













Epson Home Cinema 2040 1080p 3D 3LCD Home Theater Projector
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Jason Boergerhoff
> 3 dayI cannot stress enough how good of a purchase this was. Before this I was limited to using my 26 inch television for everything: TV, movies, and games. Now with some careful positioning Im able to project the equivalent of a 125 inch screen onto a homemade projector screen in a very dark room. This darkness is important, as the projector doesnt need to work as hard while at the same time providing an extremely vivid image. Of course Ive had the lights on as well in this room which has washed out the image significantly, but it is still visible. I am new to the world of projectors, and after a couple years of researching and comparing I think I have found the best introductory model for me. Your situation may be different, but I would still recommend the Epson Home Cinema 2040 if youre thinking of starting down this road. I honestly believe that I couldnt be happier with this purchase.
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Rick Mc
> 3 dayBought this Projector with the hopes of creating a home theater. While I have gone back and started redoing the walls for the theatre room, while this was up the picture quality was awesome and the video brightness was acceptable in the normal/eco modes. It has plenty of inputs, and the remote worked well. They Keystone also worked amazingly well for when I had sat the projector at a funky angle. It was able to throw it on the wall at an angle, compensate and make it nearly level/flush. The one issue with doing this is that it slightly goes out of focus because of it throwing further in certain corners. I did not leave it like that, but I used it for a few days like that. Noise wise, it isnt bad at all. To me it just sounds like a quiet fan, Im not worried about it, but would definitely consider building a box with fabric on the inside that would dampen the noise for a purely theatre feel. IT DOES 3D. Bought some cheap 3D glasses (active) and they were recognized by the projector. Also had to fiddle with the blu-ray player to get passive 3D to work. Both types worked for me. The quality is very good considering the price point. I personally could not understand wanting to spend more money for a projector with the same features and maybe slightly further throw distance. When I was working for AT&T as a wire technician I would see many types of projectors in use. I feel like I have saved a lot of money because many of the customers paid multiple thousands for a projector with no significant quality difference in my opinion. Remote works well from various angles.
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cyphersk8
> 3 dayThis projector is ok. Its not the best, but its not the worst either. For a sub $1000 projector it is pretty good. Why only 3 stars? The projector has a manual lens cover for starters. If youre mounting this higher up, youll need a stool to reach for it every time. A slight annoyance, not a huge deal breaker though. The particular unit I received had very severe color separation from the lcds not being matted together perfectly. I ran all sorts of tests as you can see in the photos. I believe this is outside what can be considered tolerable. Maybe it was a manufacturing defect, but I was disappointed. I am very sensitive to it, which is also why I opted for the LCD vs DLP projectors. The unit is bright, but that also comes with a sacrifice... noise. When you have it set to bright, its LOUD! On the other brightness settings the fans really quiet down and I found it to be bright enough even during the day time. Ive had a PLV-Z4 for 8 years and its been a great projector. Ill be looking at upping my price and testing out the 5030 soon. Overall, this is a decent little guy, but I found too many cons to outweigh the pros for my particular set up.
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Stucazzo
Greater than one weekGot this on sale for 499 and replaced an aging 8350. I was on my 3rd bulb on the 8350 and although i loved it, the price for the bulbs were too expensive, especially 5 years later. What really sold me on this projector was the price and the price of the replacement bulbs ($99). I use it mostly for video gaming and movies. The fan is not any louder then my 8350, but when scenes change, the unit is really loud. it sort of sounds like a really loud shutter. But for the price how can you really complain. go buy a $2k projector if you want super quiet. The colors are great and its just as bright as my 8350 was.
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Tired & Dirty
> 3 dayProbably the best value in 3D 1080p projectors when I bought it earlier this year. Might still be. I came from an older DLP projector, and this Epson is at least as good in terms of color and overall image quality as that. 3D works very well with Panasonic TY-ER3D4MU glasses. Shutdown takes only a few seconds, unlike the DLP which needed to cool off first. The fan is noisy, but I use surround headphones so its fine for me. May be a problem for you if you use speakers exclusively and you are close to the projector. There is not a major difference in actual brightness between the economy and bright modes for some reason, but the fan is noticeably louder in bright mode. I just keep it in economy mode for simplicity and to save the bulb. Some other things: - Optical zoom adjustments are narrow, making placement a bit awkward in my case. - Fewer holes on bottom than normal for ceiling mount. Had to be extra creative with my existing mount. - AV Mute is a just stupid manual lens cover. I forget about this sometimes. - Remote is not backlit, hard to see buttons in the dark. - No component input. What cancels out all the negatives is that the official bulbs are C-H-E-A-P. Cheap enough that I use this as my primary TV now. Hopefully the rest of the unit lasts a long time.
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drbob
> 3 dayI want to give it 4.5 stars and it deserves it. I have had a couple glitches, cant seem to hook a sound bar up to it for one and it has just stopped on me a few times. I have it on a 4X7 screen and Im glad I have it. I researched projectors for 3 weeks, reading everything I could get my eyes on, visiting home theater stores, talking to people with projectors and I ended up with this. It was between this and the BenQ and the price and durability of bulbs pushed me in this direction. Im pleased.
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Joe Burks
> 3 dayI bought this because of the advertised color brightness and... WOW! They werent kidding. Leaves DLP in the dust. Dust that is very muted in tone with no color richness to speak of. DLP is fine for your Powerpoint presentation, but if you want to watch a movie in your home theater, you want something more like this. Because there are three different image elements in this projector creating three different images, you only get perfect convergence at one distance from the lens. I had this projecting onto a wall in my garage (dont know exactly how big the image was, but it was over 10 feet wide) and the color separation was about 1/4 at worst. I didnt notice this issue unless I was being picky and looking for it.
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Ariel Scott
06-06-2025Im pleased to finally write a review. The plastic casing is easy to scratch or to receive scratched so double check when the box arrives. Amazon and Visual Apex were very helpful and fair about returns. Aside from that, there is no need to calibrate the projector. This projector comes right out of the box ready to display brilliant, accurate colors. Great use with Finding Nemo 3D. We are using this projector against a painted light grey wall (before considering a screen) and it works great so far. Official reviews from magazines have stated that the black levels are not great. To fix this, I simply bought a ND2 46mm lens with a round adapter used on drones and secured it to piece of word. I noticed a great difference when I put the lens near the front of the projector while watching Star Wars. Space in the movie was now deeper and better. If anyone has any opinion, please let me know. I almost went for the Epson 3000, but saved the $600 by going this route and buying a replacement bulb for future. The Epson 3000 with a replacement bulb is $600 more. The Epson 3000 actually made the film Gladiator look washed out, syrupy and needed much more calibration. The Epson 2040 can really work well in daylight and on a painted wall. I looked at both projectors (3000 vs. 2040) in a store side by side and it was hard with the naked eye to tell the difference between the images. The 3000 was almost over saturated. The 3000 is better for placement from a ceiling. The small grey space I get along the edges of the image by raising the projector a bit is not too much a bother since the eye is mainly focused on the middle of the image - plus I did not think it was with correcting for $500 to $600 more and get the 3000. Believe me I was torn between the two, but went wit the 2040 since right out of the box it is hard to believe my entire wall can be covered with an impressive image. I tested motion with Star Ward and it worked fine.
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Art Vandelay
Greater than one weekMy initial review is below. Ive now had this projector for two years and havent seen any issues with it. Its rock solid and reliable. Also havent had to replace the bulb yet, which is nice. If I was shopping for a new one, Id look for deeper black levels (these are OK, but not great) and perhaps something with a quieter fan. The sound is fine in ECO mode but gets a bit loud otherwise. -------------------------- Ill put it this way: the picture on this thing is good enough that I can watch a movie and not feel, as I used to when I had a TV, that I was missing out on the visual impact Id get from seeing it in the theater. Sitting 15 feet away from this projecting on a 6 foot wide screen, Im immersed, totally. Im projecting it at around 90 diagonally, and the picture is bright and razor sharp. Put on a well-mastered BluRay and youll be blown away witih the quality, brightness and detail, particularly in outdoor, daylight scenes. For darker scenes, black levels are not deep, inky black, and night scenes dont quite have the contrast of a higher-end model. But its definitely watchable. I would recommend using it on eco mode, which is still quite bright and apparently extends the lamp life significantly. Going from eco to standard makes the picture seem maybe 10-15% brighter, but makes the fan easily twice as loud. The good news is eco mode will be bright enough if your room is even moderately dark. Theres a 60fps image smoothing setting, common on a lot of TVs now, but Id leave it off for movies and TV unless you like that weird soap opera effect;. The one exception would be sports or video games. Im very impressed with this projector. My last Epson ran for three years without any issues and without having to even change the bulb, and so far (five months) this one is going great.
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Phil Sayles
> 3 dayThis is my first home theater projector, so take my opinions with a grain of salt, but I am very happy with it. At the time, I was debating between this Epson 2040 and either the BenQ W1070 or slightly new HT1075. The vertical positioning of the Epson wasnt an issue for me, so the ultimate tipping of the scales was that this Epson went on sale for $699 (list of $799) at the time I was looking to buy. Brightness There are 4 varying levels of brightness than you can select depending on how much ambient light is in the room. During the daytime, I usually run it on the max setting to get the best picture. My set up is not ideal and actually have a fairly large bay window right next to the projector screen, but I can still manage a good picture in spite of the high level of background light. The downside is that the fan is working hard to keep the projector cool and is pretty loud on the brightest setting. At night however (which is 90% of the time I normally use it), we run it on the lower settings and the fan is practically silent. Color Shift? Im not sure what the correct term for this is, but as other reviewers have noticed, there is a detectable color separation of green and purples on the edges of still black and whites next to each other on a menu or setup screen. Im not sure what this means, but its definitely there when you get up close to the screen. But once I sit back down at normal viewing distance, I dont notice the difference. And I definitely cant see a difference when watching a movie or anything else. In the end, I may have been happy no matter which projector I opted for, but this one has certainly exceeded my expectations.
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