Epson Home Cinema 5050UB vs Valerion Vision Master Pro2

“People get mad at me and accuse me of being elitist when I tell them that the floor these days is an Epson 5050UB. $3000 new or $2400 for refurb: https://www.bestbuy.com/site/epson-home-cinema-5050ub/6344895.p?skuId=6344895 https://www.amazon.com/Epson-Projector-Advanced-Balanced-Brightness/dp/B0857B1DGC The issue is that I'm not being elitist. I just can't in good conscience tell them that what they want to do is possible for the price they want to do it. You've already experienced first hand want $1000 gets you in projection. Do you really think that was worth spending $1000 on? There's plenty if better options that cost more than the Epson 5050UB. And if that's your price range, we can discuss those. But I have an extremely difficult time recommending the options that cost less than that. All the good projector makers have pretty much decided they no longer want to make competitive budget projectors, including Epson. That's why this model hasn't been refreshed since 2019. So we are left with a bunch of cheap DLP projectors that recycle the same two Texas Instruments chips and cannot match a 5 year old Epson in color accuracy or contrast. If you desperately need to spend less than the Epson 5050UB and are willing to give up some contrast, the Epson 3800 is not terrible for the price. It's certainly better than the alternatives in its price range: https://www.bestbuy.com/site/epson-home-cinema-3800/6366530.p?skuId=6366530 But on the whole, if you can reach a bit further and afford the open box 5050UB instead, that's the much better route to go.”

“We haven’t tested the Valerion Max at RTINGS yet, but we did review the Valerion Visionmaster Pro 2 and liked it quite a bit; if the Max genuinely improves on it, and it looks like it does, odds are it’s a very good projector, and could match the Nebula X1 on many metrics. That said, we don’t rely on marketing numbers as projectors almost always measure lower post-calibration (D65), so we’ll reserve judgment until we run our standardized tests on a retail unit.”