Epson Home Cinema 3200 4K PRO-UHD 3-Chip Projector with HDR

Had a optima cant compare this projector is fantastic

EDIT: 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.

Pros: Bright and performs well in a room with ambient light, has a sharp picture and great HDR controls Cons: Contrast is not optimal, lens adjustment and focus is manual and makes it extremely tedious to adjust a ceiling mounted projector, fan noise is a bit loud.

Its pretty much what I was expecting. I would buy it again

Ive had 4 or 5 projectors over the years and this one is by a wide margin the king. Even other epsons this is brighter and clearer and just projects better. The bluetooth sound works flawlessly and it even includes an onboard speaker, though its not enough for large or loud locations. The lens has all manner of adjustments for being able to get the correct flat picture on screen even when its throwing said picture from a weird or close angle. I hope that the bulb lasts longer than my last one which got about half the rated life span.

Well...its very easy to use it and my husband is completely satisfied with the quality

I have owned literally a dozen projectors but the only ones still used daily in my home are all Epsons due to their quality, ease of use, and price point. The family room has a UST Epson that is brilliant for its use case but it lacks 4K. 4K is reserved for the proper theater room and thats where the 3800 comes in. The 3800 hits a great price point for its performance. Its not as elegant as the 5040 since it lacks the automatic lens controls (which are so handy) but if your install is fairly simple then the 3800 gives you virtually the same picture quality at a fraction of the cost of the 5040. Its plenty bright for a theater room and will even work well in a family room after dark but if you dont have any light control then it will struggle in rooms with excessive windows during the day. Image purists will argue that Epson doesnt have true 4K due to their pixel shifting, however plenty of reviews will tell. you the same thing, you just need to see it in person and decide for yourself if you can see the different. Price wise it is still a big jump in cost to get a real 4K projector and even after paying that price you wont get one that can put out the number of lumens that this 3800 can. This is a perfect family home theater room projector at a good price. Its not a $5k or $15k Sony thats going in some high end custom theater but it will blow the family away in any modest home theater. Im running this on a 135 screen in a theater room with no windows. Its quiet, plenty bright, beautiful colors and simply great for the price point. If you own a 1080P projector and have access to 4K content on streaming services then I highly recommend taking the plunge and upgrading to see what youve been missing.

Back in the 1990s and 2000s I had several Epson projectors and generally they were refurbished units. They all performed very well and I could see no difference in quality from a new unit. This year I have tried two Epson products, the LS300 ultra short throw and this unit the Home Cinema 3800 and both were refurbished and both had issues and were defective. The 3800 has bad and crackling speakers and when they did so, it would cause the image to flicker. Also the video playback would randomly shut off by itself and the unit would power down. Also the remote would not power down the unit. In order to turn it off, you had to turn it off at the unit. Also the 4k image quality has not as expected. The black levels were not good. There were no blacks just light greys. Black levels were far better on SD but still not great. 4k playback looked very good in bright scenes and dismal in dark scenes. This was actually the same with the LS300 which had an alleged contrast ratio or 1000,000:1 but it looked more like 5000:1. Maybe this was due to the units being refurbished but possible Epson is simply not what it used to be.

I 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.

I found this projector to be too bright for a 84 diagonal screen. Beyond putting the lamp in ECO mode, there is no variable lamp brightness control. I spoke with epson customer service and they confirmed this. The projector is great during the day, but it is blinding at night, even on its dimmest setting. It seems like other epson projectors have a 30-100% lamp brightness control, but not this one. Its too bad because it is hard to find a 4k projector with a long-throw lens like this one has. Otherwise, the projector seemed great. If you have ambient light or a much larger screen, this would be a good choice.