Epson EpiqVision LS650 UST Laser Projector Review.

The Epson LS650 UST Laser Projector is a well-built ultra-short throw projector with a single laser light source that lasts for 20,000 hours. With simple setup and installation, it can project a bright and sharp image up to 120 inches on your living room wall or screen with support for HDR10 and Ultra HD resolution. Integrated Android TV means you can stream content with no source component required.

After attending ultra-short throw projector shootouts for the past two years, I think it’s safe to say that they are a thing. The idea of a single display component throwing a 120-inch image with integrated sound for less than $3,000 is extremely compelling. Yes, you can get a 100-inch flat panel for close to that price but then you’re contending with a 140 pounds of TV. A UST projector is about the size of an AV receiver and weighs less than 20 pounds.

Epson has maintained relevance in today’s display market with a line of USTs that deliver high performance, easy setup, and excellent value. I’ve always been impressed with their traditional home theater models so it follows that their USTs will also deliver a high degree of satisfaction.

Today’s USTs, with few exceptions, use a laser light engine. The chief advantages are long life, no bulb changes, and consistent color and light output. You can expect to enjoy as many as 20,000 hours or about 15 years of large and beautiful imagery.

The LS650 UST Laser Projector fits squarely into the hotly contested value portion of the market. You can spend a lot more money for a little more performance. And that divide is one laser versus three. Many tri-laser projectors claim to have larger color gamuts and higher light output. But single-laser models like the LS650 deliver nearly the same performance for around half the price. Let’s take a look.

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Unlike most USTs which use a DLP imaging chip, the LS650 sticks with Epson’s tried-and-true 3-chip 3LCD design. It is indeed an LCD projector, but it bears no resemblance to the boardroom displays from 15 years ago. Epson has tweaked and refined this technology over two decades to the point where it handily competes with high-end DLP and LCoS designs. If you want further proof, check out my recent review of the LS12000.

The 3LCD chips’ native resolution is 1080p (1920 x 1080) but Epson’s 4K Resolution Enhancement Technology (4K PRO-UHD) bumps that up to 3840 x 2160 or Ultra HD. 10-bit color is supported as is HDR10 and Hybrid Log Gamma (HLG). The only thing missing is a wide color gamut. The LS650 is a Rec.709 display.

Contrast is also addressed with effective Dynamic Contrast, Dynamic Tone Mapping for HDR, and Adaptive Gamma features. In tests, I saw just over 4,000:1 which for any projector is excellent performance. You will be hard-pressed to find a greater dynamic range for $2,300.

The LS650 has plenty of user aids in the setup department as well. You can run an automated routine, via a phone app if you wish, to adjust the geometry. Focus is manual using a lever on the side and there’s a digital zoom that switches the throw ratio between 0.26 and 0.41:1. Like any projector, the way to the very best image is without any digital alteration. To that end, two independently adjustable feet can get you level and square. Image size is controlled by simply moving the projector closer to or further from the screen.

What else do you get? There are three integrated speakers with 20 watts of power controlled by a Yamaha DSP. Two HDMI 2.0 inputs, one with eARC, support signal formats up to 3840 x 2160 at 60 Hz with 10-bit color and HDR10 & HLG. You can run the audio signal out of an optical port to an external sound system. Or use the LS650 as a Bluetooth speaker by turning on that option in the menu.

Epson breaks with its tradition of large handsets with the LS650’s pared-down remote. It’s well designed for convenience though I always prefer backlighting; there is none here. You can easily get to the projector settings or control the integrated Android TV interface. If you stream content, it’s possible to run the projector with no external source component, just connect to your home Wi-Fi network and watch away.

The LS650 is a bit wider than the average AV receiver and fits easily on a credenza or bench-style entertainment center. You will want to place it about a foot below where the bottom of the image will fall. If it is perfectly perpendicular to the wall or screen, it will be square without any need for digital manipulation. Then move the projector in or out to size the picture. The front feet help with leveling. I had no problem filling my 92-inch Stewart Filmscreen Luminesse Studiotek 130 screen. The best choice for any UST is a prismatic screen that rejects light coming from angles other than below. This is the way to go if you plan to have the lights on. I played with Epson’s Setting Assistant App which is an easy way to run the automated geometry feature. In any case, the focus is covered by a small lever on the right side, hidden beneath a removable cover.

Exploring the menu quickly revealed that the LS650 has no traditional calibration controls like white balance or color management. There is a color temp slider that adjusts from warm to cool. The default setting was close to 6500K. Color is fairly accurate to the Rec.709 standard and gamma is right on the 2.2 spec. So, out of box accuracy is good enough that calibration isn’t strictly required. But it would be nice to have the option. There are four total picture modes of which Natural, Epson’s usual go-to, is the best for all content.

The LS650 has several contrast enhancement options that are worth using. Dynamic Contrast is a general dimming option with normal and fast settings. Turning that on bumps both SDR and HDR contrast up to around 4,000:1. Then there is Auto Contrast Enhancement and Scene Adaptive Gamma which work on a frame-by-frame basis to optimize both color and contrast. And for HDR, there is Dynamic Tone Mapping which improves on HDR10’s fixed metadata. If you turn that off, a slider adjusts HDR brightness manually.

For viewing and testing, I chose the Natural color mode and left the color temp slider on its default of 7 for both SDR and HDR. I turned Dynamic Contrast on to High Speed and set both Auto Contrast Enhancement and Scene Adaptive Gamma to 10 of 20. I also dropped the sharpness slider to zero to eliminate a bit of visible edge enhancement.

The LS650 is an extremely capable projector whether you just stream using the integrated Android TV or an outboard component like an Apple TV or Blu-ray player. I started with some streamed content from YouTube which claimed to be 12K, likely referring to the filmed resolution. It looked very colorful with deep contrast even though it wasn’t showing in HDR. My first impression was that I was looking at a giant TV. The dynamic range was excellent, not at OLED level, but at least as good as a premium LCD. I had the room lights turned off. I also checked out a few shows on Paramount+ and Disney+ and saw similarly high quality. Though I am a fan of the Apple TV box, you can enjoy streaming on the LS650 without one.

I recently bought the full set of Harry Potter films on Ultra HD Blu-ray and couldn’t wait to check them out. Dark scenery, like the opening of Half Blood Prince, is especially challenging for a projector. The LS650’s dynamic tone mapping made the most of this HDR10 encode. I could see all the shadow detail without blacks becoming a murky gray. Highlights popped and helped to increase the perception of depth and contrast. Color was muted as all these films are, but never so much that the image went flat. This is the best I’ve seen these movies presented and they are a significant improvement over the old SDR Blu-rays.

No Time To Die is another go-to for me with its bright scenery and saturated color. Though the LS650 isn’t a wide-gamut display, nothing seemed amiss. You’ll see below in the color tests that it hits the inner color targets and only comes up short in the most saturated content. This film further convinced me of this projector’s HDR prowess. I experimented with the frame interpolation feature and was surprised at how good the low setting looked. The soap opera effect was there but only barely. I would happily use it for sports and if I had someone watching with me that wanted it on, I’d be ok. This is probably the best example I’ve seen of this technology outside a MadVR video processor.

Justice League is pretty much a run-of-the-mill superhero film, but it has a visual style that sets itself apart from the over-processed look of Marvel titles. The look is a gritty one with film grain and deep blacks where shadow detail is intentionally crushed. The LS650 preserved the creator’s intent beautifully making it very compelling to watch. The color was almost monochromatic, but the image’s tactile quality came through. There is a very good lens in use here along with well-engineered dynamic contrast. The dynamic tone-mapping is also properly tailored to this projector with a great balance of dynamic range and detail rendering.

Finally, I went for a torture test, Babylon 5 on Blu-ray. The remaster is well done but the original film elements are of relatively low quality. There’s a lot of grain and the image is generally soft. The LS650 did a solid job putting this vintage TV show on the big screen. I could see details like freckles and razor stubble on the actor’s faces. I’ll bet no one saw those things when the show aired in 1993. The grain was well controlled, and the color was well saturated. This projector will do your legacy Blu-rays proud.

My overall impression of the LS650’s audio quality was favorable. The sound was super clean and free of audible distortion, even at full volume. The internal speakers won’t rock your room and action films will benefit from a subwoofer. But the dialog was always clear and forward and the sound stage had greater depth and width than the projector. I played some music using the Bluetooth speaker mode as well. You must go to the home screen (home button on the remote) to hear it but there were no issues pairing with my iPhone 12. The LS650 is handy for entertaining when you want some background music.

To test the LS650, I set up my usual suite of benchmarks using the latest version of Calman from Portrait Displays. To measure color, I used an X-Rite i1 Pro Spectrophotometer and for luminance, an X-Rite i1 Display Pro tri-stimulus colorimeter. Signals were generated by an Accupel DVG-5000. HDR signals were generated by the same unit with an HD Fury Integral in the signal path.

SDR Tests

As I stated earlier, the LS650 has no traditional calibration controls like white balance or color management. You can adjust the color temp with a slider that makes it warmer or cooler. And there is brightness & contrast along with saturation/tint and sharpness. After checking out the four color modes, I settled on Natural as the best in both measurement and appearance.

The best part about this chart is the gamma trace, it is right on the reference line except for the tiniest dip at 10% which is something no one will be able to see. It follows that if contrast is the most important element of image quality, that gamma is the most important measured metric. You can get away with minor color errors if luminance tracking is correct. And the LS650’s is. Grayscale runs a bit warm and that too is a forgivable error because it’s the hardest one to spot in content. Green and blue errors are more obvious.

The LS650’s gamut chart is very good with a touch of over-saturation overall and accurate hue tracking. The 100% red target is a bit off which is vexing but I’m ok with it because every other red target is nearly perfect. And with an average error of just 2.35dE, the color will be visually perfect in all SDR content.

HDR Tests

There are no white balance or color management controls for HDR content either, but I did spend time exploring the various dynamic contrast and tone mapping options. They make a significant difference and are useful for dialing in the varied content that comes with HDR10. The highest static contrast comes with Dynamic Contrast turned on, so I went with that option for the tests.

Dynamic Tone Mapping is turned on by default. This removes any option for user adjustment but is a good way to enjoy HDR content without tweaking each selection. By the numbers though, it causes an unusual dip between 50 and 75% brightness. This translates to a little less pop in the mid-tones. Grayscale tracking runs a bit warm but like SDR, it looks good in practice.

I preferred the LS650’s look with Dynamic Tone Mapping turned off and HDR set to number 1. This results in a dark luminance curve, but no detail is clipped when viewing test patterns or content. Higher settings of the HDR slider make the image much darker so I never went higher than 1. This is a good performance overall, but I’d love to have an option that gets the entire EOTF curve on target.

The LS650 is not a wide gamut display but it covers as much of DCI-P3 and Rec.2020 as it can. It accomplishes this by hitting the inner targets, even over-saturating them a little, until it runs out of color. For red, that’s around 90%, and green, 80%. Blue is fully saturated. Hue tracking is on-point, so the overall effect is one of HDR color that is more saturated than SDR except for the brightest reds and greens. I observed the same behavior in the Rec.2020 test. Epson has made the right choices here so that the HDR effect is maximized within the capabilities of the display.

Brightness & Contrast

For the brightness and contrast tests, I set up my meter 10 feet back from the screen, a 92-inch Stewart Filmscreen Luminesse Studiotek 130, gain 1.3.

In SDR and HDR mode, I got the same native contrast measurements. That is with Dynamic Contrast turned off and the color mode set to Natural.

• White – 161.553 nits
• Black – 0.17 nit
• Contrast – 950.1:1

Obviously, this will vary a bit depending on the screen material. You’ll see higher contrast if you use an ALR or prismatic projection surface.

Turning Dynamic Contrast to Fast increases contrast more than four-fold thanks to a much lower black level.

• White – 168.6447 nits
• Black – 0.0421 nit
• Contrast – 4002.9:1

Clearly, having Dynamic Contrast on is the best choice. And observations of 0-10% step patterns showed no clipping so there is no downside to leaving it on all the time. This is excellent performance.

The Epson LS650 UST Laser Projector delivers excellent performance and convenience with a large bright image, integrated Android TV, clear audio, and easy setup.

As the prices of 100-inch flat panel TVs creep downward, one might wonder where UST projectors fit in. Their advantage is convenience and ease of use. Epson’s LS650 UST Laser Projector is about the size of an AV receiver and weighs less than 20 pounds. A 100-inch TV is a 140-pound behemoth that creates a sizable installation challenge.

The LS650 is a single-laser design but delivers solid color accuracy and excellent contrast. With thoughtfully engineered enhancements, I saw bright whites and deep blacks from SDR and HDR content, on standard Blu-ray and Ultra HD. The Android TV streaming interface delivered high-quality material from its large selection of streaming providers. The integrated speakers won’t shake the room, but they provide clean sound at decent volumes. They were certainly better than any flat-panel speakers I’ve heard.

You can set up an ultra-short throw projector just about anywhere with enough wall space and some light control. The addition of an ALR or prismatic screen means you can leave the lights on and if you’re a home theater buff with a dark room, the LS650 excels. It delivers excellent value and in my experience; offers 95% of the performance of triple-laser models for half the price. Highly Recommended.