Test and review of the Epson EH-TW650 projector: the best quality for your money

Small but remote: with over­all dimen­sions of 300x90x250 mm, the Epson EH-TW650 is as com­pact as it is pos­si­ble in prin­ci­ple with the cur­rent lev­el of tech­nol­o­gy. In addi­tion, its weight is only 2.7 kg, which means it is real­ly light. Thus, the pro­jec­tor is easy to trans­port, for exam­ple, to watch foot­ball with friends. The TW650 shines with a max­i­mum bright­ness of 2,531 lumens, so you can use it with­out prob­lems even in the light. In the stan­dard oper­at­ing mode, we mea­sured quite decent 1,356 lumens.

Test results

A good pro­jec­tor does­n’t have to cost like a heli­copter wing: the Epson EH-TW650 costs less than $450, but still pro­vides a good home the­ater expe­ri­ence. While the Full-HD pro­jec­tor did­n’t per­form at its best dur­ing our test­ing, it man­aged to please us with a bal­anced set of para­me­ters: all scores were uni­form­ly good. Because Epson uses LCD tech­nol­o­gy, there is no rain­bow effect found in DLP pro­jec­tors. At the same time, the view­er will have to refuse 3D-dis­play.

Epson EH-TW650 test results

As natural as possible

This Full-HD pro­jec­tor projects images using 3LCD tech­nol­o­gy, which we like for the nat­u­ral­ness of the dis­played col­ors and the high lev­el of detail in the pic­ture. Accord­ing to the mea­sure­ment results, the gam­ma devi­a­tion is 4%, so that even when view­ing dark scenes, many details remain clear­ly dis­tin­guish­able. For com­par­i­son: in its price cat­e­go­ry, this is the best val­ue. Usu­al­ly the devi­a­tion is much more notice­able and ranges from 6 to 11%.

How­ev­er, the 1.2x zoom does not pro­vide much room for maneu­ver, so you need to be care­ful when posi­tion­ing the device. Ver­ti­cal (auto­mat­ic) and hor­i­zon­tal key­stone cor­rec­tion, how­ev­er, make it pos­si­ble to form images on the wall at angles of +/-30 degrees. Epson EH-TW650 is suit­able for loss­less image pro­jec­tion on screens up to 300-inch diag­o­nal.

A well-equipped projector

Two HDMI inter­faces pro­vide the best pos­si­ble qual­i­ty, but alter­na­tive­ly, you can also use the VGA out­put to con­nect a lap­top. Epson EH-TW650 also has a USB port. Exter­nal speak­ers can be con­nect­ed via an RCA cable (Cinch), since the sound qual­i­ty of the inte­grat­ed speak­ers leaves much to be desired, like most of these devices. A good addi­tion would be, for exam­ple, speak­ers Edi­fi­er Stu­dio R1280T.

Whisperer in Eco mode

When the light out­put is high, the lamp becomes hot faster and the fan is forced to work hard­er. Accord­ing to the man­u­fac­tur­er, the Epson EH-TW650 achieves a max­i­mum vol­ume of 37 deci­bels (dB). This, although not extreme­ly loud, is still clear­ly audi­ble and may inter­fere with some users. If you watch a movie in Eco-mode, the fan will make noise with an imper­cep­ti­ble 28 dB — they are eas­i­ly cov­ered by the sounds of the movie.

One film every day is enough for 11 years

Epson is pret­ty self-con­fi­dent and gives cus­tomers a record-break­ing war­ran­ty peri­od: accord­ing to the man­u­fac­tur­er, the lamp will be able to work for 36 months, or 3,000 hours of oper­a­tion, whichev­er comes first. If you con­vert to more prac­ti­cal units, such as an aver­age movie length of 105 min­utes, it turns out that with the help of an Epson pro­jec­tor, you can watch one movie every day for 11 years. This is indeed an ambi­tious war­ran­ty peri­od, as Epson’s promis­es are one of a kind in the pro­jec­tor seg­ment.

In terms of val­ue for mon­ey, this pro­jec­tor cur­rent­ly occu­pies the high­est place. No oth­er device cur­rent­ly offers such good image qual­i­ty and fea­tures for less than $45,000 — a clear win­ner.

Alternative: Benq TH683

Who, when choos­ing a pro­jec­tor, attach­es great impor­tance to the pres­ence of a 3D dis­play func­tion, he should take a clos­er look at the BenQ TH683. It sup­ports 3D for­mat and costs only 50 euros more. The image qual­i­ty is slight­ly bet­ter though. It projects an image using reli­able DLP tech­nol­o­gy, so it is great for both indoor and out­door use. It also has a high­er con­trast ratio, although in dark scenes it does­n’t have the same high lev­el of detail as Epson’s pro­jec­tor. Nev­er­the­less, it is a good and at the same time inex­pen­sive alter­na­tive for 3D lovers.

Alternative: Optoma UHD550X

Who­ev­er finds Full-HD res­o­lu­tion insuf­fi­cient, the Optoma UHD550X can get a won­der­ful UHD pro­jec­tor. It has very good image qual­i­ty and cap­ti­vates with a high lev­el of detail in all light­ing con­di­tions. Thanks to its high con­trast, you can see the pic­ture clear­ly even in bright sun­light. But a 4K pro­jec­tor has a cor­re­spond­ing price …

Read also:

• Buy­ing a pro­jec­tor: what to look for
• How to choose a pro­jec­tor for your home: what res­o­lu­tion is right for you

Epson EH-TW650 test results

Specifications and test results Epson EH-TW650

Pho­to: man­u­fac­tur­er, pixabay.com