If you’re looking for a projector to build your home cinema around then I can’t speak highly enough when it comes to the EH-LS12000B 4K PRO-UHD. It’s one the best projectors you can buy this year under ten thousand Aussie dollars – $8999 to be precise. I spent a full day with at Epson Australia HQ playing with settings, screens, and various media to record this review. Hopefully the images speak for themselves, because when it comes to a pure cinema experience, this projector delivers. Of course you’ll have to supply the media, whether it’s UHD disc or Google/Amazon dongle.
WHAT’S DIFFERENT?
The key to this projector is the light source and the path it takes to your screen. Using pixel shift technology, this laser projector pumps out 2,700 lumens of white brightness – the same for colour to. It can do this for 20 thousand hours at 100 percent – which isn’t always needed. The colour engine driving the LS120000 delivers a beautiful picture thanks to full 10-bit colour processing and HDR10+ support.
Although the out-of-box experience is pretty good – when I visited my own YouTube channel .. SDR content .. colour and contrast was too low. With no opportunity to calibrate professionally – I just eye-balled it – and given I was familiar with the source material it was pretty easy. Once I got YouTube looking goodI moved onto the movies via UHD disc. Expect great Stand Dynamic Range results – high dynamic range was good but make sure those ambient light levels are low for best performance.
I’ve watched Godzilla vs Kong before and this is a very colour rich film. I felt I nailed the settings for this and it looked amazing. 1917 was pretty close to perfect. The colours were spot on for overcast day scenes and at night the colour and contrast did justice to Roger Deacons legendary cinematography.
MOTION
You also have options when it comes to motion. Easily the most frustrating issue when it comes to home entertainment systems. Normally you would have frame interpolation turned off for movies but there are times when it helps. And I’m saying this as a fan of the traditional 24p look. You can choose from off, low, normal and high. It makes a difference but do you really want to be chasing this the entire film?
Of course when it comes to watching sport you want smooth action. So I watched a bit of cricket from YouTube – and as a big event projector – the LS12000 is definitely a winner.
INPUTS
The inputs on the back support HDMI 2.1 so you can enjoy gaming at 120 frames per second and there’s eARC for audio over HDMI. I had an Amazon dongle plugged in for online content such as Netflix, YouTube and other streaming services.
REMOTE
It’s backlit but only after pressing the button in the top right corner. But it has a lot of shortcuts and you’ll use most of them. So don’t be afraid to dig into he settings because there is a lot of room to move when it comes to gamma and other adjustments.
SCREEN SIZE
When it comes to screen-size this standard or long throw projector lights up a 50 to a massive 300” 16:19 frame. But you’ll need some depth in your room 3.0 – 6.3 metres for a 100 inch result. I found this projector can pull off a pretty good image on any screen .. even the light rejecting screen that I found behind the main screen. While this test unit was on a table at the back of the room … ideally you would mount the LS12000 on the ceiling. It’s a big unit so don’t skimp on the support bolts.
SCREEN ALIGNMENT
Epson makes aligning the LS12000B very easy. Say there’s light fixture in your home that can’t be moved .. or a ceiling fan .. with motorised Lens Shift you can direct the projector so the light beams past it. You can save positions in memory too. So if you need to move the projector back to an early setup – you can just recall it and it moves precisely into place. I had a lot o fun with this. I just wish I had more than a day with it.
SUMMARY
The Epson LS12000 is a fantastic projector. If you want a true cinema experience at home – this will provide it. In Australia it retails for $8 999 .. so it’s a significant investment. But with the right screen, dark room, and thumping sound system it’s an investment that will give you hours of viewing joy.
