Epson Lifestudio Flex EF-72 review: The perfect living room projector?

Epson’s new Lifestudio range sees the brand unreservedly committed to the concept of a lifestyle projector; the kind that sits on a coffee table in a swish living room, not attached to the ceiling of a dedicated home cinema. In fact, everything about the flagship Epson Lifestudio Flex EF-72 seems focused on making it the best lifestyle projector it can be, from its subtly Scandinavian styling to its Bose sound.

And, really, how you feel about it will depend on your priorities and whether you’re happy to compromise slightly on some aspects of performance in the name of convenience and style. The Lifestudio Flex EF-72 isn’t the best projector at this price point that I’ve tested this year – or even this month – but I’m struggling to think of one that gets the lifestyle stuff so right, with so many thoughtful features and touches. Read on, and you’ll find out what I mean.

What do you get for the money?

The Lifestudio Flex EF-72 costs £1,080 and is a beautifully designed compact 4K projector with a short integral stand. It has a faux-aluminium and gloss black plastic body with an oak-effect panel on the top, giving it a vaguely Scandinavian Hi-Fi look. The stand, 117mm high, holds the projector at a suitable level on a low coffee table or the floor and can be tilted upwards by up to 90 degrees, enabling you to project onto the ceiling.

Where most compact 4K models rely on a laser or LED light source and a DLP chip, the Flex EF-72 combines Epson’s well-established LCD technology with an RGB-LED source to produce a 4K image with up to 1,000 ANSI Lumens of brightness (and Epson is clear that this describes not just the white light but the coloured light – something some manufacturers fudge). As with every 4K projector at around this price point, it uses pixel-shifting techniques to construct the 4K image, but, as usual, the results are so close to true 4K that you won’t really notice any difference.

The Flex EF-72 supports 10-bit colour, HDR10 and HLG, has a throw ratio of 1.20:1, and a digital zoom of up to 3.3x, allowing it to beam images of between 30in and 150in in size. Without the zoom, you’re looking at a 100in image from a distance of 2.66m or an 80in image from 2.13m. It’s pretty flexible within the average living room.

Epson has installed Google TV for streaming purposes, along with Wi-Fi 5, while a 10W speaker system, co-designed with Bose, delivers Dolby Audio sound. On the physical connection front, there’s an HDMI input with eARC support for AV systems, Blu-ray players and consoles, plus a USB 3.1 Type-A port and two USB-C ports. One of these can be used to supply charge from a 100W power bank, which makes up for the lack of a built-in battery. It’s not a big deal, anyway, given that this is more of a living room option than a portable projector.

What does it do well?

The Flex EF-72 can produce good 4K pictures and immersive sound, but its biggest strengths are its physical design, its convenience and its flexibility. Google TV makes it easy to set up and use, with excellent app support. I was able to install and run all of the major UK streaming apps, including the sometimes tricky BBC iPlayer.

Meanwhile, Epson has developed one of the best auto-alignment and correction systems out there. Plug the projector in and point it at a surface, and you get a usable picture nearly every time. Move the projector, and you can watch the image straighten out in real-time, even as you move it. The system works from fairly extreme angles and includes obstacle avoidance, but the image softens the further you move from straight-on. It can also adjust for different wall surfaces and colours, meaning you can get watchable pictures on a smooth-ish white or off-white wall or even a coloured wall, provided it’s a fairly light colour.

It’s also just a very living room or even bedroom-friendly projector. It fits in well with the surroundings and doesn’t take up too much space, and can moonlight as a mood lamp with a soft orange glow. While not projecting, it can work as a Bluetooth speaker, making the most of the Bose sound system. You could even argue that it’s a bit of a two-in-one device.

As a projector, it’s strong if not quite stellar. You can get a nice, sharp 4K image in a dark room, and it does a great job with streaming 4K content and a fine one upscaling Full HD material. Colours aren’t the richest or most vivid I’ve seen recently, but the presentation is subtle and cinematic in the way that many Epson models manage, working particularly well with slick streaming dramas like Netflix’s Untamed or Wednesday, as well as blockbuster movies like Furiosa, Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning and Thunderbolts. There’s enough punch to dish out the comic book detail of Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, but also enough tonal nuance to deal with the gothic gloom of Nosferatu.

However, put it up against brighter models like the XGIMI Horizon S Pro or the recently reviewed BenQ GP520, and the Flex EF-72’s images aren’t as vibrant or quite as crisp and detail-rich. What’s more, the Flex EF-72 struggles more to project a clear, high-contrast image in rooms with natural or artificial ambient light. Here it does better than any portable projector, but it’s still not on the same level as similar compact 4K models.

In my tests with a colorimeter, it covered 84.8% of the sRGB gamut and 69% of DCI-P3 in the Standard mode, beating the performance of Epson’s brighter EH-TW6150 and the Anker Nebula Cosmos 4K SE and matching the BenQ GP520. Colour accuracy isn’t exceptional, with an average Delta E of 5.53, but there are detailed colour controls and a PC mode if you want to improve on that, albeit at the cost of some brightness.

The Flex EF-72 has a gaming mode plus ALLM support for reduced latency, and I didn’t notice any serious lag or colour smudging in a few hours playing Assassin’s Creed: Mirage and Doom: The Dark Ages. Here again, the BenQ and XGIMI competition deliver a brighter image with a bit more shadow contrast, but in isolation, the Epson acquits itself well.

What could it do better?

The modest brightness levels are this projector’s biggest drawback, but the sound’s not quite perfect, either. On the one hand, the Bose sound system produces audio that’s rich and warm, with a surprising degree of bass. It works noticeably better as a Bluetooth speaker for music than most other compact all-in-one projectors, not to mention portable models like the XGIMI MoGo 4. 

However, it doesn’t go as loud as the BenQ GP520, and at lower volume levels, dialogue just isn’t clear. Watching at night, with the volume kept at well under the 50% mark, I struggled to hear dialogue in some films and programs to the extent that I needed to switch the subtitles on. This was never a problem on the BenQ GP520.

Serious home cinema buffs might also be put off by the lack of HDR format support. There’s no Dolby Vision or HDR10+, just HDR10, and also no Filmmaker mode for director-approved colours. In actual use, HDR content looks pretty good given the brightness levels, but isn’t quite in the same class as the Epson’s BenQ and XGIMI rivals.

Should you buy the Epson Lifestudio Flex EF-72?

Maybe. In many ways, it’s the most successful living room projector I’ve seen. It’s small, stylish and very flexible, and Epson has put a lot of thought into its Bluetooth speaker skills, the lighting and the overall design. It’s incredibly easy to get up and running and is designed to work all around the home. Yet I also can’t ignore that if you’re buying on this kind of budget, there are better options out there in terms of brightness and overall picture quality, not to mention options that work better outside a darkened room.

For some, the styling and convenience will be more important, and make the LifeStudio Flex EF-72 the perfect addition to their home, where it’ll work well as a projector for casual movie nights, gaming, sports events and more. But if you’re more focused on getting the best 4K pictures at this price point, this might not be the projector for you.