The UST (Ultra Short Projection) market has exploded in the last couple of years. Those who want a truly cinematic big screen experience at home can either sink big bucks into a huge flat panel TV, invest time and money into installing a long throw projector and make sure to close the drapes and control those room lights, or find a good deal on a UST projector and call it a day.
Unlike regular projectors, ultra short throw projectors can be placed right next to a wall and still create a huge image, up to 150 inches diagonally. And if you buy the right UST projector, it will be bright enough to compete with ambient room light or even the occasional sunlight streaming through the windows. And one of the top-rated - and brightest - UST projectors right now is Epson's LS800.
The Epson LS800 offers a full 4,000 lumens of peak brightness, a laser-lit light source and three different LCD imaging panels for excellent color reproduction. It normally lists for $3499 but for Black Friday you can get it for $2799 or even as low as $2699 after a limited time cash back offer. To get the deal, buy the LS800 from ProjectorScreen.com:
> Buy or Find Out More about the Epson LS800 UST Projector on ProjectorScreen.com
The price listed is $2799 but there is a limited time cash back offer advertised on the site to receive a $100 gift card after purchase. This brings the next cost down to $2699, which is the lowest price we've seen on this projector.
The LS800 is a native 4Ke ("4K Enhanced") projector which uses a laser light source and three separate LCD panels to crank out a whopping 4,000 ANSI Lumens of color and white brightness. This light cannon should be well-suited to creating a huge screen home theater experience, even in a bright living room.
Not just a basic projector, the LS800 offers "smart streaming" features, with Android TV on board. This includes access to the top streaming services including YouTube, Disney+, Hulu and MAX. As with many other Android TV projectors, there is no native Netflix support, so if you use Netflix we'd recommend adding a FireTV 4K stick or similar 4K streaming device. It's possible Android TV will be updated in the future to support Netflix.
The projector offers Google Assistant built-in: you can use the microphone in the remote to ask Google to play the latest episode of "House of the Dragon," or "How's the weather?" or pretty much anything else you can think of. You can also use your voice to control smart home devices like lights or a Nest thermostat on the Google Home platform.
The LS800 projector includes a built-in high quality 2.1 channel sound bar, thanks to an exclusive design partnership with Yamaha. In addition to enhancing sound from TV shows and movies, the soundbar can be used for music listening with or without the screen active. It even includes Bluetooth connectivity so you can use it as a standalone wireless bluetooth speaker. At the 2023 Laser TV Showdown, Projector Central's editor-in-chief Rob Sabin and I spent some quality time comparing the sound quality of the Epson to eight other high-end UST projectors and found that the Epson held its own among the better projectors. We'd still recommend upgrading to a full-fledged surround sound system, but the built-in speakers will get you buy in a pinch.
Introduced at the end of last year, the LS800 took second place last month in the 2023 Laser TV Showdown, scoring higher than more expensive projectors including one projector which sells for over three times the Epson's current price. The LS800 won over the judges with its high brightness, accurate colors, excellent motion handling and strong contrast.
Pair the LS800 with a motorized light rejecting screen like the Vividstorm Rising ALR Screen and you can have a huge screen 4K TV which virtually disappears when not in use.
In addition to movies and TV viewing, the LS800 makes a great choice for gamers as it offers excellent motion reproduction and a gaming mode with under 20ms input lag time. This is less than half the lag time of competing UST projectors. With a laser-based light source, the LS800 will never need a bulb replacement and is expected to deliver bright moving images for at least 20,000 hours (that's over 10 years of average viewing).
It's worth noting that the Epson LS800, which they call a "4K UHD Pro" projector, uses the company's dual phase pixel shift technology. This results in screen resolution that is twice as detailed as 1080p HD, but only half as detailed as native 4K. Does that really matter? Frankly, in terms of perception of picture quality, one would be hard-pressed to see a difference between this and a "true" 4K projector, even on large screens. All 4K projectors at this price point use some form of pixel shifting to generate the image (2X or 4X shifting). True native 4K imaging panels (which do not use pixel shifting technology) aren't even available yet on any UST projector.
With the extreme brightness (4000 ANSI Lumens of both color and white brightness) of this projector, and its correspondingly high contrast, the perception of detail exceeds that of some true 4K projectors that offer lower brightness. Having seen the LS800 in person, I can strongly recommend it, even against more expensive DLP projectors with higher resolution specs.
The LS800 can be mounted on a console stand, TV cabinet, coffee table or even on a ceiling (with a proper mount). It weighs about 27 pounds and measures in at around 27.3 x 13.4 x 6.1 inches (width x depth x height). Noise rating is a reasonable 32 dB in standard mode or a whisper quiet 19 dB in Economy mode.
NOTE: If the LS800 is out of stock on ProjectorScreen.com, also check Amazon. The Amazon price is currently $2799 (on Black Friday) but if you pay with an Amazon Prime Card, you can get over $100 cash back as a statement credit, bringing the price down to approximately the same as on ProjectorScreen.com.
> Epson LS800 (White) on Amazon
> Epson LS800 (Black) on Amazon
> More Black Friday and Cyber Monday Projector Deals at ProjectorScreen.com
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