Campbell Simpson Good Gear Guide
Bottom Line:
Epson’s EH-TW3000 Full HD 1080p home theatre projector is a great all-round model. It costs less than $3000 and it performs almost as well as models costing significantly more.
This Full HD 1080p home theatre projector from Epson costs less than $3000 and has plenty of adjustment options.
The Epson EH-TW3000 is a home theatre projector that provides a native Full HD 1080p resolution and plenty of picture adjustment for under $3000. The image it creates is of good quality and is almost as refined as much more expensive models.
Like other Epson projectors we have reviewed such as the Epson EH-DM2 and the Epson W6, the Epson EH-TW3000 has a pleasant white exterior and a rather standard layout. The lens is offset to the left hand side of the chassis, while the on-board controls are in the centre of the home theatre projector’s top face.
If you’re planning to connect a multitude of video devices to the Epson EH-TW3000 you will be well catered for. Two HDMI 1.3a ports as well as individual component, composite, S-Video and VGA connectors means plenty of devices can be connected simultaneously.
The specifications of the EH-TW3000 are impressive. A dynamic contrast ratio of 18000:1 is impressive, especially when combined with a high brightness level of 1800 ANSI lumens. A 10-bit colour processor means images have a wide colour gamut, while Epson’s latest D7 image processing chip allows deep blacks and drastically reduced image noise.
It looks great on paper… and it’s just as good in real life. We set the Epson EH-TW3000 up with a Sony BDP-S350 and played some Planet Earth Blu-ray discs to test out the home theatre projector’s Full HD capabilities.
It did not disappoint, with consistent sharpness and fine image detail from corner to corner. In its default settings we definitely found the image too bright — with the added downside of producing intrusive fan noise. When the brightness was lowered to more theatre room-friendly levels fan noise dropped off to near-inaudible levels.
The dynamic iris mode is exceptionally fast — in most cases we were unable to detect when the brightness was being lowered and boosted. Because of this, the contrast between light and dark scenes is great with plenty of detail visible in both extremes.
Even in our standard definition video tests, with the difficult lobby scene from The Matrix, the Epson EH-TW3000’s up-scaler efficiently displayed video with no aberrations or artifacting.
There are no areas where the Epson EH-TW3000 struggles. It is a capable all-round home theatre projector for a good price, so if you are considering a more expensive model, check out Epson’s offering as well.
