The Epson Home Cinema 5040UB is a cream-of-the-crop projector aimed squarely at the high-end market. With 100% DCI P3 support (only in digital cinema mode), HDR10, and 3LCD technology to remove the rainbow effect, the Epson Home Cinema 5040UB is one of the best 3D projectors on the market.
Why We Like It – Epson Home Cinema 5040UB
The Epson Home Cinema 5040UB is a high-end full HD home theater projector that aims to provide a top-of-the-line media experience in HDR content thanks to its wide color gamut, excellent picture quality, and high contrast.
- Excellent contrast
- High dynamic range support
- Phenomenal image quality
- Faulty power supply design
Performance/Resolution Etc.
Despite only coming in at 1080p, just like the Epson Home Cinema 5050UB, the Epson Home Cinema 5040UB provides an excellent viewing experience. Epson’s pixel-shifting technology gives it the ability to display 4K content closer to the appearance of native 4K, but it’s no substitute for its lower resolution; its lower resolution is its only real fault on the visual front. If you’re a stickler for resolution, the Epson Home Cinema 4010 is ideal. The BenQ TK800 4K Projector has a native resolution of 4K, but overall image quality is worse. Resolution aside, you’re looking at a standard premium projector; image quality is excellent, especially in dim rooms, making it well-suited for viewing blu rays and other media in high quality. Its 3LCD technology also means it won’t suffer from the rainbow effect, though a laser would have been preferred at this price point. If you are looking for a projector with Android TV support, consider the Anker Nebula Capsule II.
Brightness/Lumens
Brightness is adequate on the Epson Home Cinema 5040UB. 2,500 lumens is more than enough for what it’s meant for–viewing media in dark or dim rooms with minimal ambient light. It’s bright enough to display HDR content and provide a solid experience all around, but it’s not well-suited for outdoor use. If brightness is the solitary factor you care about, the Epson Home Cinema 3700 Full HD 1080p 3LCD Projector is a better buy since it’s slightly brighter at 3,000 lumens, but overall image quality is significantly worse as it’s a much lower-end model.
Adjustability/Viewing Angle
Adjustability is phenomenal on the Epson Home Cinema 5040UB, as it should be for its very high price tag. It has motorized focus, 2.1x zoom, and an ultra-wide lens shift, alongside a feature known as lens memory that saves up to 10 lens positions. It sports two HDMI inputs, one of which is certified for HDCP 2.2, alongside a USB port for direct media playback, an ethernet jack, audio jack, and for some reason, VGA. DisplayPort would have been nice to see at this price point, but isn’t mandatory as none of its features require it.
Durability
There is one very glaring problem with the Epson Home Cinema 5040UB in the durability department–it has a faulty power supply design with a very high failure rate. Even with that issue aside, its lamp life isn’t anything impressive, coming in at just 3,500 hours when not in eco mode. The lack of laser technology at this price point is very unfortunate, and it exacerbates its iffy power supply design.
Value
Value is another fail for the Epson Home Cinema 5040UB, though that doesn’t make it a bad buy. High-end products are never good value propositions, period; budget options like the Epson Home Cinema 2040 3D 1080p 3LCD Projector will always provide significantly better value, as they cost much less and offer similar feature sets. With that said though, value offerings will have much worse overall picture quality, and they’ll often miss out on nice-to-have features like HDR and super high contrast ratios, such as would be the case in this comparison.
Epson Home Cinema 5040UB Wrap-up
The Epson Home Cinema 5040UB is a very good, but very flawed, product. It’s difficult to say it’s the definitive best buy in its price range; its middling lamp life and faulty power supply design make it a spotty product in terms of its lifespan, and it’s let down by both its 1080p resolution and its lack of laser technology. If you’ve got a lot of money to spend and can even find one in stock, it’s a very good pick (especially with how uncommon 3D is), but it’s a difficult product to just up and recommend to anyone with several grand to blow.
