Epson Home Cinema 3200 4K PRO-UHD 3-Chip Projector with HDR

Family loves this projector. We are enjoying the warm evenings with movie nights almost daily. It plays action shows without a hitch and volume/fan is fine. No need to get extra speakers I highly recommend this item.

Pros: Bright and performs well in a room with ambient light, has a sharp picture and great HDR controls Cons: Contrast is not optimal, lens adjustment and focus is manual and makes it extremely tedious to adjust a ceiling mounted projector, fan noise is a bit loud.

At First, I will be honest, after reading a lot of reviews and having this show up brand new with 2 small pits and a scratch on a brand new lens with a premium price, I was a bit ...concerned. HOWEVER, I set it up anyway, (after using a new lens cloth I use for photography to wipe what I thought at first was maybe a small streak of oil or something from the manufacturing process). -Imean, it comes with a lens cap. O_o? How in the name of all that is holy or monstrous can you not perhaps be gentle with optics during assembly or handling or Even QC and not notice a pretty decent scratch on a brand new UHD projectors MAIN OUTPUT METHOD.? Ugh.. But, with all that said, I turned it on and tried to find any aberrations with the picture using various methods and all I got was delicious eye candy. And, as this projector gives you 3 settings of brightness, after switching to the already quiet, stock Medium setting to ECO, it was downright silent. ( Projector was set up -just- behind my head as well for testing purposes ). It is a Very bright, crisp and silent projector. The very first day I had it on and was focusing it, I did notice once the center was in perfect clear focus, the right bottom side of the screen was just slightly not. But, having used the Epson 9200 Pro and loving that for nearly 5 years, I gave this new beast a try. Somehow, after 4 hours of use on the first day, the second day I had a hard time trying to find the once a little softer parts of the screen. * I have Zero Idea if burn-in applies to projectors of this sort with the sensor or other elements, but the slightly softer right bottom side cleared up and all I got was an extremely beautiful and engaging 4K picture with wonderful contrast and an extremely quiet and quick auto iris for even deeper blacks. ~Joy~ I ran through a bunch of basic tests using both video and Xbox One X games and just got lost in the detail and rendering of what the console and Projector are capable of. It is, for sure, a treat for the eyes. Current screen is matte white, 100 at about 11ft (in a light controlled room), but zoomed as large as it could go just to check pixels and it was still crisp and clear and looked like a 100 , 200LB 4K led display. . . but this you can throw in a large backpack and not hire a crew to move it. ~ Also Joy ~ SO, in short, I have no regrets purchasing this and am still sort of in awe of the overall quality upgrade. Im still a bit unsure about the process of out-the-door QC at that particular plant, but truth be told, ~ Unlike a camera lens Receiving light Into it, perhaps shooting light Out of a lens at a distance of 10 - 15+ ft onto a screen/wall is a completely different animal. And perhaps Epson knows this. (?) Thankfully, and weirdly, it does not effect picture. No idea why. But, I do start my new job as a Rocket Surgeon soon so maybe will have some answers then. I have no plans to return it as it otherwise works flawlessly so far. So even with the slight blemish, shes a keeper ;)

Even with some light this projector still shines so bright

Very bright and at most times the image is sharp. But, there are a lot of unpleasant visual effects. Dont really know how to describe it. When there were desert sands on screen there was like pink blobs.. when showing the sky there was massive rainbow effects. Honestly, the cheap 70$ one this replaces didnt have these problems. Im not going to return it but I would not have bought it had I known the picture would be like it is.

I switched to this from my old 3000 Lumen 720p projector. I had expected a clarity improvement, but I was unsure about the drop down to 2900 Lumens since the 3000 wasnt great in a brighter environment that I sometimes have. Im pleased to say that I was blown away by the improvement in clarity and completely surprised by the brightness. I know the rating is 100 Lumens lower, but it seems significantly brighter than my old projector.

Lens shift, zoom and focus make this projector easier to install than most. You dont have to mount it dead center of the screen, You just get it close and then adjust the image to fit. Image quality is outstanding as is brightness. At 20lb. it is a bit heavy so take this into account when mounting it.

PROS: + At 2,900 Lumens, this projector is bright + Pixel Shifting 4K Projector looks great; in particular with HDR content + Accepts full 10-bit HDR source input signal + Supports 4k @ 60fps resolution via HDMI 2.0 (18 Gbps) + Excellent vertical & horizontal optical lens adjustments (manual) + Latest Bluetooth tech for external audio source + Little to no fan noise in Eco modes + 3LCD tech avoids rainbows, for those sensitive to it + 3D glasses support, for those who aren’t happy with a mere 2 dimensions + Low input lag and latency for gaming + Relatively compact design for a 4k projector + Lots of advanced picture controls and adjustments + Full-featured remote control + 2.0A USB Power Port CONS: - Poor black levels - No built-in speakers - Fan can get noisy at higher brightness levels - Some may find on the pricey side BACKGROUND First I should note that I have an existing home theater/office that I’m using to test out this projector. I currently have an Optoma UHD65 DLP 4k projector. This would be at a different price point but I’ll make a few notable comparisons. I’m also using a Silver Ticket 120” 16:9 Gray Material screen and about 12’ away. The room has blackout curtains but I did tests in complete darkness and with various levels of ambient light. UNBOXING & SETUP Out of the box you’ve got the projector, a remote, batteries, documentation, and a power cable. No HDMI cable is included. The project itself is compact for a 4k projector. It’s smaller than the Optoma UHD65. The lens is off-set, which is normal for smaller projectors. That’s just something to note for installation. Although it’s easy to adjust for that. Speaking of setup, it’s fairly straight forward as just about any modern-day projector. There are adjustable feet for table use as well as ceiling mount points on the bottom. Thanks to the manual lens adjustments for horizontal and vertical positions, installation is very easy. Some projectors don’t have this, such as the current Optoma projectors, meaning you have to mount dead center and at just the right height. Otherwise, you’ll have to deal with digital keystone correction which limits resolution since it’s basically cropping the image. Avoid digital this if at all possible. The physical optical lens shift is the way to go. REMOTE CONTROL The non-universal remote is surprisingly useful for the projector. It’s a standard candy-bar design with quick-access buttons for just about every feature you could want. There are still menus that you’ll need to dig through for some advanced functions. But the basic stuff is all there with a single button. The remote is also backlit and very intuitive to use. The IR signal and receiver are strong enough so that I can just point at the screen and the project at the back of the room picks up on the signal. I’ve used some projector remotes that fail at this. CONTROLS & SETTINGS I won’t go through every setting as the manual would do a better job. But Epson projectors are well known for having just about every advanced feature and setting you could possibly want. In addition to several common features in the form of physical buttons on the projector. But the on-screen menu itself is laid out in an intuitive manner. In other words, if you just want to make some basic adjustments to brightness or pick a preset picture mode, you can do that. Or if you want to adjust the gamma or hue and color saturation, it’s all there for you. For example, the primary color mode presets of Dynamic, Bright Cinema, Natural, and Cinema will be all that your average user needs to touch in order to get the picture they are comfortable with. PICTURE QUALITY I did most testing in Natural, ECO power mode, and High-Speed Auto Iris. I haven’t spent much time doing extensive calibration yet as it’s surprisingly good with a few minor changes. After the bulb has some more hours on it I’ll go through that process and update here as needed. Basically, the picture looks great. The bright 2,900-lumen output with HDR enabled really makes colors pop. And with 4k pixel shifting, you do notice those fine details. At least with 4k content, which is most of what I watch these days. It’s worth noting this isn’t a “true 4K” projector, but with said pixel-shifting, it technically meets the industry definition for use of 4k branding due to the number of pixels hitting the screen. Compared to the Optoma, I do find it’s DLP chipset to produce a smoother picture which lends itself to a more crisp image. There’s more vibrant color saturation with Optoma’s RGBRGB color wheel versus the RGBCYW of the Epson. The latter is meant to allow more light output. But that’s something you really do have to compare back-to-back to appreciate. On its own, the 3200 is really impressive with 4k content; more so with HDR as it has the added benefit of being quite bright. The biggest negative is absolutely the 40:000:1 contrast ratio. Whereas the pricier models can easily push 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio, it’s very noticeable with any content where there is a decent amount of black content and when viewing in a dark room. The best you get is a medium gray color. This is most apparent in the dark home theater environment. With curtains opens or a little ambient light, it’s essentially a non-issue for virtually any projector. GAMING I threw a few 4k games at the projector via my Xbox One X and it absolutely met all expectations. After some more back-to-back comparisons with the DLP projector, there is a noticeable improvement with lower input lag. I had pretty much gotten used to it and had simply adjusted to the lag by dying more frequently. But if you are playing a game that benefits from fast responses you’ll appreciate the quick responsiveness via low input lag. AUDIO There are no speakers on this model, which is unfortunate as I know some would like that for outdoor use. The remote is used for other projectors, so there are volume controls, but they won’t do anything with the 3200. There is an aux jack for audio output as well as Bluetooth audio streaming. Bluetooth is using a relatively new “aptX” Bluetooth standard that compresses and decompresses audio streams for fast low latency audio transmission to your wireless receiver (i.e. headphones, speakers, etc). Older Bluetooth receivers may not support this new standard. Regardless, you’ll get much better audio quality if you provide your own HDMI AV receiver and speaker system. Just make sure it supports HDCP 2.2 and HDMI 2.0 standards for 4k passthrough. CONCLUSION There are projectors for just about every use case you can think of. Which is what I’m going to focus my review and rating. This projector is ideal for a living room home theater. In other words, a dual-purpose room. Where you may have some ambient light coming into the room because you have a near-by kitchen, game room, window, etc. In which case the bright output of the projector can still produce a nice crisp and detailed 4k image. Just note that as with any projector, black levels and overall image visibility will suffer due to external light sources other than the projector itself. This is why in those situations, a lower contrast ratio isn’t as big of a deal. And you still need to have some control of light as there are physical limitations here. Also, a gray material screen will help with black levels and reflections from said lighting. If you’re going to primarily use this in a dedicated home theater where you can control all light sources, the 3200 is still perfectly acceptable. But if you’re particular about those black levels, I’d suggest moving to an alternate and possibly more expensive model with a better contrast ratio. As long as you make the right choice for your needs, you won’t regret the decision. The Epson 3200’s bright lumen output, 4k HDR picture quality, and flexible installation make this an easy recommendation from me.

This one had really bad picture quality.

Works quite well right out of the box. There are some issues getting focus perfect in all areas of the screen, but installation went really quick to replace older 720p DLP ceiling mount unit in the same spot. The flexibility of the throw distance made this the right choice. Wide range on optics for zoom and lens shift allow it to go right up. However, as discussed in some forums, it obviously wants a perfectly perpendicular lens geometry for accurate focus. Any down tilt for ceiling throw off keystone and thus requires minor compromise on perfection. I may have to lower the mount to get this right. However, that said for the money this does seem to a sweet spot right now. I wish I waited a few more days because it looks like it is about to break some more on the price, making it even sweeter. I expect that trend to continue over the next few weeks.