Equal parts home theater and home entertainment projector, the Epson Home Cinema 3500 ($1599.99) delivers both suitable image quality for a home theater and several features—including a bright image that can stand up to ambient light—that make it equally suitable for home entertainment use in, say, a family room. The combination of image quality (for both 2D and 3D), brightness, modest price, and setup conveniences like the 1.6x zoom makes the 3500 ($1,210.98 at Amazon) an easy pick as Editors' Choice.

The 3500 delivers full 1080p HD in 2D and 3D. Its three-chip LCD design distinguishes it from DLP models like the BenQ HT1075 ($892.60 at Amazon) by guaranteeing that it can't show rainbow artifacts (red-green-blue flashes). The LCD engine also ensures that the projector's white brightness and color brightness match, so you don't have to worry about differences between the two potentially affecting color quality. (For more on color brightness, see Color Brightness: What It Is, Why It Matters.)

The 1.6x zoom is a welcome convenience for setup, giving you more flexibility than most models for how far you can put the projector from the screen for a given size image. Potentially even more helpful is a significant level of vertical and horizontal lens shift. Lens shift lets you move the image without moving the projector and without turning the rectangular image into a trapezoid. According to Epson, the 3500 can shift images by as much as 60 percent of the screen height up or down from the center position and as much as 24 percent of the width left or right from the center.

My measurements confirmed Epson's claim for the vertical shift, but came in a little lower for the horizontal shift, at 21 percent left or right of the center position. That still gives you lots of freedom for where you can put the projector relative to the screen without needing to adjust the image shape with keystone correction, which can add artifacts.

Setup, Brightness, and Sound

Epson says that the 3500 is designed to fit on a bookshelf, at 6.4 by 16.1 by 12.6 inches (HWD) and 14 pounds 14 ounces. It also offers front ventilation, so there's no need to leave room for air flow in back. However, all the ports are on the back, so you'll need an extra two or three inches of open space behind the projector to make room for cables.

Aside from the advantages of lens shift, setup is standard, with manual focus and zoom. Image input include two HDMI ports, VGA and composite video ports, and a component video port with three RCA connectors. One HDMI port is Mobile High-Definition Link (MHL)-enabled, and there's a USB Type A port for reading files from USB memory devices or connecting an optional ($99) Wi-Fi dongle. Both HDMI ports support 3D from video sources like a Blu-ray player or a cable or FiOS box.

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Based on Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) recommendations for theater-dark lighting, and assuming a 1.0 gain screen, the 2,500-lumen rating for the 3500 makes it bright enough for a screen size (measured diagonally) of roughly 195 to 264 inches at 1080p's 16:9 aspect ratio. With moderate ambient light, it's bright enough for a roughly 130- to 145-inch image. For dimmer lighting or more realistic screen sizes for home use, you can adjust the brightness by using Eco mode, a lower-brightness predefined mode, or both.

The two 10-watt speakers deliver excellent audio quality—for a projector at least—with easily enough volume to fill a family room or living room. If you want still better sound quality, or a system with speakers far enough apart to hear a stereo effect, you can easily plug in an external audio system. Also note that the speakers are on the back of projector, which means that if you put the projector on a bookshelf in the back of a room, you'll probably want to use an external sound system in any case.

Performance: 2D, 3D and Lag Time
Image quality for the 3500 is excellent or close to it across the board. With 2D, color quality in my tests was impressive, and the image showed crisp detail. I saw some minor issues, but only in the most demanding test clips, which we use precisely because each one tends to bring out a specific problem. Among these is a hint of posterization (shading changing suddenly where it should change gradually) in faces in one badly lit scene and a mild loss of shadow detail in another. However, the projector handled both skin tones and shadow detail without problems otherwise.

For 3D, the 3500 comes with two pairs of Epson's RF glasses. Additional pairs are $99 each, although Epson says you can use any glasses that follow the Full HD RF 3D standard. Image quality is essentially the same as for 2D, with excellent color quality and a level of sharp detail that stands out as unusual for 3D projectors. In addition, I didn't see any crosstalk and saw barely a hint of 3D-related motion artifacts.

The one disappointment is the 3500's lag time performance. Using the projector's default settings, I measured it with a Leo Bodnar Video Input Lag Tester at 116.9 milliseconds (ms), which translates to a 7-frame lag at 60 frames per second. Even with all the settings that could affect lag turned off and with Image Processing set to Fast instead of the default Fine, it still scord a 45.8 ms—or 2.7-frame—lag. As a point of reference, the Optoma HD141X ($379.99 at Amazon) came in at 33 milliseconds.

If you're looking for a projector for game playing, you'll probably prefer one with a shorter lag time, like the Optoma HD141X. For a home theater or as a substitute for a TV in a family room, however, the Epson Home Cinema 3500 offers the advantage of rainbow-free images, excellent color quality, and near-excellent overall image quality for both 2D and 3D. The added conveniences of the 1.6x zoom and lens shift are the proverbial icing on the cake. They turn the 3500 into a compelling pick and our Editors' Choice for a moderately priced home theater and home entertainment projector.

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