Epson Home Cinema 3010 – Review Summary

Epson Home Cinema 3010 Projector - The Bottom Line

What it offers instead, is a close to best picture for the money, and just about double the brightness of all but one or two competitors.

And being a bright projector is a wonderful thing for family rooms, bonus rooms and outdoor evenings. That significant extra brightness should give this Epson a lot of bonus points with me, and most of you. I’ve been yelling at manufacturers for years, to give us brighter projectors for the family room.

Until now, those brighter ones have mostly been very entry level lower res projectors, or some crossovers – modified biz projectors that aren’t even close to a match with projectors like this Epson 3010 in picture quality.

With the Epson Home Cinema 3010, you really get an all around projector, that has no major flaws. Skin tones are rather good, black level performance is very good for the price, and the Epson is pretty well loaded with features, other than lacking CFI – motion smoothing and lens shift.

Features include a full CMS for color adjustment, 3D of course, a zoom lens with good zoom range (1.5:1), and sophisticated gamma controls. Although the projector lacks lens shift, it has pretty good placement flexibility regardless. You get a full control panel on the projector and good remote control with plenty of range.

Remember, these Epson Home Cinema 3010 projectors are geared first for family room type environments. If you do have the budget for something more expensive, and want a step up in quality, there’s plenty out there, but in this price range, with this type of feature set, especially with light canon brightness, the Home Cinema 3010 is going to be hard to beat.

For those caring for 3D capabilities, in fact, most likely the two most interesting alternatives are going to be around $3000, and that would be the previously mentioned Panasonic PT-AE7000 and Epson Home Cinema 5010. Both are also bright projectors, with 3D. At the same price (roughly) as the Epson, is the Optoma HD33. Of the two, though, the Epson seems to be a much better value, brighter, more features…

If you are only interested in 2D only: There are more good choices. Consider the Epson 8350, and Mitsubishi HC4000 two of our favorites, and also the forthcoming Panasonic PT-AR100U, which should be even brighter (2800 lumens claimed vs 2400), for $1999. Just remember, despite that extra $400 the Panasonic is 2D only. Also, the Epson has the best warranty of any of those mentioned.

If you are going into a theater type environment, and don’t need all that brightness, then two more alternatives are the just being discontinued (10/11) Panasonic PT-AE4000U and the Epson Home Cinema 8700UB, which have been, without doubt, the best selling ultra high contrast projectors out there.

I’ll mention one more, the BenQ W6000 for those craving for a fairly bright projector, with that DLP “look and feel”. It too, is more in the $2000 range, but it’s not quite as bright as the Epson.

After offering you some possible 2D only alternatives, I’ll still pitch the Epson 3010 and 3D. Why?

I think there’s some great 3D for almost everyone.

Don’t sell 3D short, just becaue the perception is that most movies are for kids, or at least “family” flicks, or gimmicky. The wide range of other great content on Blu-ray 3D and HDTV, almost certainly has something you will like, and glasses aren’t much of a “price” to pay for the 3D experience. It really can make a world of difference entering a bright, 3D world through your 7 to 10 foot wide screen! It’s nothing like watching on a 42″ LCDTV demo at Best Buy.