Epson EF-100 Mini-Laser Streaming Projector With Android TV Review
The Epson EF-100—available in either black or white and rated at 2,000 lumens—is impressively different from most home projectors, but not in the way Epson suggests. The company refers to it in full as a "Mini-Laser Streaming Projector With Android TV," and focuses on the streaming part. But you can plug a streaming dongle into any projector. The bigger difference is the "mini-laser" bit, with equal emphasis on "mini" and "laser." It's also what makes the EF-100 worth its high price—officially $999.99 on Epson's website, reduced to $699.99 from some sellers at this writing—despite its modest 1,280-by-800-pixel native resolution and lack of optical zoom or support for 3D, HDR, or input resolutions above 1080p. What the EF-100 offers instead: all the advantages of a laser light source in what is, at anywhere near its brightness, the least expensive, smallest, and lightest home laser projector to date.
The only key advantage lasers don't have over traditional lamps as a projection source is price. To begin with, they're meant to last the life of the projector, so you don't have to shell out money for replacements or go through the bother of replacing a lamp. And, unlike lamps, they lose brightness gradually throughout their lives, rather than dropping by a lot early on and then decaying gradually after that.
