LCD screen-door effect—with each individual pixel outlined by thin, dark lines. Surprisingly, however, I had to stand as close as three feet from the 78-inch-wide image I used for most testing to see the lines. They simply don’t show from a typical viewing distance of 10 feet or more.
See How We Test Projectors
Image quality is more than acceptable otherwise, although it falls just barely into the near-excellent range. I saw a touch of posterization (details changing suddenly where they should change gradually) and a minor loss of shadow detail (details based on shading in dark areas), but only on particularly demanding test clips.
In addition, the contrast ratio was low enough in my tests in theater-dark lighting to notice, but not low enough to be an issue with ambient light. More important is that color quality was near excellent in my tests, and so was color balance. It also helps that the three-chip LCD design guarantees that the 640 won’t show the rainbow artifacts that virtually all DLP projectors do. Overall, the image quality is comparable to what you’d expect from a high-quality SDTV.
Audio and Lag Time
The 640’s two-watt mono speaker delivers good sound quality, with enough volume to fill a small family room or living room. Unfortunately, there’s no audio-out port. For stereo, better sound quality, or higher volume, you’ll have to bypass the projector entirely.
The 640’s lag time is at least arguably good enough for casual gamers. I measured it, using a Leo Bodnar Video Signal Input Lag Tester , at 45 to 50 milliseconds (ms), depending on the preset color mode. That translates to 2.7 to 3 frames at 60 frames per second, which is not much slower than the fastest projectors we’ve tested, at 33ms or two frames. However, serious gamers tend to think even a 33ms lag is unacceptable.
Conclusion
For a projector that offers a higher-resolution image but is also reasonably low-priced, consider the Epson 730HD, our top pick for 720p 2D projectors; the Epson 750HD, our preferred budget choice for 720p 3D models; or the DLP-based BenQ TH670, which offers 1080p, but shows occasional rainbow artifacts. If your primary criterion is cost, however, the Epson Home Cinema 640 3LCD Projector will give you a big, bright, highly watchable image for a seductively low price.
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Source link : https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/epson-home-cinema-640-3lcd-projector