It may have a name like an Italian ice cream but this widescreen projector is packed with features. So is it worth your money? Read our Australian review.

While plasma screens have dropped considerably in price, and the technology behind LCD screens has made them more and more viable, the real action at the low end of the consumer space is arguably in home-theatre projectors. We've already seen (and been heartily impressed by) Epson's EMP-S1 projector. The Dreamio EMP-TW10 will set you back a touch more than the simple EMP-S1, but the extras packed into it make it a worthwhile purchase option.

While we're all in favour of product names having meaning rather than sounding like Star Wars Droid names, we can't help thinking the name "Dreamio" sounds more like a boutique Italian ice cream than a widescreen projector. Maybe it's just us.

Physically the EMP-TW10 is a pretty imposing beast at 402x114x294mm and 3.6kg, a tad heavier than the EMP-S1. Having said that, it is well styled and should suit most decor. However, we're not sure that design issues are a large concern in a product that works best in a pitch black area in any case.

One factor that often makes setting up the cheaper home projectors a chore is having fiddly feet, and here we were impressed with the TW10. The feet are solid and easy to turn to pitch the projector image correctly which makes the TW10 particularly easy to set up and put away if you don’t have the space for the TW10 to be permanently deployed. About the only thing missing is release latches for the feet--you've got to manually twiddle them out into position every time.

In terms of connectivity, the TW10 should connect up to just about anything you care to throw at it, with the choice of S-Video, Component, RCA, and VGA connectors, as well as a set of RCA audio-in connectors, just in case you wanted to watch your high-quality DVD movie with tinny projector speaker sound. As with the S1, there's a duplication of remote control functions on the top of the projector, covering the standard aspect modes and keystone correction.

The TW10 offers an interesting twist on controlling the focus and zoom of the projector--quite literally. Rather than turning the lens directly, a pair of control rings sit about 5cm recessed from the front of the projector, making it very easy to make on-the-spot focus and zoom corrections.

The TW10 comes with three in-built colour settings that control the exact luminance of the projector. “Theatre black” drops the luminance to 400lm and is best suited to those with a good dark room and a quality screen, we had neither so in our testing it tended to be just a touch too murky.

We warmed more to the standard “theatre” mode (500lm) which worked well in our test environment. For PC and gaming applications the “living room” setting worked well, although you'll want to alter the aspect ratio (standard 16:9 widescreen) for these applications. There's also a dynamic setting that pitches the brightness up to its full intensity. In every setting but the theatre black the fan has to go full tilt, which Epson rates at 35dB, a tad noisier than the 33dB output of the S1. If you're running in theatre black mode, it drops to 29dB, which in most presentation settings should be quiet enough to be effectively silent.

The TW10's technical specifications sit in an interesting place compared to the cheaper S1. With a brightness rating of up to 1000 ANSI lumens (depending on selected mode), the TW10 is a touch less bright than the S1 (1200 ANSI lumens), but it makes up for this slight shortcoming with a much better contrast ratio of 700:1, a factor that produced much clearer pictures in our testing, especially for darker tones.

The TW10 uses a 132W UHE lamp that Epson rates as being good for up to 3,000 hours, although that's in the low-brightness Theatre Black mode. If you use the lamp in any other mode the rating drops to 2,000 hours. At AU$349 for a replacement lamp, that's around 17.5c per hour, which is quite economical for this kind of projection.

The credit-card sized remote that ships with the EMP-TW10 is ridiculously easy to lose--behind sofas, chairs, and even on the top of DVD players--although it does have a small slot housing underneath the S-Video connector. Despite its tiny size it works well from most angles, as long as you're in the vague direction of the EMP-TW10's IR port, located on the back of the projector.

The intense competition in the entry-level projector space--you could look at projectors from Toshiba, Dell, Sony, or InFocus at this level--is great news for consumers wanting an easy entry point for home projection. By bringing quality widescreen presentation into the mix the EMP-TW10 brings yet another variable to bear, and it's one that is most welcome.

Epson EMP-TW10
Company: Epson Australia
Price: AU$2,699
Distributor: Selected resellers
Phone: 1300 304 767