Epson PowerLite Home Cinema 5030UB Pro Reviews

The Epson 5030UB projector is better then ever, with excellent picture quality for the money and class-leading light output, making it shine in both dark and moderately lit rooms.

Unless you are a gung ho DLP fan who won’t buy any other technology, this Epson needs to be on your short list if you are shopping anywhere near it’s price point. It just provides a whole lot of picture and features for a really reasonable price. While I feel there are a couple of projectors a bit more expensive that are excellent alternatives, even then, this Epson is easily brighter for media and family room environments if that’s your intent, although they are both very serious competition in the theater. The only other reason for scratching the Home Cinema 5020 UB from your list is if you have your heart set on going widescreen: 2.35:1.

The Epson PowerLite Home Cinema 5030UB is, on its face, an incremental improvement to last year's 5020UB. The specifications are similar enough, despite a significant increase in contrast, and there are no groundbreaking new features to differentiate this model from last year's version. However, the small, incremental changes made to the 5030UB come together to create an image that is smoother, more film-like, more three-dimensional, and overall more polished than the image created by last year's projector. And that is saying quite a bit, especially since last year's model was already a compelling, polished home theater projector. The bottom line is this: the Epson Home Cinema 5030UB's strengths are its stellar picture quality and abundance of features that make the projector a pleasure to use. While it has some weaknesses, they tend to be related to anamorphic video or the finer points of calibration. If you're looking for a powerful home theater projector that is great for both 2D and 3D video, it's hard to go wrong with this one.