HARDWARE REVIEW

Epson EH-TW5350 Review

by Luke Walsh, June 28th, 2016

The Epson EH-TW5350 focuses on entertainment and is the top of the range for the EH-TW. Costing £600 it is fairly cheap for a home cinema and it comes with brightness of 2200 lumens, full HD with 3D and a promoted dynamic contrast ratio of 35000:1 and a range of extras.

Enclosed in a curvy gloss white casing the Epson EH-TW5350 has a big vent on the left hand side and contains a decent sized lens for the price of the projector. If you are worried about light escaping through the vent, you will be pleasantly surprised that there is none. On the back, you will find the two hdmi ports, one with MHL compatibility, a VGA input, a USB 2.0 connection and a composite video connection.

Two HDMI connections allow you to have more than one device connected at once without the need of a HDMI splitter which is good for a projector. The MHL function allows compatible devices to be powered from the projector without the need for extra power. Using the USB 2.0 you can attach a hard drive or camera, Miracast and Wifi Direct cover the remaining options making sure you should be able to connect practically anything.

Inside the box there are 3 main items, the projector itself, a remote control and a power lead followed by the usual manual and leaflets. The remote is rather small but useable, in a dark room it can be hard to use as there is no backlighting. If you do need to use it in the pitch black, Epson have made an app which you can connect up to the projector which also functions as a remote.

Once setup, the Epson EH-TW5350 can be configured in a number of different ways allowing you to match it up at a range of different angles and wall sizes. I was impressed on how well you could position the projector at an angle and still be able to get a perfectly straight picture with the keystone control. Depending on your layout you will be able to get an image as small as 34 inches up to a massive 150 inches. No longer does a projector need to be mounted straight and on top of the ceiling, the Epson EH-TW5350 is no different.

With 2200 stated lumens, the projector is bright and holds up even in a lit room. Epson have stated the bulb should last around 4000 hours in normal mode and up to 7500 when in economy mode, dropping the brightness down to around 1500 lumens. Doing the math you can watch one film every day for 11 years until you need to replace the bulb. For the hardcore gamer though, if a replacement is needed you can pick one up at £62 which is a reasonable price.

Using the projector for video games was fantastic, playing Fallout 4 on Xbox One was clear, bright and had great colours in a dark room. The projector does well as mentioned in the light but the blacks are not as strong, it is perfectly playable but I wouldn’t recommend facing it on a wall with directly in natural light. Blacks on the EH-TW5350 projector could better, dark scenes looked greyed out with a shift of different tones. This impacted the overall colour performance, leaving you wanting more. The lighter the room, the more you will notice the low quality blacks. Light colours are very vivid and rich and do make up for the blacks, using HD sources as well made the picture very clean and crisp.

With a 5w speaker built into the projector, you can use it straight out of the box and game. Surprisingly, the speaker is decent and loud for what it is. Voices sound clear and the bass is pretty punchy for such a small speaker. You do need to have it up quite high though, to get through the casing and over the bulb fan.

If you want to watch or game in 3D, the EH-TW5350 uses active shutter glasses and picture quality works extremely well. In 3D mode however the noise from the fan is louder as it sets to normal level cooling level. Turning the projector back into ECO mode can make it quieter but as a result the picture will be darker.

Overall the Epson EH-TW5350 is a good projector for £600 the quality of the image is great for the bright colours but the blacks could be much better. If you watch a lot of movies or play a lot of games and want a playable screen of up to 150 inches then you should consider this as an option. If you don’t need the added extras like the Wifi Direct and Miracast you can purchase the cheaper Epson EH-TW5210 and TW5300.