BenQ W10000 New Owner Brief Review

[Digione]

After months of reading reviews and viewing projectors I decided to take the plunge and I am very pleased with my choice..as is my wife.

My video system is comprised of a Denon 5900 with SDI out driving a DVDO VP30+ABT set to 1080P60 driving the projector via HDMI. The DVDO timing gives a non cropped pixel mapped image. Whilst the screen is a 106 inch 16x9 Da-Lite Hi-Gain.

I choose the W10000 inspite of its potential rainbows as it has a high ANSI contrast, does not rely on a motorised shutter to get an excellent contrast ratio and has all the required color adjustments to ensure that aging etc. can be easily accomodated. The advantage of no convergence issues, very high quality glass, a three year great warranty and quarenteed excellent grey scale also played an important role in my final decision. See other projector comments at the end.

The projector is hung inverted from the ceiling and set up was extremely simple. My biggest concern was focussing but the very fine adjustement made this a simple task, being focussed tight enough to see the mirrors dimple.

So what does it look like? Out of the box and set to warm, low brightness mode with the shutter about 60% closed the color temperature was typically 6800K with a contrast ratio (100IRE to 0IRE) of just under 4000:1. The white field uniformity was all but perfect (at all IRE levels) with no drop of in the corners for white or any other flatt field color. The black level shadow detail was excellent as where the blacks. Sharpness was truly outstanding and with all enhancment controls set to off or zero there were no signs of ringing. Colors were bright and well saturated without being "cartoonish" with skin tones taking on a very natural look. Ah yes the fan noise, what fan noise? At 23dB it is all but inadable when sitting six feet directly under the projector.

The only two issues that I have is that I occaisonally see rainbows when there is peak white detail on a dark background and I move my eyes/head quickly. There is also a very SMALL amount of light spill from refections of the lense housing. Considering the overall video performance the rainbow issue is a non issue as is the light spill which you really have to look for, my HT is almost a cave.

I new this was a keeper as soon as my wife said "well it looks like the expense was worth it, what a stunning image", and she thinks its all a waste of time and money!

Once the bulb has aged for about 100 hours I will fully calibrate the projector to see what its potential really is. Even without this it will be a long time before I upgrade again.

For those wondering why I did not choose the VW50 or RS1 the answer is easy. I have borrowed both of these projectors and both had unacceptable panel allignment, poor white field uniformity and various chromatic aberations. Being from the broadcast industry these are things that I could not live with.

For those that care the support audio system is a Denon 5803A, 5 Genelec 1038's, 2 SVS PB12NSD's + SMS-1 and 2 Polk fx500's.

Regards

Paul