Epson Home Cinema 6500UB – Review Summary

Epson Home Cinema 6500UB Projector - The Bottom Line

The 6500UB improves on the older, and top rated Home Cinema 1080 UB. It accomplishes this with more brightness, a sharper image, and even better black levels. It even got a little quieter in operation.

While good right out of the box (better than most) with a basic calibration the Home Cinema 6500UB improves even further. None of the other LCD projectors near its price range can match its brightness or its stellar black level performance.

Nor can the DLP projectors out there touch its black levels. That pretty much leaves the JVC projectors – JVC is the reigning black level champ, but none of theirs is close to the price of this Epson. Sony’s new HW10 comes up a little short, although the much more expensive VPL-VW70 (VW80 overseas?), may match or even beat the Epson. This we will find out when we review one of those Sonys.

The only real issues with the Epson are the Frame Interpolation problems, which for some will be important, but for most of us, I’m not overly concerned about a feature that can do some good, but adds/subtracts something from the original, when our normal goal is to faithfully reproduce the original.

The Epson should work well on screens up to 110 inch diagonal for movie watching in dark rooms, without having to go to very high gain screens. It has more lumens than all but a handful of competitors when it comes to delivering maximum lumens (“brightest mode”) for working in moderate ambient light conditions.

The combination of great blacks, good dynamics and a very sharp image provide more depth to the image than many competitors as well.

Overall, I really like the Epson for its rich, dynamic look. In this regard perhaps it isn’t as “film-like” as some other projectors, but then, it does have a lot of wow factor – pop, but without being over the top. Some of the other projectors I ran side by side, seemed a bit dull and lacking, by comparison.

Epson Home Cinema 6500UB Projector: Pros, Cons, and Typical Capabilities

We give the Epson our Hot Product Award, and, as of this writing, it looks to be a serious contender for a Best in Class award in our upcoming comparison: The 1080p Projector Comparion Report. I’ll start working on that late January, after the last four “must include” projectors have been reviewed.

There’s plenty of competiton for the Epson Home Cinema 6500UB, but this projector seems up to the task. Of the LCD projectors, it is now my favorite, with or without a fully functional Frame Interpolation capability. With a starting street price of under $2800 (after rebate), the Home Cinema 6500UB is going to be really tough to beat from a price/performance standpoint.