Epson has added three laser projectors to its Home Cinema line in the United States, and the cheapest of them costs less than half of what the company was charging for a laser model with a conventional lens a week ago. The Home Cinema LS5000 lists at $1,999.99, the LS6000 at $2,199.99 and the short-throw LS7500 at $2,699.99. Epson announced all three on September 22 and says they will reach its own online store and selected retailers in late September; ProjectorScreen.com, which already had an LS6000 on its bench, is quoting two to three weeks before its stock leaves the warehouse.
All three use the same core: three LCD panels lit by a laser diode array, with Epson’s pixel-shifting producing a 4K (3840 x 2160) image from what the company describes as 8.29 million addressable pixels. They share a 120Hz ceiling, input lag rated below 20 milliseconds, Auto Low Latency Mode, HDR10 and HLG with 10-bit processing, two HDMI 2.1 inputs with eARC, Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 6.0 for sending audio to wireless headphones or speakers. Laser life is rated at 20,000 hours in normal mode. None of them has built-in speakers.
Three boxes, one engine
The differences are brightness, lens and contrast. The LS5000 is rated at 2,500 lumens of colour and white brightness, the LS6000 at 3,400, and both use a standard-throw lens with a 1.62x manual zoom and a 1.32 to 2.15 throw ratio. The LS7500 is rated at 3,500 lumens and swaps in a short-throw lens with a 1.0 to 1.3 throw ratio and 1.3x zoom; it is also the only one of the three with an RS-232C port and a trigger output for motorised screens, and its dynamic contrast is quoted at 1,000,000:1 against 800,000:1 for the other two. Lens shift is identical across the range and manual: plus or minus 59 percent vertical and 21 percent horizontal. The two standard-throw models weigh 17.6 lb, the LS7500 18.2 lb.
In practical terms, the throw figures put a 100-inch 16:9 image at between about 9.6 and 15.6 feet from the LS5000 or LS6000, and between 7.3 and 9.4 feet from the LS7500. That last number is the reason the short-throw model exists: in a typical living room, it is the difference between a projector on a shelf behind the sofa and one hanging from the ceiling in the middle of the room.
Europe is getting a slightly larger range. German retailers and press list an EH-LS5000, EH-LS6000 and EH-LS7500 alongside an EH-LS7000 rated at 3,600 lumens, a model Epson has not announced for North America, and the European versions are being promoted with Matter support for Google Home, SmartThings and Home Assistant control. Epson’s US announcement does not mention Matter at all, and it pairs the three American models with a two-year warranty that includes full unit replacement.
The price ladder just changed shape
The more interesting number is where these land in Epson’s own catalogue. In our guide to Epson’s 2026 range, written at the start of September, the company’s home-theater ladder had a hole in the middle. Below $2,000 there was the lamp-based Home Cinema 2350 at $1,499.99; above it came the lamp-based 5050UB at $3,799.99 and then the LS11000, its standard-throw 3LCD laser, at $4,499.99. Anyone who wanted an Epson laser and a normal lens had to spend four and a half thousand dollars.
The LS5000 now does that for $1,999.99, and the LS6000 does it with more light. On paper the LS6000 is rated at 3,400 lumens against the LS11000’s 2,500, or 36 percent brighter, for 49 percent of the money. Per rated lumen, the LS11000 costs about $1.80; the LS5000 about 80 cents, the LS7500 about 77 cents, and the LS6000 about 65 cents, which makes it the obvious pick of the three. Its $200 premium over the LS5000 buys 900 extra rated lumens; the LS7500’s further $500 buys 100 more lumens, the short-throw lens and the control ports.
What the extra money on the LS11000 still buys is lens hardware and black level. Its shift range runs to roughly 96 percent vertical and 47 percent horizontal, it has a 2.1x motorised zoom with lens memory for people using wide screens, and its dynamic contrast rating is above 1,200,000:1. The new models also stop at HDR10 and HLG, while the LS11000 adds HDR10+. For a dedicated dark room with a 2.35:1 screen, that gap is real. For a living room that is lit half the time, it is mostly irrelevant, and the new machines were plainly designed for the second case. Epson’s own announcement leans on sports and gaming rather than film.
What the first measurements show
ProjectorScreen.com published the first bench results for the LS6000 on September 22. In Natural mode, the most accurate preset rather than the brightest, it measured about 2,200 lumens at the widest zoom setting, roughly 65 percent of the 3,400-lumen rating, with about 98 percent Rec. 709 coverage and a greyscale error of 2.09 Delta E after a two-point calibration. That is a respectable ratio: calibrated modes on most projectors give up a third or more of their headline output, and 2,200 accurate lumens still puts close to 280 nits on a 100-inch screen.
The weak point is contrast. The same test measured sequential contrast of 406:1 at the wide end of the zoom and 451:1 at the tele end, and the reviewer names elevated black levels as the main limitation in dark scenes. That is the distance between a dynamic rating of 800,000:1, which depends on the laser dimming between frames, and what the panels do inside a single frame. It also explains why the 5050UB, lamp and all, stays in Epson’s catalogue: the new models do not replace it for a blacked-out room.
Where 3LCD earns its keep is visible in the same test. The reviewer saw no rainbow artefacts and no laser speckle, which matters more at this price than it used to. The competing designs around $2,000 are mostly single-chip DLP projectors, and the newest of them use RGB triple lasers that post wider colour numbers but can show speckle to sensitive viewers; XGIMI’s own Amazon listing for the HORIZON 20 Pro warns that five to ten percent of people may notice it. Epson’s argument has always been that three panels give equal colour and white brightness and no colour-wheel artefacts. At $2,199.99, with 3,400 rated lumens, it is now making that argument in the price band where most people actually buy.
For readers weighing placement first, our short-throw guide covers the other lenses at this price, and the LS7500 will slot into that comparison once it ships. The question worth watching over the next month is whether the LS6000’s measured contrast holds up across more samples, because at 65 cents a lumen, black level is the only thing standing between it and a very easy recommendation.
