The living room may still be the biggest open plan room in the house next to the kitchen, but it doesn’t mean you’re going to spend time there watching a movie or a show. There are just so many other ways to do that.
You can watch on your phone. On your laptop. On a tablet.
But if you need to get that big experience, you still need something that delivers a big screen. It just doesn’t have to be in the living room.
In the past few years, projector manufacturers have shown us why projectors can take up this spot, transforming a wall, sheet, or the back of a campervan without necessarily needing to make that projector a dedicated fixture in the house the way a TV might, and that whole thing is getting bigger.
Epson has been one of the brands leading this charge, alongside companies such as Anker and Samsung that also offer projectors more focused on portability, and it has two more joining the assortment.
Being portable, the new arrivals aren’t quite like the larger models the company makes, and more fit into a category of “mini” projectors. They still need a power cord, but they may have a stand built in, delivering 4K projection technology and support for Google TV, as well as slightly better-than-normal speakers thanks to sound tweaked by Bose.
Two new models are in the range, with the Epson EF-62B “LifeStudio Pop” offering 3LCD colour technology and 700 lumens of light in a somewhat compact traditional projector design (also know as a rectangle you’d leave on a shelf of table somewhere).
A little bigger again, the Epson LifeStudio Flex EF-73 lifts that concxept up on its own stand, while boosting the brightness to 1000 lumens and including a wireless charging pad, handy if you want it to sit next to your bedside and still offer a way to keep your phone and earphones charged.
It’s not the first time we’ve seen a lifestyle-focused compact projector from Epson and clearly won’t be the last, nor is the first time we’ve seen the “Sound by Bose” approach used in Epson’s projectors, having kicked off that collaboration earlier this year.
But the range of 700 to 1000 lumens does give us pause, because it also mightn’t be a lot to work with unless it’s clearly getting darker. By comparison, the EF-21’s 1000 lumens matches the EF-73, and we thought that EF-21 model could be a little brighter still.
That suggests both of these projectors might be best suited to rooms where it’s properly dark and you can draw the curtains (such as your bedroom) plus the outside when the sun goes down, and may not suit every house in the home.
But they’re also built to be 4K, which is a higher resolution than the Full HD on offer in the EF-21, though priced considerably higher at that. As such, Australians can expect to see the projectors for a little more, with the EF-62 priced at $1499 and the EF-73 at $2199.
