If you’ve ever seen a budget projector online boasting an eye-popping brightness spec—like 95,000 lumens—you might’ve done a double take. As it turns out, so did Epson. The company has just settled a legal dispute with projector brand TMY over exaggerated marketing claims for its V08 projector. The result? That 95,000 lumen figure has been corrected to a far more realistic 95 lumens.

Yes, you read that right: 95,000 to 95. It’s not a typo.

Epson filed the lawsuit after noticing that TMY’s marketing for the V08 projector claimed an impossibly high brightness level—one that’s simply not achievable by consumer-grade projectors. To put things in perspective, most legitimate home projectors advertise brightness in the range of 1,500 to 3,000 lumens when measured using standardized methods.

Under the settlement, TMY agreed to update its marketing materials to reflect the correct brightness specification and—more importantly—use the globally recognized ISO 21118 standard for all future products. That standard defines how projector brightness, specifically White Brightness, should be measured and reported.

“When projector brands use the same, internationally developed and published standards, it protects consumers and establishes trust within the industry,” said Mike Isgrig, vice president, consumer sales and marketing, Epson America.

“TMY’s commitment to use internationally published and accepted standards (such as ISO 21118 for White Brightness) moving forward for their entire product line will provide accurate White Brightness information for consumers.”

The corrected specification for the V08 projector is now live, showing 95 lumens of White Brightness under the ISO 21118 standard. TMY will also use this same standard going forward for all its projectors, which is a step in the right direction for clarity and consistency.

This isn’t Epson’s first rodeo when it comes to projector lawsuits. In the past year, the company has taken action against several brands—including Comaogo, Dr. J Professional, AWOL Vision and JMGO—for similar issues. The common thread? Misleading brightness claims that don’t hold up when tested using industry-standard methods.

Brightness is one of the most important specs when buying a projector. It tells you how well an image will appear in different lighting conditions. But not all brightness measurements are created equal. Some manufacturers use vague or misleading terms like “LED Lumens,” “Lux,” or “Lamp Brightness.” These don’t follow any consistent testing method and can make one projector seem far more powerful than it actually is.

Online marketplaces like Amazon are filled with these inflated numbers, especially among budget models. This can make it incredibly hard for shoppers to tell what’s real and what’s marketing fluff. That’s exactly what Epson has been trying to fight with these lawsuits.

In plain terms, ISO 21118 is the global rulebook for measuring projector brightness. It lays out specific guidelines for how to test and report White Brightness—basically, how bright a projector looks when it displays a plain white screen.

When brands follow this standard, it makes it much easier for you to compare apples to apples. A projector listed at 2,000 lumens using ISO 21118 is going to be significantly brighter than one that claims 9,000 “LED lumens” without explaining what that actually means.

Without this standard, specs become a marketing free-for-all. And as Epson points out, when that happens, it’s the buyer who loses out.

This case might seem like a one-off correction, but it fits into a larger trend of projector brands using big numbers to grab attention, especially in the entry-level market. The problem? Those numbers often don’t reflect real performance.

By pushing for the use of ISO 21118 across the board, Epson is trying to bring more transparency to the space—and hold other brands accountable when they don’t play by the same rules.

For now, the best advice for anyone shopping for a projector is simple: don’t just go by the biggest number on the box. Look for White Brightness measured with ISO 21118. And if you see something that sounds too good to be true, like 95,000 lumens for under $100, it probably is.