When times are hard and budgets are lean, one of the first casualties is leisure. So if you've been cutting back on trips to the cinema, theatre, concerts and sports events then perhaps one way to recapture some of that lost excitement is to invest in a projector.

True, that still means an initial outlay of £649 (although online prices have been considerably lower) but if you purchase Epson's latest EH-TW420 then you'll effectively own a ‘leisure enhancer'.

You'll see what we mean the moment you take it out of the box. It's smooth, white, cool and compact, measuring 327 x 92 x 245mm and weighing a comfortable 2.8kg. It certainly won't look out of place stacked next to your iPod, Apple, Wii or Xbox 360 and it's so portable that Epson even throws in a smart black carry case to prove the point.

When you look around the back, the multimedia nature of the projector becomes apparent. In a refreshingly clearly-labelled strip you're presented with an SD card holder (so you can set up a slideshow of your favourite photos), two USB ports (types A and B), S-Video, VGA and finally HDMI, so you can plug in your Blu-ray and high-end consoles.

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In the PR material, Epson is lauding this as an ideal viewing experience “for gaming, sports and movie fanatics” and to that end there's a built-in 7W speaker that works fine if you not too bothered about full surround sound.

This HD-ready, 1,280 x 720 resolution projector comes with equally user-friendly controls on the top, which include an auto search facility to lock onto the correct input as well as automatic keystone correction. The 2,000 ANSI lumens lamp (which has a Low setting that decreases power usage by 40W as well as fan noise) is protected by a sliding cover that acts as an A/V mute when you want to pause viewing, and you can make use of the supplied remote for all the menu options.

All good so far, and when you look at the Colour Modes there's more encouragement, with no fewer than eight options: Dynamic, Game, Living Room (for black and white materials in a bright room), Theater, Photo, Sports, sRGB and Dark Wall. However there's only an ineffectual 1.2x zoom which means you'll be struggling to outdo your mate's large plasma screen if you're using this as a Home Cinema.

Also, although you have a degree of control over the red, blue and green tones, the overall impression on virtually all the settings apart from Dynamic is very dark, with surprisingly disappointing black level differentiation. Blu-ray films were naturally better in quality than DVD but not as significantly improved as we'd hoped, while paradoxically some brighter looking games (such as Assassin's Creed) had to be toned down from the default settings.

This chic, portable projector manages to combine Home Cinema pleasure with several other multifunction options but despite its versatility (or perhaps because of it) the resulting picture quality is disappointingly dark at times, plus you're hampered by a restrictive 1.2x zoom.