Epson EpiqVision Flex CO-W01 Review

While it lacks premium features, this straightforward projector provides essential functionality for office use. We appreciate its portability, simplicity, and price, but we don't recommend it for home entertainment.

Entertainment

For top-notch performance in home entertainment, a projector should offer high contrast, high brightness, and sharp image quality. Advanced models often include smart features like built-in streaming apps, which earn them extra points in our tests.

The Flex CO-W01 skips out on a lot of that, so we feel it's targeted towards the business user rather than the home cinema market. However, it still has decent color, albeit with less contrast and a more washed-out look than top performers.

Business

Thanks to its portability, sufficient brightness for well-lit spaces, and overall simplicity, the Epson EpiqVision Flex CO-W01 makes a solid business projector.

Color accuracy matches up with source documents well, with whites and colors exceeding a lot of projectors when it comes to slideshow presentations. However, the edge-to-edge clarity leaves something to be desired, especially on fullscreen spreadsheets. Overall, reading text and graphics was fine.

This small and relatively light projector is portable, so it picks up a few points there. It comes with a remote but no controls onboard the projector, which isn't ideal. If the remote is misplaced, there is no way to adjust some settings. In fact, the projector doesn't feature much besides a manual focus ring; it's even minimal on ports, with just 1x HDMI, 1x USB-B, and 1x USB-A.

Contrast Ratio

The Flex CO-W01 demonstrated good separation of dark and light colors, making it one of the best units outside of the top performers in terms of contrast ratio.

Epson doesn't specify a contrast ratio for this unit, but we measured a 638:23 ratio in our ANSI contrast ratio test.

Brightness

Epson lists the Flex CO-W01 as a 3000-lumen projector, and we confirmed a respectable 2061 lumens reading with our light meter. This projector is plenty bright enough to be seen in well-lit office environments.

Setup & Use

Projectors that perform well in this category often come equipped with a variety of convenient features, such as adjustable legs for both front and rear settings on uneven surfaces, backlit remotes for effortless button location during movie nights, and voice command recognition.

Additionally, we consider enhanced keystoning and focus controls, zoom capability, and integrated tripod/ceiling mounting options as factors when awarding points in this metric.

This Epson features the bare basics: a remote control, a 5-watt integrated speaker, manual focus, manual keystone adjustability (from the remote control only), a front leveling leg, and a tripod mount on the bottom.

Input Lag

A projector with low input lag is really only necessary if you intend to use it for competitive gaming. The Epson EpiqVision Flex CO-W01 performs ok here, with an average response time of 54 milliseconds at its 1080p resolution, as measured by our signal input lag test device, taking an average of the readings from the top, middle, and bottom of the screen.

Should You Buy the Epson EpiqVision Flex CO-W01?

If you're looking for a simple and portable projector for business use, the Epson EpiqVision Flex CO-W01 shows a lot of promise. It has a good contrast ratio and sufficient brightness for most environments. However, if you're more interested in movies than spreadsheets, there are far better options.

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