Laser light show

Epson projectors, once released, stay around for a good few years; this is not a company which brings out iterative updates every season. So when a major new model arrives, you can expect something special. The new Pro Cinema LS12000B 4K Pro-UHD laser projector certainly makes such promises, with the company calling it “possibly our best Pro Cinema Projector ever”. And after having this substantial projector running our entertainment visuals for two full weeks, we think this is not mere marketing exaggeration.

Equipment

This is no compact tabletop projector; it’s quite the beast, measuring 52cm across, some 20cm high, and 45cm deep plus a little more room for cables to emerge. But this physical size gives room for a number of benefits, from output strength to (despite its size) versatility of positioning

Inside Epson has installed a large and high-quality light engine with some impressive glass, the Epson VRX Cinema Lens having a proprietary 15-element precision glass structure designed to avoid light leakage while keeping focus uniform edge-to-edge.

It also gains an all-new Laser Array Light Source: true multi-array laser diodes lighting up the 3LCD Projector Engine, this three-chip system allowing 2700 lumens of both white and colour brightness. The lasers confer far longer life than ye olde bulbs: 20,000 hours of full brightness operation is Epson’s promise, and suffering no bulb-like fade-off in brightness on the way.

Is this a 4K/UHD projector? Genuinely so, it seems. Previous Epson ‘4K Pro-UHD’ projectors have accepted a 4K input but could claim to deliver only half of the full count of pixels required for 3840x2160 Ultra High Definition, also known as consumer 4K. But this time the LS12000B promises to yield