When Epson laid out the specs for the EX30, a number of its designers need to not have attained the memo about this becoming a price range mannequin. Whilst it fees only $549, the EX30 is one of the most impressive of this company's lengthy line of finances-priced projectors. Whilst it's not as portable as a lot more high-priced projectors, the EX30's value tag is liable to produce you forget that additional bodyweight.

Layout

With regards to looks and form, the EX30 is nearly identical for the most up-to-date fellow member of Epson's reduced-priced PowerLite S relatives, the S6, but has some gray accents, as opposed for the S6's all-white entire body. Like the opposite Epson funds models, the EX30 is not any lightweight, weighing in at 5.8 pounds, but its journey weight of six.7 pounds (including the usual complement of cables and remote management) however matches very well within our definition of portable.

Certainly, finances models have to have some shortcomings-otherwise, who would obtain anything at all else? The EX30 has no optical zoom, which might be a problem when fitting an image to a particular filter sizing. This can be partially offset by a two-prong AC cable plug which will mate with any extension cord, generating it easy to make use of this design only about wherever.

The remote control, which will be the measurement of a tiny mobile phone, lacks a laser pointer but does involve some tiny but useful buttons for navigating a PowerPoint slideshow. For some odd reason, these Web page Up/Lower buttons do not get the job done by default. To activate them, you have to discover the projector's on-display menu.

Performance

As with almost all spending budget models, the EX30 has pretty reduced resolution (800 x 600, or SVGA), however the image was enjoyably huge. The projector produced an image dimension of 54 inches in diagonal at a 5-foot display distance.

On our lab tests the EX30 performed very very well, if not superbly. Our brightness test revealed 1946 ANSI lumens, less than ten percent shy in the advertised worth and only as bright as models twice its price tag. On our checkerboard contrast test, it scored a ratio of 226:one, about normal for LIQUID CRYSTAL DISPLAY projectors. Up close, the man or women pixels showed a slight registration error, with purple and blue fringes. This makes incredibly modest textual content hard to learn, but you're unlikely being  using very modest text in a very presentation anyway.

On the plus side, that identical LCD engineering generated gorgeous shades, particularly brilliant yellows and wealthy reds. The photos were also amazingly continual, devoid of even the slightest hint of flicker. The cooling fan noise inside the default excessive-ability mode appeared about regular, but in lower-energy mode (only 20 percent dimmer) it was quite quiet.

Although you don't typically consider of an SVGA projector in association with high-definition TELLY, the EX30 includes its unique component video adapter-a attribute lacking on many increased-resolution projectors. Sure adequate, once we linked the EX30 to our 1080i fixed-top rated field, we ended up being impressed with all the picture. Although we did see some occasional motion blur, this design's fairly lower resolution seemed to stand up effectively with higher-resolution XGA models.

The EX30's warm-up and cooldown periods ended up being amazingly shorter: 14 seconds and 3 seconds, respectively. Accessing the cooling fan filter, which needs to be modified periodically on all LCD projectors, could be very effortless.

Verdict

Like any budget design, the $549 Epson EX30 will not be fairly perfect. In fact, the NEC NP100 presents even increased effectiveness towards the greenback, but in case you want the prosperous shades of an LCD projector plus a super-continual image for your price range selling price, the EX30 must be substantial in your variety.

The brand new Epson EX30 is one particular in the price range projectors in Epson's lineup. It had been released just a handful of weeks back again and gives a whole lot of features and has very very good specs, but is available at a really great selling price which nearly defies its characteristics. It really is a single of the greatest projectors offered in that vary. In this review, we take a look at the Epson EX30 and see how it stacks up in opposition to other projectors in its assortment.