Epson Home Cinema 8500UB Projector – Performance 3

Posted on October 22, 2009 By Art Feierman

Epson Home Cinema 8500UB: Bottom Line Sharpness

Without the Super-Resolution feature, the Epson is pretty typical in sharpness among the 3LCD and LCoS projectors, but not as sharp as most single chip DLP projectors. With the Super-Resolution feature, the Epson steps up a bit, and produces a crisper image, that’s particularly appreciated on digital content.

Light Leakage

Light leakage has never been a problem with the Epson Home and Pro series 1080p projectors. The Home Cinema 8500UB leaks a minor amount of light out the front vent. It’s off angle and insignificant. No worries!

Image Noise

Epson uses Silicon Optix Reon-VX processing which is highly regarded. The Epson projector did really well on our assorted image noise tests, but then, we use the Silicon Optix HQV test disc, so I would hope so. Seriously, the Epson is pretty clean. Of course the more special features you kick in, the more noise they are going to generate.

Audible Noise

The Epson projector is about in the middle of home theater projectors in terms of noise. It is generally quieter at full power than just about any DLP projector, and usually a fair bit quieter. It’s on the high side of average in noise, among the other LCD projectors, and the LCoS ones as well.

Epson claims 22db in low power, and that’s believable. Figure about 27 db at full power. To put that in perspective, I believe the quietest projector around is 18 db at full power, and the loudest DLP’s run around 32 – 34 db.

Epson’s dynamic iris makes a low rumbling noise that isn’t very loud or noticeable in my opinion, but I do know that it bothers some folks. I rarely, if ever notice it when the Epson is in the main theater – about 4 feet behind my seat. In some cases, I believe mounts or a rear shelf can resonate a bit with the low frequencies. I’ve noticed that by putting some soft drink coasters between the projector and the table it sits on, helps reduce the rumbling. Again, however, it is low frequency and to me definitely a lot less noticeable than the fan noise.