I tried a £3,000 home projector - this is why it might be worth your money

For the longest time, my wife has been saying that we should get a projector. So, when the opportunity came to try one out on a short-term loan, I filled in my delivery information quicker than you could say ‘but Rob, we could never afford that’.

Indeed, coming in at an RRP of £3299, the Epson EH-LS970 is not exactly an impulse purchase that you’ll make at the supermarket checkout. This would be a huge investment for most people, and it would involve some serious saving (or debt) if I wanted to buy one for real.

Despite that, as I saw the massive cardboard box arrive at our door, the excitement I felt was real. There are two big empty walls in our home that we’ve been meaning to spruce up for ages, and perhaps this will be the solution we’ve been seeking.

• Order the Epson Lifestudio Grand Plus EH-LS970B

Firstly, though, I cannot overstate quite how massive this cardboard box was – during the period that we had the projector, the only space I could find to hide this box away was in our bathtub. It took up more than half of the space in said tub.

Surely, I thought, as I looked at the massive box for the first time, the actual projector can’t be that huge. I hoped this would be a case of the warehouse people putting a massive brown box and a load of padding around what is, otherwise, a much smaller box containing the actual product that is even smaller still.

But, dear reader, I was wrong. The product box was tight within the warehouse box, and the product itself was tight within that. This projector is a chonky item, let me tell you. It’s 695mm wide and 341mm deep. Instantly, I began to question by decision to call this item into my household.

Being a big brave boy, though, I persevered. The first spot I wanted to try the projector on, the first blank wall begging out to be used, is at the foot of our bed. We used to have a load of pictures on that wall, but it felt a bit cluttered when we were trying to chill. Equally, we didn’t want to have a TV on the wall functioning as a big black mirror when we weren’t using it. A projector, surely, would be perfect.

Cut to me, some time later, absolutely sweating buckets and screaming to the heavens – there happened to be a heatwave on the day I tried to align the projector perfectly in our boiling hot room. I didn’t have a great time. The instructions weren’t overly detailed, and the projector would make a shrill beeping sound every time I stood in front of it to try and tweak its position.

Thankfully, I soon found the settings button on the remote, which offers a far less physically-demanding way of perfecting the picture. After downloading an app on my phone, I was able to use my phone camera to tweak the projector’s image and make it the right size.

Finally, I was able to summon my wife into the room to chill out and watch some telly (the chill factor being purely of the mind, that is, because the projector actually gives off a fair amount of heat... which is not what you want when you’re already drenched in sweat during a heatwave).

I’m pleased to report that the image quality was absolutely picture perfect, even with a fair amount of sunlight poking around our blinds. The sound quality was also pretty good, although I imagine that the sort of person who buys this will probably splurge on a soundbar or surround sound system as well.

Being able to turn this dull wall into an entertainment centre was a really nice feeling. And because the software running on the projector is actually the operating system of a Google TV, I was able to log into all of our apps and pick up right where we left off. The first thing we watched was The Pitt, if you were wondering, and those traumatic injuries have honestly never looked better.

There was one big wrinkle with the bedroom idea for the projector, though. Because this is quite a short-throw projector, it wants to be close to the wall you’re projecting onto. And because it’s such a chonky piece of kit, as discussed, it basically blocked my entire pathway from bed to the door. I just knew I would trip over it if I left it there overnight, and I certainly didn’t want to be moving it every single evening before nodding off.

So, how about that second location that I mentioned? In the room that we use as a home office, there’s another big blank wall. Directly in front of it is a chest of drawers, which is exactly what was missing in the bedroom setup.

The flat top of this drawer unit normally ends up housing our keys, headphones, and anything else that we dump there after getting home. But now, I had a proper purpose for that space (with apologies to the unhoused keys etc).

After summoning my strength, I lugged the projector from the bedroom to the office and voila, it looked great in this new spot. And, as an added bonus, there was no space for a cat to step in front of the sensor and set off that shrill beeping sound. Joy of joys.

I was pleased to find that the projector didn’t forget any of my information after being unplugged. And after fiddling with the app again, it didn’t take long to get a picture that looked great in this room. At because it wasn’t being muffled by the bedroom carpet and nearby blankets, the sound was actually even better in this new spot.

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As I sat there fiddling around with my TV apps, I pondered who exactly this projector is for. Rich people, obviously, but also people who have the right kind of dead space – a blank wall with some sort of TV unit or chest of drawers in front of it.

It dawned on me that this would be the perfect projector to build a cinema room around. Nice big wall, little ledge for it to sit on, and a big bucket of popcorn to enjoy as you watch the feature presentation of your choice. So, if you’ve been thinking of setting up something like that, and your pockets are deep enough, I’d say this is the right projector for you.

This projector has a couple of HDMI ports, too, meaning that you can connect up your PS5, Xbox, Nintendo Switch 2 dock, or basically any modern device that you'd otherwise connect to a TV. That 4K laser image would be a great way to play your games with an absolutely massive picture.

For me, however, I’ve now sent this bad boy back to Epson and freed up some space in my bathtub. I still like the idea of having a projector in the bedroom, but I’m now in the market for a smaller one that can sit further away from the wall. Watch this space, and I’ll let you know if I find one. I’d better start saving, too.

For more info on the Epson Lifestudio Grand Plus EH-LS970B, see the official website

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