Epson PowerLite Home Cinema 3020

Bottom Line

For 3D on a budget, it's hard to beat the Epson Home Cinema 3020. Mediocre blacks are a disappointment for purists, but great brightness and near perfect color without calibration makes it a great choice for family-room viewing. 3D performance, while not perfect, is on the right side of very good.

Image Quality

Great color, lots of light, so-so blacks. Because of relatively weak black levels, critics say that the Epson PowerLite Home Cinema 3020 isn't really the best choice for use in a darkened home theater room (although it can do reasonably well under the right settings). In rooms with some ambient light, however, it can shine -- literally. That makes it a good choice for spaces that serve more purposes than watching movies, such as living rooms, dens, and family rooms. That high brightness also comes in handy for 3D, working to overcome the brightness penalty that all 3D glasses impose.

But while black levels aren't widely appreciated, color performance is. Bill Livolsi at ProjectorCentral.com writes, "since default color is already close to ideal, you 'set it and forget it' types can just open the box, plunk the projector down on the coffee table, and get right to enjoying your new home video projector.

Art Feierman of ProjectorReviews.com agrees, saying "You don't have to calibrate this projector to enjoy a real good picture," adding that those that like to tinker will find making adjustments easy to do. Livolsi, on the other hand, chirps a little that the user menu is a little slow to respond. "This isn't annoying until it is, at which point you've overshot your option and have to go back," he says, while adding that it's not an issue at all once the projector has been set up.

Image quality in 3D is also pretty good. Epson is among the makers that have switched from IR to RF glasses, and that helps keep things in sync; with IR glasses, even tilting your head could cause the glasses to lose sync with the screen momentarily, dissolving the 3D effect. Crosstalk is minimal in the default settings, and turning down the glasses' brightness setting pretty much gets rid of it altogether, Livolsi says.

Note that this projector is offered in two versions: the Epson PowerLite Home Cinema 3020 and the Epson PowerLite Home Cinema 3020e (*Est. $1,900) . The difference? The latter has WirelessHD capability for getting a signal from your source (a Blu-ray player, for example) to the projector; otherwise, the projectors and their performance are identical.

Features

Value-added options abound. Robert Silva at About.com notes that the Epson Home Cinema 3020's 2D to 3D function does add some depth to 2D images, but isn't always accurate -- he's not a huge fan, but thinks the 2D-to-3D feature might be useful for enhancing sports content if applied sparingly.

Also of particular note: Built-in 10-watt speakers with, as Livolsi writes, "enough volume power to give your favorite movie or television show the oomph it deserves" -- although of course, it won't substitute for a dedicated home theater sound system.

The video projector lacks an enhanced refresh rate, but we didn't see any extraordinary complaints regarding motion blur. There's also no dejudder or frame interpolation feature, so the typical judder of 24 fps film content on video is present. Some may be bothered by that, but more seem to be turned off by the unnatural quality that dejudder can introduce (the so-called "soap opera effect").

Rounding out the line up are some of what Feierman calls "cool features, such as a split screen and USB slideshow functions.

Setup and Use

Great usability, with minor exceptions. Although the Epson PowerLite Home Cinema 3020 doesn't have lens shift capability its 1.6x manual zoom gives you good flexibility as far as placement distance from the screen.

Silva points out that when using the Epson Home Cinema 3020 in 3D mode, the fan becomes noticeably louder -- an observation echoed by a number of user reviewers. We also found a few comments that the auto iris function (which can be disabled) makes a noticeable soft clicking as it operates.

For gamers, Livolsi points out significant input lag -- 67 to 84 milliseconds -- that might make this projector less than ideal. And finally, Livolsi says that the Epson 3020's manual focus mechanism moves smoothly but tends to shift slightly in the first 10 minutes of operation; he suggests adjusting the focus after 10 minutes or so of warm-up time then leaving it there for the next warm-up.

Value

Great value for a 3D LCD projector. Reviewers note that the Epson PowerLite HomeCinema 3020 is among the lowest-priced 3D projectors available. Owners posting at BestBuy.com give the Epson Home Cinema 3020 a quiet vote for value; in every case, it receives 5 stars out of 5 for that characteristic. "Great price for what it offers," explains one user.

Feierman agrees, noting that the Epson Home Cinema 3020 comes at a great price for a 3D-capable LCD projector. The fact that it's an LCD projector -- and thus doesn't produce the rainbow effect a small percentage of viewers perceive with DLP projectors -- may be the Epson Home Cinema 3020's greatest distinction in this price range.