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Epson Home Cinema 2100 and 2150 Projector Review – Performance

Posted on November 16, 2017 by Nikki Zelinger

Epson Home Cinema 2100 and 2150 Projector Review – Performance: Brightness, Sharpness, Audible Noise

Brightness

Color ModeLumens
Dynamic2617
Bright Cinema1763
Natural1708
Cinema1690

The Home Cinema 2150 beat its 2,500 lumen claim by 117 lumens, measuring in at 2,617 in Dynamic Mode. All measurements were taken at mid-zoom, on Normal power. Not surprisingly, the other modes came in lower. Bright Cinema, which is a great mode to use during the day when you’ve got some ambient light, measured at 1,763. The other two modes, which both have great color, didn’t come in much behind that. Natural mode has 1,708 lumens, while Cinema has 1,690. Not bad.

I found that Bright Cinema was usable with the curtains open, but since we have blackout curtains installed, we preferred to shut them. The other modes are still pretty bright, so we generally just used Cinema mode all the time and it was fine. When switched to ECO mode, Dynamic measured at 1,599 lumens.

Lumen Output and Color Temp at 100 IRE Dynamic Mode (Mid Zoom and Eco Lamp)

2018@6867K This equates to a 32% drop off in lumen output vs high bulb.

(2994 high vs 2018 low)

ECO-Mode: Affect on Brightness, Power Consumption

ZoomLumensColor Temp (Kelvin)
Zoom Out 66” Tall30866976K
Mid-Zoom 53.5” Tall29946704K
Zoom In 41” Tall27876792K

Sharpness

Pretty sharp! I was truly impressed with the image on the Home Cinema 2150. The quality is really seen in HD content such as films on Blu-ray disk and streaming content from Netflix, or my NVIDIA SHIELD streamer. I have a cable box, but like a true millennial, I rarely use it, so I tend to talk about streaming more.

Skin tones look natural and smooth, and everything else just looks really good. I was impressed by this sub-$1000 projector on many counts, sharpness when viewing content being one of them. The photos in the slider above show the HC2150 in action, and are good examples of the kind of sharpness you can expect from this projector.

Image Noise

I didn’t notice any real image noise on the out-of-the-box settings, except for when you get into playing with those settings. Like most projectors, you’ll get some when pushing some of the dynamic controls to their extremes. Setting your Detail Enhancement to 5 will create some image noise, and pushing CFI to High causes some minor artifacts to appear. This is most visible around objects and their background as they move around the screen.

I kept the Detail Enhancement at its default setting. There’s room to mess around with the controls to get your ideal picture, with Image Enhancement, Sharpness, etc. I’ll usually push the sharpness just a tad on these lower cost models, but that’s up to you (I left everything at default for the photos in this review). CFI – avoid High. The other two modes, Normal and Low, have less image noise, with Low having the least. Normal, while it still has a bit of image noise, shouldn’t be much of a problem when watching sports – and that is really the only type of content you should be watching with CFI, as it changes the way films and TV look.

Audible Noise

There are two power modes on the HC2150 and HC2100 – Normal, and ECO. Normal is fairly loud at 37db, but is no more bothersome than the sound of an air conditioner, so you get used to it quickly. The only mode that uses Normal power by default is Dynamic, which you probably won’t use often anyway except in dire lighting conditions.

The other three modes – Bright Cinema, Natural, and Cinema – all switch the power mode to ECO, which is much quieter at 27db. With the sound on, especially if you’ve got the projector hooked up to an external pair of speakers, you possibly won’t even hear the fan at all. Now, that 37db at Normal power is still acceptable, so if you do need to amp up any of these better modes, it shouldn’t interfere with your viewing experience.

That does it for the performance! Overall, I was really impressed with the HC2150's color and performance. Next up, we’ll summarize the review for you and provide some pros and cons.

Epson Home Cinema 2100 and 2150 Projector Review – Performance: Brightness, Sharpness, Audible Noise

Brightness

Color ModeLumens
Dynamic2617
Bright Cinema1763
Natural1708
Cinema1690

The Home Cinema 2150 beat its 2,500 lumen claim by 117 lumens, measuring in at 2,617 in Dynamic Mode. All measurements were taken at mid-zoom, on Normal power. Not surprisingly, the other modes came in lower. Bright Cinema, which is a great mode to use during the day when you’ve got some ambient light, measured at 1,763. The other two modes, which both have great color, didn’t come in much behind that. Natural mode has 1,708 lumens, while Cinema has 1,690. Not bad.

I found that Bright Cinema was usable with the curtains open, but since we have blackout curtains installed, we preferred to shut them. The other modes are still pretty bright, so we generally just used Cinema mode all the time and it was fine. When switched to ECO mode, Dynamic measured at 1,599 lumens.

Lumen Output and Color Temp at 100 IRE Dynamic Mode (Mid Zoom and Eco Lamp)

2018@6867K This equates to a 32% drop off in lumen output vs high bulb.

(2994 high vs 2018 low)

ECO-Mode: Affect on Brightness, Power Consumption

ZoomLumensColor Temp (Kelvin)
Zoom Out 66” Tall30866976K
Mid-Zoom 53.5” Tall29946704K
Zoom In 41” Tall27876792K

Sharpness

Pretty sharp! I was truly impressed with the image on the Home Cinema 2150. The quality is really seen in HD content such as films on Blu-ray disk and streaming content from Netflix, or my NVIDIA SHIELD streamer. I have a cable box, but like a true millennial, I rarely use it, so I tend to talk about streaming more.

Skin tones look natural and smooth, and everything else just looks really good. I was impressed by this sub-$1000 projector on many counts, sharpness when viewing content being one of them. The photos in the slider above show the HC2150 in action, and are good examples of the kind of sharpness you can expect from this projector.

Image Noise

I didn’t notice any real image noise on the out-of-the-box settings, except for when you get into playing with those settings. Like most projectors, you’ll get some when pushing some of the dynamic controls to their extremes. Setting your Detail Enhancement to 5 will create some image noise, and pushing CFI to High causes some minor artifacts to appear. This is most visible around objects and their background as they move around the screen.

I kept the Detail Enhancement at its default setting. There’s room to mess around with the controls to get your ideal picture, with Image Enhancement, Sharpness, etc. I’ll usually push the sharpness just a tad on these lower cost models, but that’s up to you (I left everything at default for the photos in this review). CFI – avoid High. The other two modes, Normal and Low, have less image noise, with Low having the least. Normal, while it still has a bit of image noise, shouldn’t be much of a problem when watching sports – and that is really the only type of content you should be watching with CFI, as it changes the way films and TV look.

Audible Noise

There are two power modes on the HC2150 and HC2100 – Normal, and ECO. Normal is fairly loud at 37db, but is no more bothersome than the sound of an air conditioner, so you get used to it quickly. The only mode that uses Normal power by default is Dynamic, which you probably won’t use often anyway except in dire lighting conditions.

The other three modes – Bright Cinema, Natural, and Cinema – all switch the power mode to ECO, which is much quieter at 27db. With the sound on, especially if you’ve got the projector hooked up to an external pair of speakers, you possibly won’t even hear the fan at all. Now, that 37db at Normal power is still acceptable, so if you do need to amp up any of these better modes, it shouldn’t interfere with your viewing experience.

That does it for the performance! Overall, I was really impressed with the HC2150's color and performance. Next up, we’ll summarize the review for you and provide some pros and cons.

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