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Epson Lifestudio Flex Plus: One minute review
Under the hood, the Epson Lifestudio Flex Plus offers a sizable upgrade over the EF22 thanks to the 4K projection system, but otherwise still uses the same 3LCD tech and has the same 1,000 ISO lumens brightness spec.
It’s nice to see the 4K resolution since larger images really benefit from it. But picture quality with the Lifestudio Flex Plus otherwise isn’t terribly impressive, with weak contrast, minor ghosting and motion hiccups, and a brightness level that really requires a dark room.
As for the rest of the package, having only one HDMI port is a limiting factor and the built-in Sound by Bose speakers provide just average sound quality. And even though the stand allows for flexible aim, it doesn’t offer anything that other examples of the best projectors with built-in stands don’t.
While the $999 price tag puts the Epson Lifestudio Flex Plus on the affordable side for a 4K projector, it still has to square off against the oft-discounted price of the brighter, more colorful JMGO N1S Pro 4K and the slightly brighter, slightly more expensive, but more versatile Hisense M2 Pro.
Epson Lifestudio Flex Plus review: Price & release date
- Release date: September 2025
- MSRP: $999.99 / £1,149.99 / around AU$1,536
The Epson Lifestudio Flex Plus has just launched, and it lands with a retail price of $999.99. Given its newness, it’s unlikely to see any considerable discounts in the near term. This puts it in a tough spot as it has to face off against pricier rivals like the JMGO N1S Pro 4K, which has a retail price of $1,999 but has seen discounts as low as $1,099 since its launch.
Epson Lifestudio Flex Plus review: Specs
|
Screen sizes supported: |
30-150 inches |
|
Brightness (specified): |
1.000 Lumens |
|
HDR support: |
HDR10, HLG |
|
Display technology: |
RGB LED, 3LCD |
|
Smart TV: |
Google TV |
|
Connections: |
1x HDMI (with eARC), 3.5mm audio out, USB-A, USB-C (supports 100/140W PD input) |
|
Dimensions (H x W x D): |
7.5 x 7.5 x 9.7 inches (190 x 190 x 246mm) |
|
Weight: |
8.8 pounds (4kg) |
Epson Lifestudio Flex Plus review: Design & features
- All-in-one system
- Integrated stand with a unique lamp feature
- Quick, automatic adjustments
Epson has attempted to make the Lifestudio Flex Plus a bit more than a simple piece of tech. While the main portion of the projector is a little box that’s pretty typical of lifestyle projectors, it sits on a unique pole stand that allows for flexible aim and raises it to showcase the bottom-mounted LED lamp.
With taps on the top of the projector, the lamp switches its lighting scheme, offering some fun and colorful light shows or settling into a basic white. It’s a kind of fun gimmick, though with ambient light being the enemy of dimmer projectors, it’s also an odd choice. Even more odd, there’s no controlling the LED lamp with the remote, so you’ll have to touch the projector if you want to turn it off while watching.
The projector has a stylish design with a fabric wrap on its lower half and a wood-grain top, leaning more into accent furniture than a typical piece of tech. Still, it looks a little awkward standing on its monopod leg.
The stand is functional with a sturdy base, easy rotation, and a 105-degree vertical tilt. This lets you aim the projector straight up to project on ceilings (though it requires moving a small plastic panel on the rear that doesn’t serve much purpose other than aesthetics). The stand can also tilt down slightly if you need to project from a high-up place.
While it’s nice to have an integrated stand, this one doesn’t prove as helpful as some of the others I’ve seen lately. The Hisense M2 Pro’s stand, for instance, provides similar vertical shifting but also allows the projector to flip upside-down, which is even more convenient for projecting from high places than having the ability to tilt down, as it can avoid keystone adjustment.
The Epson Lifestudio Flex Plus can make it easy to get up and running. It has automatic focus, keystone adjustment, and obstacle avoidance. This squares the image with the wall and crops it into the available space on your wall or screen. Cropping the image this way isn’t entirely ideal, as it sacrifices resolution and overall brightness in the process, but it’s quick and convenient if you move the projector around often.
Though the Lifestudio Flex Plus doesn’t have an internal battery, it does encourage portability with its small size and ability to run off a USB-C charger battery pack with 100-140W of USB PD output.
The projector features an eye-protection feature to avoid harming anyone’s eyes, pets included, if they walk in front of the projector’s path. While many projectors have similar features, on the Epson Lifestudio Flex Plus, they are quick to activate and conveniently pause video playback so you don’t miss a beat.
The Lifestudio Flex Plus integrates Google TV for easy streaming, and with Wi-Fi 6, it can get a consistent, high-speed connection. Google TV was generally responsive during my testing, though it had the occasional hitch when loading up video. The system includes its own stereo speakers as well for a complete all-in-one package.
If you don’t want to rely on the Lifestudio Flex Plus’s built-in streaming and speakers, the projector’s single HDMI port supports HDMI eARC to send out audio. There’s a 3.5mm audio port on the back as well, and a USB-A port to play back local media. If you plan to connect a game console to the projector, ALLM is supported, which automatically switches the projector to a low-latency Game picture mode.
The Lifestudio Flex Plus comes with a basic remote. It has the standard Google TV control wheel, which makes navigation pretty simple. Brightness and volume controls are on their own pill-shaped buttons that make them easier to locate. There are also a few app shortcut buttons and an input-selection shortcut, though that might as well just be a shortcut to HDMI. The remote doesn’t include any backlighting, which makes it harder to use in a dark home theater environment.
- Design & features score: 4/5
Epson Lifestudio Flex Plus review: Picture quality
- 4K resolution
- Limited brightness, color gamut, and contrast
- Some motion handling issues
Image 1 of 2
The Epson Lifestudio Flex Plus is a fine projector, but it doesn’t offer a remarkable home theater experience. With a brightness level that hits just 1,000 lumens, it’s simply not up to the task of delivering a dazzling picture, and it especially struggles with ambient light. To make the most of the Epson Lifestudio Flex Plus, you’ll need to turn out the lights and get blackout curtains or use it at night.
Even in the right conditions, picture quality with the Epson Lifestudio Flex Plus is still just average, though its 4K picture has impressive detail. Color looks fairly natural, though the projector’s color gamut isn’t as wide as with some triple-laser models I’ve tested in recent years. The plus side is that, with Epson’s 3LCD tech, there are none of the rainbow artifacts you’ll find with DLP projectors.
Blacks on the Epson Lifestudio Flex Plus are rather elevated. When watching relatively dark movie scenes, it fails to reach very dark levels, even with active contrast enabled. This harms the overall experience as dark scenes simply lack richness, and letterboxing is all too visible.
The projector also suffers a bit from ghosting. This doesn’t rear its head much in brighter scenes, but it shows up in darker ones. Watching Warfare, it cropped up big time after the IED explosion during the team’s first evac attempt, with the soldiers moving through the explosion of dirt and sand, followed by ghosting trails that made the scene a blur.
Motion interpolation is enabled by default on the Lifestudio Flex Plus. This can be useful in some limited contexts, such as panning shots, but it makes for unnatural motion from people and inaccurate smoothing in animation. Though it’s generally better with the feature disabled, the projector can stutter from time to time during panning shots, even with just light motion.
The mixed projection experience is matched by the middling Sound by Bose speakers. They can put out enough volume to get by in a 150-square-foot room without distortion. But, they suffer from the typical TVwq speaker issue: if the volume gets loud enough to hear the dialogue, the action and music are too loud. Conversely, if the action and music are at the right volume, the dialogue becomes too quiet to hear clearly.
- Picture quality score: 3/5
Epson Lifestudio Flex Plus review: Value
- High price tag
- Price is still competitive for category
- Performance equivalent to competition
The Epson Lifestudio Flex Plus puts everything you need for a modest home theater into a single, $1,000 package. Its performance is generally good, and while that would have gone a long way a couple of years ago, the portable projector space has gotten incredibly competitive since then.
Rivals from JMGO, Xgimi, Hisense, and Dangbei provide a ton of new options, while older projectors have had discounts. Some of these offer similar features and higher brightness without costing much more, and that reality hurts the Epson Lifestudio Flex Plus’s value.
Should I buy the Epson Lifestudio Flex Plus?
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Attributes |
Notes |
Rating |
|---|---|---|
|
Design and features |
Fun design with a useful stand that makes it easy to aim at a wall or ceiling. It’s an all-in-one device as well, giving you speakers and a streaming platform. While it has its own DC power adapter, it can also run on USB-C power |
4/5 |
|
Picture and sound quality |
Natural-looking color and a 4K resolution. But the brightness and color gamut are underwhelming, an an elevated black level limits contrast. Sound quality too is just average |
3/5 |
|
Value |
While it’s nice to get an all-in-one package, the picture and sound quality isn’t impressive compared to some recent competitors that fall in the $1,000-$1500 price range |
3/5 |
Buy it if…
Don’t buy it if…
Also consider
| Header Cell – Column 0 |
Epson LifeStudio Flex Plus |
Epson EpiqVision Mini EF22 |
Anker Nebula Mars 3 |
JMGO N1S Pro 4K |
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Price: |
$999 |
$999 |
$1,049 |
$1,099 |
|
Screen sizes supported: |
90 to 130 inches |
30 to 100 inches |
30 to 200 inches |
85 to 180 inches |
|
Brightness (specified): |
1,000 ISO lumens |
1,000 ISO lumens |
1,000 lumens |
2,400 ANSI lumens |
|
HDR support |
HDR10, HLG |
HDR10, HLG |
Dolby Vision, HDR10, HLG |
HDR10, HLG |
|
Optical technology: |
3LCD, LED |
3LCD, LED |
LED DLP |
RGB laser DLP |
|
Smart TV: |
Google TV |
Google TV |
Android TV |
Google TV |
|
Connections: |
1x HDMI (with ARC), 1x 3.5mm |
1x HDMI (with ARC), 1x 3.5mm |
1x HDMI, 1x 3.5mm |
HDMI x2 (1 w/ eARC), USB-A (powered), 3.5mm |
How I tested the Epson Lifestudio Flex Plus
- Tested at home in multiple, real-world viewing conditions
- Presented the display with a variety of media and formats
- I have tested numerous projectors and displays over the last half-decade
I tested the Epson Lifestudio Flex Plus at home, in real-world conditions. This saw it faced with ambient light coming in from numerous windows, in-room lighting, as well as ambient noise that both the projector and speaker systems had to overcome. The projector was tested both with a bare, white wall and an Akia Screens CineWhite screen. It was presented with streamed content, both HDR and non-HDR.
My testing evaluates the projector’s performance with respect to its price and competition from other models I and colleagues at TechRadar have tested.
I have been testing projectors since 2021 and displays for even longer.
