Proper home cinema doesn’t have to cost the earth
The BenQ W1800’s £1099 price looks like good value for a projector that boasts not only 4K and high dynamic range support, but a number of other specific video features that point towards a superior home cinema performance.
This projector is small enough to sit on any coffee table, and its combination of a glossy white finish with a goldy brown front panel gives it an attractive, domesticated look. Grilles down the side and on the front left corner allow heat (but not light) out from the W1800’s optics, with the lens sitting towards the right hand front. A section cut out of the top edge provides access to simple zoom and focus wheels around the lens, and there are screw-down feet to front and rear to help angle the image to where you need it to be.
Movie-friendly
The BenQ W1800 sets out its home cinema stall in a number of key ways. For starters, it claims to be a 4K projector, and can support both of the HDR10 and HLG HDR formats. The claimed 4K support is controversial in the sense that, as with all such affordable ‘4K’ projectors that use DLP optical technology, the BenQ W1800 doesn’t actually carry a native 3840x2160 number of digital mirror devices (DMDs) on its 0.47-inch chip. Instead it draws on the amazing speed with which DLP’s mirrors can respond to get them to deliver essentially multiple pixels of picture information within a single frame.
BenQ’s CinematicColor technology encapsulates a number of technical features devoted to delivering a more movie-friendly picture and it is present here, as is a Filmmaker Mode. Developed by the Ultra HD Alliance, an industry body comprising a broad church of content creators and consumer electronics companies, this picture preset is designed to deliver images that resemble as closely as a device can manage the video standards used by the creative industries when they master their content. This is quite common on TVs now, but it’s still rare in the projector world. Contrast is claimed to be an impressive-looking 10,000:1, while brightness tops out at a claimed 2000 ANSI Lumens. This isn’t especially bright by today’s living room projector standards, but then this is a projector that’s self-consciously focused on home cinema. Too much brightness can contribute to disappointing contrast and black levels in the sort of dark rooms in which home cinema fans like to watch.
The W1800 supports a 1.3x level of optical zoom, and can deliver a 100in image from a throw distance of 2.5m/8.2ft. Connections include two HDMIs, one USB port, a 3.5mm audio output, and an
