Epson - Home Cinema 880 1080p 3LCD Projector, 3300 lumens - White

I love going to the movie theater, but that is no longer a viable option lately with the pandemic. When I heard Epson was releasing its latest entry level 1080p projector, I jumped at the opportunity to bring the cinema experience to the comfort and safety of my living room. The Epson Home Cinema (HC) 880 is simply awesome! It has just enough of the big features you’d want in a projector without the hefty price tag, and that makes this a value winning projector. I love the fact that it is rated at 3,300 lumens of color and white brightness. What that means for me is that I can watch my favorite movies without turning out the lights. I tried the projector during the day with the blinds and curtains open, letting in plenty of ambient natural light, and the projector image was still bright and sharp without any washout. And during the night I had my living room lights on, the Epson 880 continued to display a bright and clear image. The projector’s lamp brightness is a little dimmer in ECO mode when compared to Normal mode, but both modes still work well in ambient lighting. I use a large white wall in my living as the projector screen. The projector’s image colors are true to life, sharp, bright, and have plenty of contrast. I was only able to project up to 8’ before I ran out of wall space, but Epson claims that the projector can display up to 386”. Another feature I like is that the Epson HC 880 comes with an audio jack. I know in the past Epson did not include an audio jack for its older model entry level projectors, but I’m glad Epson finally included this feature. I can now connect my external speakers for a better home cinema audio experience. However, the built in 2 watt mono speaker works well, too. It gets plenty loud to overcome the projector’s fan noise. Speaking of fan noise, the Epson HC 880 isn’t too loud. In ECO mode, the fan barely makes a noise. Once you turn it to Normal mode, the fan does become more audible, but nothing to the point that it becomes a distraction. One of the best things about this projector is that it is so easy to set up and use. You could mount it on the ceiling, but I simply set it on a table, plugged it in, leveled it by adjusting the height of the rear feet and front foot, adjusted the image for squareness, plugged my laptop into the hdmi connection, focused the image, and I was ready to enjoy a good movie with some popcorn in less than five minutes. The projector allows you to easily adjust for image squareness with the automatic vertical keystone correction, manual horizontal keystone correction, and Quick Corner setting. And there are plenty of image settings just like you would find on a television such as adjustments to color saturation, brightness, contrast, sharpness, tint, and so on. The remote control is easy to use and the onscreen menus are intuitive. Although it is marketed as a home cinema projector, the HC 800 can also perform well as a business projector. After all, it can reach 3,300 lumens of brightness which is plenty to overcome the ambient lighting of a conference room. And it weighs only 6 lbs which is considered lightweight for a full size projector, making it easy to tote around. I couldn’t find anything bad to nit pick with the projector. Some folks might be turned off by the limited number of connections. It only has 1 hdmi, 1 usb-type a, 1 usb-type b, and an audio jack as its interfaces. I don’t mind though, because I only use the hdmi connection. I can connect my google chromecast to the hdmi and power it with the usb-type a connection on the projector. This turns the HC 880 into a streaming machine. Things that I wished were featured on the HC 880 would be a backlit remote control for the times when I’m using the projector in the dark, and also if Epson could include a soft carrying case for the projector. Other than that, for the value price and extraordinary image quality and features, the Epson HC 880 is a perfect entry level projector meeting the needs for a fun family movie night. I totally recommend this projector!

We use a projector as our main TV in our living room and this Epson Home Cinema 880 is replacing our current 1080p LED projector. The first thing we noticed is that the Epson’s 3LCD display generates a much brighter image than our previous projector, so at 3300 lumens, it is bright enough to be seen clearly during the day and with some lights on (indoors). The clarity of the image is also super sharp and crisp all the way to the edges of the screen with no vignetting at the corners. The projector has a built-in spring-loaded front foot for pitching the image upward and two adjustable leveling feet at the back, but these couldn’t go high enough to get the image where we needed it from where the projector was placed. Since the image was too high, we had to pitch the projector at a downward angle by putting a book under the back side of the unit. The automatic keystone for both vertical and horizontal skew correction worked okay sometimes depending how we positioned the projector, but I did have to manually adjust it to get it perfectly square. I like that the sliding lens cover also acts as an A/V mute switch and cuts off the audio and switches off the lamp, helping to preserve the lamp life when not in use. You can also extend the lamp’s usable hours from 6000 to 12000 hours by setting the projector to ECO mode, which we primarily use and the image is still pretty bright and clear though contrast suffers a bit. I had no problem getting the image dimensions up to a 100 inch diagonal, which is the size of the PVC screen we use in the living room. It was actually a little too big for the screen where we have the projector placed, so we use the digital “e-zoom” to zoom out and make the image smaller to fit the screen’s borders. You can also digitally zoom in, but note that there is no physical zooming capability so the projected “area” always stays the same size and the image scales within that. The picture also looked great on our outdoor 120 inch screen when we used it for outdoor movie night, and the image was unaffected by the light cast on the screen from the fire pit. The focus wheel behind the lens is smooth and easy to adjust incrementally, so you can get the clearest image possible (at larger projection sizes you’ll be able to discern individual pixels; the max is 320 inches). The fan noise when set to ‘cinema’ or ‘game’ modes in ECO mode is pretty quiet, even though the projector still puts out a ton of heat. The fan only gets constantly loud if you set it to ‘bright cinema’ (good for day time viewing) or ‘dynamic’ color settings. The one other noise factor that we noticed when using the projector is that occasionally there are moments of clicking/grinding that sound like they are coming from the around the lens. We think it’s from the ‘Dynamic Iris’ setting which tries to adjust the brightness on the fly based on the content as this noise happens whenever we change scenes, screens, or apps on the screen. The onboard internal mono speaker for this projector also isn’t very impressive. It is serviceable if you’re traveling and want to pack light, but it isn’t going to give you a cinema quality experience to go with the awesome picture. For that, I recommend you plug in an external speaker, sound bar, or even headphones into the AUX audio out port. The analog AUX is the only audio output option, though it can be converted to RCA using an adapter (not included); I would have preferred an optical audio output or Bluetooth for connecting an external speaker. This unit is also lacking on the input side with a single USB-A and a single HDMI port for input. We’re constantly pulling HDMI cables out to plug something else in so we may consider getting and HDMI switch to bridge this gap. You can also connect a computer to the projector using the USB-B port, though you will have to install the Espon USB Display software to use this port. One thing that did disappoint me was that the USB-A port doesn’t have sufficient power output to power the FireTV streaming stick; we had to run a long USB cable from the FireTV to a wall outlet instead of being able to use the USB port right on the projector. While I did read that this projector supports wireless connections for projection, monitoring, and control via remote, it requires a separate Wireless LAN module, that’s not included in the box. The unit has IR receivers in the front and back so you can use the remote control from either side of the projector. The remote looks a bit complicated, but all the buttons are clearly labeled and each set of keys help you quickly access common functions, like brightness, color mode, and keystone, without making you dig through the projector’s on-screen menus. However, it’s not backlit so can be hard to see in the dark. If you don’t have the remote handy, you can also use the buttons on top of the projector. Overall, the projector’s image quality and brightness is its main highlight. The unit is easy to use and set up, and the mediocre sound can be mitigated using an external speaker. Despite the lack of multiple inputs and underpowered USB port, you can still make due by simply working around these shortcomings, so they’re not show stoppers.

Fair warning, this is a first impression review. I am blown away by this thing. My only real expectations were based on the 2-3 thousand dollar projectors I remember as a kid. This absolutely blew them away, the picture quality in my basement, even on just the wall is excellent, the colors pop, the brightness is great. I’m projecting about 150 inch image and it’s still as good quality as say, a 65 inch tv of the same price. It was incredibly easy to set up and use out of the box with a google play attachment. Casting is effortless and all setup is incredibly simple, pretty much plug and play. The only thing is the audio volume is very limited, but I expected that, and it has a 3.5 mm jack so setting up a speaker system should be as effortless as everything else has been with this device. TLDR, For the price you absolutely cannot go wrong and this device has my 100% recommendation, although I’d recommend investing in a sound system.

One of the first things I noticed about this projector was how no-frills it was. It has one HDMI port, and a 3.5mm audio out, and a USB port. That's it for I/O ports. Depending on your setup that may be fine, but particularly for audio, just a 3.5mm out limits your audio options without extra cables and equipment. Setup was otherwise super simple, take it out of the box, set it up on a flat stable surface and take off the protective tape, plug it in and power it on. You can be projecting in a matter of minutes. The projector has some auto-keystone (distortion caused by the projector being at an off angle) abilities, where it will detect the vertical angle it is placed at and adjust the picture so it is square. If the projector is off angle horizontally, you will have to manually adjust that, which there is a slider on the projector for. You can also use the remote to adjust the keystoning to get a square picture. Focus is manually controlled at the lens on the projector itself. There are no options to control focus with the remote. Brightness was great, I could see the image well, in a comfortably sun-lit room. Colors are great as well, which is too be expected from a 3LCD projector. Built-in sound was nothing impressive, which is basically expected. If you want any reasonable sound from HDMI content, you'll want to use external speakers. Fan noise was tolerable; though considerably louder when set to the "Dynamic" picture mode, which sets the projector at the highest brightness. Setting it to "Cinema" was much better, and perfectly usable in most lighting conditions. Where this projector fails seems to be on the quality of the projector lens itself. Image was somewhat soft at the center, but perfectly acceptable for watching movies and tv, but the corners were very soft, with color fringing (colors separating). When I saw some text near the corners, I actually went to adjust the focus thinking I had the projector slightly out of focus, but it didn't help (or would make the edges a bit clearer, and center out of focus). This isn't as big of a problem when watching movies and tv, but if you intend to use this for projections in a school or business setting where text will be displayed, this could be frustrating, and I'd have a hard time recommending this projector for those use-cases. Attached images show a test pattern projected on my off-white wall, demonstrating the softness of the corners. But, for a cost-effective home theater projector, for watching movies and tv, this is still a great projector, and can't wait to have an outdoor movie once the weather warms back up.

I knew for a long time that I wanted to replace the TV with a projector and I knew that I wanted an Epson. When I was in school I always liked how we could use the projector with all the classroom lights on and still see it clearly and all the colors. The fan is quiet, the speaker goes up to 10 in volume and sounds just fine. We use the internal speakers when the bluetooth is charging. I have a Bose bluetooth speaker that I use with it and it sounds like the sound comes right from the screen. In the daytime, which I’m most excited about, it shows great. Now it truly is my TV because I can watch live TV anytime or day and there’s no real difference in performance. Once it starts to get dark and the lights are on, it’s the same thing. We usually prefer to turn the lights off and it’s so bright, the room just glows. All around best purchase I’ve made all year. And playing the Nintendo Switch has really made it even better. Game night is everything.

Wow! That’s all I have to say! I had purchased a junk basic rca in October and the picture sucked! I upgraded to this bad boy, and it met my expectations and more. Even on my grey wall this thing is bright and the resolution is top notch. I hesitated because of price, but so glad i went ahead with it. Do yourself a favor, purchase this and go enjoy your new movie nights.

Bought this projector to watch a movie inside my home. But the quality was sooooo good that I decided to test it on my house exterior wall and OMGGGGG. It was 1080p quality outside. I decided to have a movie night and invited the neighbors and we had a movie night for everyone. The kids loved it ans the adults had a blast. I highly truly recommend it. My pictures don’t give it justice. But it’s MARVELOUS.

This projector exceeding all my expectations. I didn’t even use a screen and have it playing off my wall. I love how it changes between dynamic and bright cinema. For the movies I use dynamic. I have it set at 50 for brightness. If you are considering one I promise you can’t go wrong with this one.