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Best Buys Audio & AV 2019-#2BenQ describes the lens assembly as a
‘Precision 10-Element 8-Group All Glass
4K-optimized Lens Array’. No cheaper plastic
there, then. The lens is fully contained within the
body lines of the unit and you may note it looks
a little odd because of a panel which looks like it’s
blocking almost half of the lens. But in fact the
geometry is such that the picture is cast slightly
upwards (or downwards, if ceiling-mounted),
clearing the barrier. Its purpose is apparently to
reduce scattering of light at extreme angles and
reflections from nearby surfaces, a useful bonus in
rooms darkened for movie night.
At the back are the inputs and other
connections. There are two HDMI inputs, both
rated for full Ultra-HD, supporting 2160p/60 and
HDR10 and BT.2020 signals. There’s also a USB
3.0 socket for media playback.
It has its own sound system built-in, which
with two rear-firing speakers each supplied with
5W of power is not going to rock your movie
world, but can be useful for many occasions.
You may have a larger sound system connected
direct to your movie source (e.g. Blu-ray player),
otherwise the BenQ offers sound output via
optical digital and minijack analogue stereo
sockets. There’s also a trigger so the unit can be
switched on and off by other devices.
PERFORMANCE
The big question for any projector performing
pixel-shifting is how well this works in terms of
delivering a sharp UHD image. We use a test
image with single pixel lines to check this, and
the W2700 resolved both pixel-wide and pixel-tall
lines so that they could be individually discerned.
They were a little smudged, not as cleanly etched
as they are on an Ultra-HD TV, perhaps a result
of slight overlap between the mirror-shifted pixels.
But the line separation was the best we’ve yet seen
from this breed of XPR DLP projectors. Short
of those far more expensive and larger native-4K
projectors, this is fine performance at the price..
The image was also even across the screen,
from corner to corner. There was no discernible
colour separation at the extremes — no coloured
halos around whites. Nor was there any noticeable
DLP rainbow effect.
One side effect of the slight overlap of pixels
over their neighbours was the complete absence
of any screen-door effect at any viewing range, no
matter how precisely focused the projector. Stuff
just looked like it was being projected from film,
not a regular grid device.
With high-quality Ultra-HD content such
as UHD Blu-ray, the image was astonishingly
good. Particularly impressive was colour. The
bright palettes used in the recent UHD re-issue
of The Fifth Element were near stunning in their
richness and power. Korben Dallas’ stateroom
aboard the ship at Fhloston Paradise was delivered
with an incredible power in its intense blue walls
and gilt detail — the shiny brass, the fine lace,
the near limitless detail everywhere. It was all
simply magnificent. Black levels were subjectively
deep. The out-of-the-box quality is a testament
to BenQ’s practice of performing factory colour
calibration for every unit — they come with
individual certificates.
Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk is a rare
Ultra-HD Blu-ray, as the film was made using
High Frame Rate and the disc has been released
at 2160p/60Hz, rather than the usual 24Hz.
Through the W2700 it looked amazingly smooth
and sharp. In fact it showed up a small fault in
the disc mastering, where the logos of the various
funding firms have been crudely converted from
24p to 60p, leaving them juddering across the
screen. Not the projector’s fault, it’s on the disc!
DLP projectors switch those pixel mirrors on and
off really, really fast, so there’s no papering-over
judder in the source material. But on some earlier
DLP projectors we’ve seen this on all 24Hz
movies, because the DLP chip seemed locked to
60Hz output. Not on the W2700. The engine
clearly runs at 24 frames per second with 24fps
content. Content at 50Hz was similarly delivered
without judder (anotehr previous limitation
overcome). But it’s best to let your Ultra-HD
Blu-ray player deinterlace 576i/50 or 1080i/50
material to 576p/50 and 1080p/50 before
feeding to the projector. Both interlaced formats
were treated as video (rather than film) content,
regardless of their source.
Using the test patterns on a Sony UltraHD
Blu-ray (press ‘7669’ from the main menu to
access them), the projector in its default settings
showed good and clear differentiation between
brightness levels 0.005 nits and 0.01 nits. Both
were brighter than indicated, perhaps, becausethe brightness scale was being mapped to the
projector’s contrast range. At the other end, it
was barely possible to distinguish between 1000
nits and 1100 nits. The full range scale across the
bottom of the brightness ramps showed a smooth
gradient from full black to full white, without
apparent steps.
With regular Blu-ray content, the performance
was also extremely good. The scaling of 1080p
to 2160p was very good. There was almost the
same sense of detail as there was with Ultra-HD,
particularly on recent material. At the extremes,
colours weren’t quite as startling.
Surprisingly, this projector incorporates a
motion-smoothing system. These can often overly
smooth the actual image as well as the motion,
but this one seemed all good, no bad. It was off
by default but it can be switched on through the
Picture menu: choose Advanced then Cinema
Master. There were three levels. At the highest
setting it had only a mild effect, taking the edge
off the enormous judder during the Chicago
flyover in The Fugitive. It smoothed while
avoiding any damage — there was no apparent
‘heat haze’ distortion, no fine detail shifting inap-
propriately in space, no seeming look of waxiness.CONCLUSION
The BenQ W2700 AV projector is a marked
improvement over the W1700, delivering a great
picture from Blu-ray and 4K Blu-ray content,
and we think that ability to swap it in for older
projectors will be a real attraction for those owners.
Highly recommended.BenQ W2700 AV projector
- True Ultra-HD (4K) resolution
- Excellent value for money
- Long lamp life
- Deinterlacing for 1080i/50 and 576i/50
Price: $2499
Tested with firmware: 1.0.0
Projection technology: 12mm FHD Digital
Micromirror Device with XPR 4× pixel shifting
Output resolution: 3840 by 2160 pixels
Aspect ratio: 16:9
Lamp: 245 watts
Lamp life: Normal 4000 hours, Economic
10,000 hours, SmartEco 15,000 hours
Contrast ratio: 30,000:1
Brightness: 2000 ANSI Lumens
Inputs: 2 x HDMI (both with UHD support)
Outputs: stereo minijack, optical digital
Other: 1 x RS-232C, 1 x USB (to supply
2.5A power), 1 x USB 3.0 (media playback/
firmware upgrades), 1 x USB Mini-B (firmware
upgrades), 1 x 12V trigger
Audio: 2 x 5W speakers
Dimensions (whd): 380 x 127 x 263mm
Weight: 4.2kg
Warranty: Two years on-site pick up & return
(Lamp - earlier of 6 months or 750 hours use)
Contact: BenQ Australia
Telephone: 1300 130 336
Web: http://www.benq.com.auThe W2700 has two 4K-capable HDMI inputs, one USB, and also built-in stereo speakers.