Epson Home Cinema 3200 4K PRO-UHD 3-Chip Projector with HDR
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Carley
Greater than one weekThis projector came packaged in a very odd way. The projector was listed as new but clearly it had either been used or unpacked from its original packaging and repackaged in other boxes/materials. I feel like we overpaid for it considering the condition it was delivered in but overall the projector seems to work fine. A few minor glitches but the picture quality is great so were keeping it.
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Ricardo Harris
Greater than one weekThis projector is Epsons mid level Pro UHD projector. Its a wonderful value for what you get. With 3000 lumens of brightness, 100,000:1 contrast ratio and horizontal and vertical lens shift. Its a great value for its price range.
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Kyle Scholz
> 3 dayQuestionable item-we thought this was new but it looks used from another owner
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Walter W.
> 3 dayThis is a TERRIFIC projector. Im a trial lawyer, and I bought it to display documents to the jury on a screen at trial. The old projector made it hard to tell whether someone had initialed a document or not. This one, by contrast, made the evidence clear and convincing, as we say in my line of work. Youll love it. You will also need to figure out some way to carry it around, because it is a big mother, but worth the heft.
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Vanessa
> 3 dayThe projector says “No Signal” from HDMI even though there is an incoming signal and the cable has been tested and works as expected. I’ve tested the other components in the AVR system and the projector is component that’s failing. I hope Epson or Amazon will send a replacement.
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Bill Bixby
Greater than one weekEDIT: After a lot more tweaking, Im updating this review to 3 stars from 2. Yes, I still have focus issues. Yes, for PC use its still mostly terrible and I do a lot less PC use as a result. I never even think about doing actual work with it. However, I have figured out enough of its quirks and use its memory settings to get acceptable results in enough situations that I decided to keep it. In summary, if youre willing to put in the work, this is an OKAY entry level 4k projector. --- Ive spent about a week with this projector. I was very excited as its one of the few 4k projectors out there with input lag thats acceptable for gaming. However, as a cinephile as well, the promise of a rich 3LCD image was also very important to me. Lastly, on my current 1080p, I do a fair amount of couch surfing and casual TV watching. The Epson 3200, unfortunately, only does one of these things well: movies. And when youre just doing movies, boy is it stunning. For games or PC use, its a big step down. Lets start with the two big elephants in the room. 1) Focus uniformity is terrible. I work with projectors a lot at my job and Ive NEVER seen focus uniformity issues this bad. No matter where you focus the screen, some other part of the screen will be out of focus, and not just a little bit. If I focus right at the center in MS Windows, the clock in the corner is extremely fuzzy. You have to choose a compromise setting where the entire image is slightly out of focus. I tried everything. Im pretty sure Ive read the entire manual twice looking for a solution. I did multiple passes of lens convergence. I tried adjusting source signals and resolutions. I did some research and, lo and behold, found many reports of the problem on reddit and AVS Forum. Some people returned their units as many as FOUR TIMES, and then finally got a unit that was acceptable to them. Ugh. Those dont seem like good odds. So either its just a bad projector or quality control is really terrible. Either way, you dont want to be holding the bag. When youre watching movies, the focus issue is far less visible, but when in Windows, as I said, its terrible. In games, where your attention is on the center of the screen most of the time, it seems okay at first. However, games tend to put menus and tool bars around the edge of the screen, right where the focus issues are the worst. Its tolerable in simpler games but if you like world-building or grand strategy games, the problem is particularly bad. 2) On to the next elephant. In 4k, nothing is legible in Windows unless you zoom it tremendously. Not because of size, but because of clarity and sharpness. If you drop down to 1080 with 4k enhancement off, its still barely usable, and not an experience youd want to endure for any length of time. Even in areas where the projector is as focused as it can be, Windows looks terrible. I dont know if this is a limitation of 3LCD or not, but the edges of fonts are horribly muddled. The pixels are also far more visible than my 1080p DLP. With that one, I have to put my face within a foot to see the individual pixels. With this epson, I can see them from around 3 feet away. You may have heard of the screen door effect. No, you wont see it at normal seating distances, but youll feel it in the form of the muddy font and window edges. Theres a set of enhancement presets that somewhat help, but still fall short of what you can get for far less money in a 1080p projector. 3) Signals. Signal sync isnt terrible but its not great either. Its slow to sync and occasionally fails when switching sources, *even on 1080p sources*. Occasionally Ill get a blank screen and need to switch to the alternate HDMI input and back again. 4) Placement sucks. Like many, I have my projector mounted on the ceiling. I have to lens shift to the very maximum setting to get the image to line up, at which point it requires digital keystoning. Most projectors project at an angle, so either theyre projecting up from a coffee table, or flip them over and install in a ceiling mount, and now theyre projecting downward toward the screen. That results in only needing to do fairly fine-tune adjustments to get everything lined up. The only way to place the epson in such a way as to be optically square to the screen is to drop it another two or three feet, at which point it would be a foot over my head. If you have a large installation with longer throw, this might not affect you, but in an other situation, its as if they designed a projector without thinking how anyone in real life might actually use it. 5) Its not portable. At a chonky 15 pounds and around 3 - 4 times larger than a DLP, yes, technically you could lug it to your friends house, but you sure wont want to. Does this projector do anything well outside of movies? Not much, but yes. 1. Its very bright. VERY bright. I can keep the shades partly open during casual viewing. 2. In Eco mode, its very quiet. And it throws so much light, most will be fine in Eco mode. I will most definitely miss this the most. 3. Color pop is amazing. The colors are so rich it very often looks like youre staring at a high end flat screen. Ive read this is an advantage of 3LCD. Especially with animation and nature content, it just blows you away and is so immersive in 4k. 4. The remote is a real remote, not those dollar store specials a lot of other projectors use. It has a nice heft and includes a backlight for use in low light. Conclusion: I wanted SO BADLY to like this projector. On paper, it ticks all the boxes. But after days of trying to overcome its shortcomings, I just cant ignore its very serious faults and limitations. Not for nearly $1500. Some aspects of this projector, particularly the focus uniformity, are significantly inferior to projectors costing 1/3 the price and its just baffling that Epson thought people would be okay with that.
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Placeholder
> 3 dayGreat picture quality and features. Best decision and nice price ! Perfect
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Anthony Melton
Greater than one weekI need to begin by noting that for the last couple of years I have been spoiled by mostly watching on a 55” OLED I purchased for my bedroom and I have to note that it is unfair in my mind to base a projector against an OLED screen. Although to black levels on the projector are as good or better than any I have used it could not possibly compare to the OLED screen I had become so accustomed to. Otherwise I am impressed by this units performance given its price level. I also cannot compare it to the new laser projectors which are far above the price of this projector. I own a large number of projectors or er the last 15 years and although some of the HD/3D units are very close to the picture quality of this one they all fall a bit short. What they do not have is bluetooth, which I was happy to see is included in this one. After spending several days watching about thirty movies and barring myself from watching my OLED screen I can say this far exceeds my expectations. I have enjoyed it so much that I began to use my home theater more and have begun to upgrade my sound system. If you are considering a first time projector at this price point then I do recommend this projector. If you are looking to upgrade to 4K but are not able to shell out at least two or three times as much money for a laser projector then I also recommend this unit. Update: After using for a few months it started making a loud buzzing noise whenever an image is projected. When it goes to no image it stops so its not the fan. Very annoying. Update 2: After using this wonderful 4K projector for over a year I have experienced just one problem, that until just recently I had no idea what was causing it. The problem was a very loud and annoying sound from the unit, especially when projecting bright scenes. The sound is difficult to describe in words and the best I can do is that of n electronic buzzing. If you are experiencing the same thing you will know what I mean. The other day I just got so fed up with it I decided to try again to see if I can do anything to stop it short of opening the unit up and playing around with something I am no way qualified to do. I decided to just change settings to see if anything made a difference. After about half an hour of switching settings off and on I finally hit pay-dirt. I have always preferred the “Dynamic Mode” setting for color mode. I changed it to Cinema Mode and played a movie that I had just experienced the annoying sound and to my surprise it was gone. It turns out that the sound is evident only when in the Dynamic color mode. Although I prefer that color mode the trade off in eliminating the noise is worth it. I hope no one else has experienced this problem but if so I suggest this as a fix.
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MeCraft 2nd
> 3 dayVery happy with this purchase. Just a super clear picture on a 135 inch screen.
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S. Rees
Greater than one weekI think how you feel about this projector will depend largely on what you use it for. As a 4K video projector, and for the price, it is a reasonably good deal. I picked my 3200 up on sale at BestBuy. You will find the contrast unsatisfactory for dark scenes unless you have a blacked-out, light controlled room. Of course, good contrast always requires a blacked out room, but even so, the blacks on this are dark gray. For example, when playing Assassins Creed Origins, I cannot see my way around a crypt without having all other lights in the room off. HDR is not very noticeable, but is adjustable. You will notice the auto-iris kick in a moment after scene changes some times (this is Epsons attempt to make up for the lower contrast levels of this projector). I can live with this, happily, if the projector is only used for video. The projector is incredibly bright. No issues there. The crappy contrast may go unnoticed in a room without light control. In my basement, with no windows, I find it very bright in ECO mode, even nearly 1000 hours in. The lens shift feature blew my mind, and hugely simplifies installation without having to mess with keystone correction, which leaves the trapezoidal gray/black light around your picture. The worst part of this projector is focus. With video you may not notice, but since Ive been working from home for the last few months of COVID, I use this as a 142 monitor for programming, several hours a day every day. It is _impossible_ to get even focus across the screen with text. You can have one area sharp and another area dreadfully blurry, or you can have the entire thing slightly out of focus and rub your eyes all day long. Lest you think it may be caused by imperfections in my screen, or not having the projector perfectly centered...I can put a piece of paper in the out-of-focus area and walk back towards the projector 4-5 feet before that text is in focus. So, it isnt due to flatness of the screen. Tech support: Epson tech support has been good. When I finally bought and mounted a screen to verify it wasnt due to my uneven wall, they happily replaced my projector with a refurbished one via 2-day fedex, prepaid both ways. Unfortunately, the refurb was even worse for focus issues and had light scratches on the lens, so they overnighting a brand new one. The focus issue persists, so it seems to be common for this line -- or my setup is inexplicably wrong somehow. Epson does not have a way to trade-in/upgrade to something better, so Ill probably have to try to sell it on my own and take a loss. So, overall - acceptable for the price for movie night. Not acceptable for computer work. If you can afford to spend a little more for something closer to true 4K, with better focus and contrast, Id recommend doing so. **Update** I have been ceiling mounting this projector to keep it out of the way of people and reduce shadows from the same. The lens shift that was so delightful, seems to be a contributor to the focus issue. Switching to keystone correction instead of lens shift helps the focus, but it is still an issue. Also, keystone correction throws off the aspect ratio so the image no longer fits the screen - its either too wide, or I have to leave small dark strips at the top and bottom of the image. Finally, I unmounted the projector, put it in tabletop mode, and stacked boxes under it so the image is perfectly centered with no keystone and no lens shift. The center is stunning, but the side is STILL out of focus. Ive included a couple pictures from the panel alignment mode to show the focus difference from center to top-right (tabletop mode) when the projector is perfectly centered on a flat, professional screen.