Epson EH-TW480 review

A 720p (1,280×1,080) projector is a great way to get an occasional-use projector on a tight budget, while still providing enough resolution for most uses, as the Epson EH-TW480 proves. While a lot of budget projects use a single DLP chip, the EH-TW480 is a 3-LCD model.

DLP projectors often create deeper blacks but they also tend to suffer from a slight rainbow effect, while 3-LCD models are immune to it. For anyone that’s tried and hasn’t got on with DLP before, the EH-TW480 could be the ideal alternative.

For such a small projector, it produces an impressively large image, and it easily filled our screen from 7ft away. Its weight isn’t evenly distributed across the unit, though, and its off-centre height-adjustable kick-stand at the front isn’t particularly sturdy either, so we’d recommend installing it on a shelf where it’s unlikely to get knocked over and use its height-adjustable back feet to angle it downwards instead.

There’s no lens shift on this budget model, so you’ll need to get the projector square-on to the screen. If you don’t, the only option is to use digital keystone correction, which reduces the quality of the picture. Annoyingly, the automatic keystone adjustment is turned on by default, although you can turn this off using the projector’s menus or the dedicated buttons on the top.

Setting the EH-TW480 up was very easy, but its slightly limited range of inputs makes it a little less versatile than other budget projectors. There’s just one HDMI input, for instance, along with VGA, S-video and composite inputs. There’s also a USB Type B input, so you can run your computer’s video and audio over USB; this is more a business feature, though, and not good enough for high-quality video, so we recommend sticking with HDMI. A USB Type A input lets you connect mass storage devices, so that the projector can show any stored images.

Despite having just four colour modes at your disposal (Dynamic, Living room, Theatre and Game), each one can be fully customised using its brightness, contrast, colour saturation and temperature, tint and sharpness settings. You can also tweak individual colour values as well as noise reduction, but some options were a little less intuitive than others to use due to poor labelling on each setting.

We found that Living Room provided the best image quality, as Theatre and Game tended to sap the vibrancy out of colours while Dynamic looked far too bright and green. In Living Room mode, colours were deep and vivid thanks in part to its very bright 2,800 ANSI lumen lamp. Its main downfall, though, was its poor black levels. Switching the power consumption to Eco mode helped make blacks appear ever so slightly darker, but night scenes in particular still looked quite grey regardless.

Black level issues aside, we had very little trouble watching the rest of our test footage, even in our brightly lit test room. We did notice a very small amount of pixellation, which is one of the main shortcomings of LCD projectors, as well as the occasional stutter during fast camera pans, but overall we didn’t find either of these issues to be too much of an irritation.

Lamp life is pretty good at 4,000 hours at full brightness and 5,000 in ECO mode. This equated to running costs of 3p and 2p per hour respectively.

We liked the projector’s remote as well. It doesn’t have a huge range of options, but it gives you quick and easy access to the colour mode, input source, volume, freeze, aspect ratio and a mouse pointer. It’s quite small, but its buttons are very easy to use.

The Epson EH-TW480 is an excellent entry-level projector. It has a few minor issues, but these aren’t enough to stop it from being one of our favourite 720p projectors. It may not be able to project in 3D like the similarly priced BenQ W703D, but its broad menu system and impressive picture quality put it miles ahead of its competitors. It wins a Budget Buy award.