Epson Pro Cinema LS10500 Projector Review – Performance

Minor confusion on our end.  I should have asked Eric to give the above numbers, for full power, rather than Medium.  We often do medium if the projector is fairly loud at full power, but that’s not an issue with the LS10500.  The good news is that the color accuracy should not change as one varies the laser’s brightness.  By comparison there are always noticeable color shifts when going from full power to an eco mode on lamp based projectors.

For most viewing, the LS10500 is bright.  These tables, show the lumen measurements from Eric’s calibration for each mode, along with the color temp of white for that mode.

Those measurements above are  with the zoom lens set  at mid-point.  That means there are a some extra lumens “under the hood”, if you can mount your projector at or near its closest point to the screen what we call full wide angle.

The LS10500 is primarily a home theater  projector.  While it has about 1500 max lumens (it’s claim), which is easily enough for a large screen (130″ diagonal), for normal 1080 content viewing.  But for 3D you need more, and for HDR, also more.  As I mentioned on the previous page, this LS10000 is best at 100″ diagonal or less for doing HDR, but you can push a little higher, but mid-tones will start getting a bit dim.

Unless you don’t care about 4K with HDR, I’d stay out of the brighter than theater type rooms, or place the projector in them only with the understanding that serious 4K HDR content, even with the right “light rejecting ALR type screen, will need a darker, not day lit room.    But still, even with a great screen designed for the job, you won’t be able to tackle a lot of ambient light, but modest to moderate amounts.  Now my living room is unusually light with lots of windows and doors on three walls.  At night, this projector will do fine on my SI Slate screen, even with 4K HDR content, as long as I control my indoor lighting appropriately.

It’s interesting that this Epson lens has the same  zoom range of 2.1:1 as many other Epsons (including the UBs), but the specs are otherwise different, no doubt due to the LS10500 having better “glass.”

Per the specs, there is slightly less drop in brightness between wide angle, and telephoto, than we’re used to on previous Epsons.    It is clearly marked as a Fujinon lens, which is what Epson’s been using for years on their UB and some other projectors.  Since we primarily use mid-zoom brightness in most discussions, and there’s often a 10-25+ percent drop from closest to mid-zoom, then in this case if you can use the closest placement you won’t see as big a jump in lumens.  In this case, not even 10%, and about 28% drop to full telephoto, while most previous Epson projectors dropped over 35%.

For those mounting further back in their rooms, that also means that the projector hasn’t lost near as much brightness, say on a rear shelf, compared to up front, as most projectors with zooms that also have a lot of zoom range.