Epson EX5230 Portable Business Projector Review – Performance

Brightness

The EX5230 is a very bright projector.  It has a rated light output of 3500 lumens and my measurements show that the peak light output (measured near the center of the projected image) exceeded the Epson specification in the brightest mode.  Below are the measured peak lumens values for the various color modes and when using the projector’s out-of-the-box settings.

Color Mode     Lumens of Light Output

Dynamic              3612

Presentation       2721

Theater                2404

Photo                    2381

Sports                   3049

sRGB                     2416

Blackboard           1853

Whiteboard          2456

The factory default settings for brightness and contrast were nearly correct.  However there was a slight amount of “White Crush” which was easily corrected by reducing the setting for the contrast by one unit (i.e., to a setting of -1).

The above lumens values were measured with the projector operating in normal lamp mode.  Changing the projector  to “Eco” mode reduced the light output to approximate 2/3 the brightness of normal mode.

I measured the brightness uniformity with the projector sitting level on a table.  The vertical and horizontal keystone adjustments were set to zero, meaning no electronic keystone correction was being used.  The brightest point was near the center of the image and the greatest light fall-off was measured at the top right corner of the image where it was nearly 40% lower than at the brightest point.  There was less drop-off in brightness at the other three corners.  While the degree of light fall-off measured at the at the top-right corner could be visually observed when projecting a full white test image, it was not very obvious when viewing normal video material.

There was a minor color uniformity issue with the unit reviewed.  When projecting a full white test image there was some yellow shading observed along the left edge of the image.  However, this was not very obvious when viewing normal video material.

Noise

The Epson EX5230 is specified to produce a noise level of 37 dB in normal lamp mode and 29 dB in Eco mode.  These values, especially in normal operating mode, are toward the upper end of what is typical for this class of projector.  While the noise level, especially with the lamp operating in normal mode, is certainly audible, it should not be distracting to most people when this projector is being used in a business conference room environment.  Changing to the “Eco” mode resulted in a noticeable decrease in noise level and to a level similar to that from a typical home theater projector when such a projector is operating in its normal mode.

Audio Performance

The EX5230 has a single 2 watt built-in speaker that produces adequate volume to not only overcome the projector’s fan noise but also is sufficient to provide the audio in a small conference room.  As is expected from such a modest size built-in speaker and with only 2 watts of power, there is no real bass and the maximum volume is limited.  Overall, the EX5230 produces average sound quality and volume for this class of portable projector but less than some other models, including some from Epson.  It certainly will work well for voice narrations and background music for an audience seated around a typical conference table.  If used in a larger room with a audience spread out over a greater area then an external amplified speaker could be used instead of relying on the small internal speaker.

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