BenQ W11000
AN ULTRA HD PROJECTOR THAT’S FINALLY AFFORDABLE... SORT OF.
IT’S SIMILAR TO OTHER UPSCALING 4K DLP PROJECTORS, BUT THE DIFFERENCE IS THAT THIS DEVICE CAN ACCEPT A TRUE 4K SIGNAL, SUCH AS AN ULTRA-HD BLU-RAY PLAYER — THE OTHERS USE STANDARD BLU-RAY...
IT’S ABOUT TIME. Ultra HD projectors, which support true 4K playback, have cost more than $20,000 ever since Sony released its ‘consumer’ UHD projector. BenQ has smashed the price barrier with the release of the W11000, releasing a UHD projector that outputs a true 4K picture for less than $8,000. However, there’s a bit of technical trickery going on here. This is a DLP projector, which means each pixel is actually a micromirror, and the chip that holds these actually has a native resolution half that of 4K. So how is that this projector is able to display a 4K image?
This projector is based around a Texas Instruments 0.67-inch 4K UHD DLP chip, but it only has four million mirrors, whereas a true 4K display has 8 million pixels. The technology used to double the resolution is called ‘XPR fast-switching’. Basically, it uses a dual-position optical actuator that shifts and doubles the position of each mirror’s output so quickly that the human eye can’t notice it. 9,000 times per second to be precise. It’s similar to other upscaling 4K DLP projectors, but the difference is that this device can accept a true 4K signal such as an Ultra HD Blu-ray player — the others use standard Blu-ray to quadruple their pixel count. With the recent release of UHD Blu-ray, we’ve finally got a relatively affordable solution for 4K content playback on the bigscreen at home.
In the real world, the resolution difference is hard to pick when compared to a ‘true’ native 4K front projector, such as Sony’s VPL-VW365ES. Image clarity was simply breathtaking, but you’ll want to have a screen that is at least 140 inches across to really start to see the upgrade. Unfortunately, this projector lacks the Ultra HD Premium logo, which would indicate that it also supports HDR colour quality. To be frank, HDR offers more of a picture upgrade than the move to 4K resolution, so it’s a real shame to see that this projector doesn’t support this. The colour quality is good, but not in the same realm as a HDR screen. Unfortunately, contrast performance wasn’t so great, especially when the dynamic contrast setting was disabled. Turning it back on helped bring out detail in the darker areas of scenes, but the shifting of the iris was quite noticeable, with the entire scene’s brightness regularly adjusting to boost up the contrast.
As a DLP projector, we were worried about colour artefacting (aka ‘The Rainbow effect’), but were pleased to see no sign of this issue. Lens shift is included, but it has to be done by hand, while the 1.5x zoom allows for relatively short throw distance.
While we love the increase in resolution, the lack of HDR is a bit of a blow and the contrast performance was a little ho-hum. It’s also a confusing buy for consumers, with the Ultra HD Premium specification appearing to be the de-facto standard for 4K + HDR displays. Note the word ‘Premium’ on the end there, which indicates HDR support. This projector isn’t true 4K, and it doesn’t include HDR. For Ultra HD Premium to take off, we’re going to need products that deliver all of the features of this spec, and not just a resolution increase.