Benq X3100i

Chunky 4K brilliance

PROJECTION is often overlooked as a format for a good gaming display, and with good reason. Over the years, they’ve been held back by a multitude of factors: poor brightness, space requirements, lens burn-in from static imagery (OLED says hello), low resolution, price, and of course, refresh rate.

There’s a lot to put off any would-be buyer, particularly when looking at their next big-screen purchase. Times have changed, however, and projectors have come a long way since those days of yore. Yes, they’re still remarkably expensive pieces of equipment, but the tech you get with them these days very much justifies the cost. Well, almost.

Take this Benq X3100i 4K gaming projector. It’s robust and chunky, complete with a 3,300 lumens brightness, 3,840x2,160 resolution, 600,000:1 contrast ratio, 1.07-billion color support, and a bulb lifetime of around 20,000 hours in normal use (that’s 2.28 years of continuous 24/7 usage). Combine that with 100 percent DCI-P3 coverage, compatibility with Android TV as standard, and super-low latency modes, as well as a high-refresh 1080p mode, and this thing is onto a winner.

The long and the short of it is that you can take this beautiful piece of kit, bang it on a 150-inch screen, and game to your heart’s content, either at 4K 60 fps or 120 fps 1080p. What’s not to love? Well, a few things, actually.

PAYING THE PRICE

First and foremost is the cost, because this thing is not cheap. Straight out of the gate, the price sits at a snug $2,399. Yep, that’s some serious cash right there. For that amount of money, you could nearly pick up not one, but two Asus ROG Swift OLED PG48UQ 48” 4K OLED displays. It’s a big investment up front, and that remains perhaps the humble projector’s biggest hurdle to overcome.

This is very much a luxury item. The reality is that it’s for a gaming room, theater, or massive living room, where you drop that projection screen once or twice a week at most, or with your buddies on a weekend, smashing around on your console of choice. It isn’t a daily driver, not by a long shot (although we’d love to hear from anyone who uses it that way). That’s inherently its biggest issue: when you can pick up a 48” OLED for half the price, and even larger OLED TVs for similar prices, that 150” glamor fades away.

Then there’s the size of the thing. It certainly isn't small; this boxy boy has some serious dimensions. It clocks in at an eye-watering, almost square 10.7 x 8.4 x 10.2 inches at 15 lbs. If you’re mounting it to your ceiling, make sure it’s high enough out of the way that you’re not going to headbutt the thing, as it’s certainly not quite as rectangular as we’d like. On top of that, the layout of the unit, including access buttons and mounting solutions, makes it rather frustrating to use, particularly when you’re dialing it in with the, err, dials. Yes, it does have a remote, but lens configuration requires you to physically adjust the unit by hand.

Ultimately, it’s a beautifully potent projector that competes well against similarly marketed projection devices. But if you’re after amping up your gaming setup, or looking for something a little more day-to-day friendly, you might be better off looking elsewhere.