Presentation of the Benq W2000

Hello Dear Readers, today we would like to present to you our detailed review of the new home-theater projector Benq W2000 (USA: Benq HT3050) that is sold for 1299€.

Thank you for Benq Germany for having provided us a new projector for this review of the Benq W2000.

The Benq W2000 is a Full HD 3D projector using the DLP technology so familiar to Benq. The design of the projector has a great recognition value and is in our opinion very nice due to the shape and color of the front.

The projector’s weight is 2,65 kg and it measures 38,1 x 12,2 x 27,7 cm. It is small, which makes it easy to find a place in the living room. The throw ratio varies between 1,15 – 1,5:1. That means that you can get a picture of width 2,60m from 3m between projector and screen only. It also has a manual vertical lens shift, which allows for a projection offset between 102,5% and 107,5%. That also means that the Benq W2000 projects upwards and is thus very adequate as ceiling mounted projector.

The menu of the projector is accessible with the remote control, but also with a top panel on the projector. This can be very helpful in order to use the projector if the remote control is not available or even lost.

The projector Benq W2000 has all connections needed in the back panel including 2 HDMI 1.4 inputs and also a mini USB connection which is very useful to perform the firmware updates at home.

Benq uses the 3D DLP link technology with rechargeable glasses, which allows for a user friendly 3D experience. The original Benq 3D glasses are sold for about 50€, but there are glasses made by other companies, some of which perform even better. The disadvantage of the DLP Link glasses is that you can lose the 3D signal when turning your head and there is sometimes a red tint in the picture due to the synchronisation red flash of the DLP Link technology.

The remote control allows for a quick access to all important functionalities like for example sharpness adjustment. There is also a button to activate the backlight of the remote which is helpful while watching a movie in a dark room. The buttons of the remote control are relatively small and as a consequence the remote is also small and light. Also mentionable is the fact that calibration settings like “Color temp” and “color management” are directly accessible on the remote control, which is very comfortable.

The projector in action

Movies in 2D

Out of the box the projector shows a punchy picture with high sharpness, nice colors.

Especially in bright scenes the Benq W2000 can clearly outperform higher priced projectors. But the most surprising thing is, that it performs still very well in dark scenes as long as there are bright spots, as you can see on the screenshot of Arkham city at night from “The dark knight” below. Only in dark scenes without bright spots, the high black level, that is typical for DLP projectors, is visible and black turns to grey.

The lack of frame interpolation is visible on film scenes with travelling or a lot of movements where the motion is not really smooth. But in comparison to some even higher end others projectors, the performance without frame interpolation is already impressive.

Below you can see a few screenshots taken from the Blu-rays “Oblivion”, “The Dark Knight”, “Mission Impossible”, “Lucy”, “Casino Royale” and “Monsters Inc.”. You can click on each picture to open it in the original resolution.

Movies in 3D

Unfortunately, we could not test the 3D performance of the Benq W2000, because we did not have DLP-Link glasses.

But we have already tested the 3D performance of the Benq W1070 which is the predecessor of the W2000 and the 3D technology did not change. That means that the Benq W2000 also has the advantage of the 144 Hz refresh rate and the disadvantage of the red DLP synchronization flash and the absence of frame interpolation.

Analysis of the Sharpness

Lens quality:

The single chip DLP projectors unlike the tri-LCD projectors do not have convergence problems. The sharpness is however like always dependent on the lens quality of the projector.

You can see on the pictures belows the DLP grid which shows nicely each pixel from close-up.

You can see on the cross pattern some chromatic aberration.

Overall the sharpness is great sitting at a 3,5m distance from the screen and the picture width being about 2,5m. The grid effect and chromatic aberration become invisible!

Sharpness VS Sharpness controls:

Here we make an analysis of the sharpness of the picture with different levels of the sharpness control, the numerical sharpness improvement system of Benq.

On the sharpness test pattern of the reference disc AVS HD 709, we have progressively increased the level of numerical sharpness from 0 to 5 to 10 to the maximum 15. We see clearly that the lines but also the numbers show more and more artifacts as we increase the numerical sharpness treatment. Indeed, on the lines we see more and more crosses and on the numbers some white ringing is appearing.

We advise to use the setting 5 to get a small sharpness boost without much artefacts.

Another illustration of the effect of the sharpness control:

Uniformity

Our exemplar of the BENQ W2000 shows on a white pattern with 100 IRE a perfectly white and uniform picture.

On dark content however, there is some background noise in the picture. The BENQ W2000 is not the only projector with this problem. In fact, many DLP projectors show this behavior to different degrees.

Here a picture that we have taken on 4% APL level. You can see clearly some dots on the background which should NOT be there. It should be instead a smooth dark grey background.

Colors: Out of the box

Out of the box, the projector has 6 predefined modes: cinema, bright, vivid, game, user 1 and user 2. Every mode was analyzed with the colorimeter i1 Display Pro profiled to the spectrophotometer i1 Pro 2 with the software Chromapure. The measurements were taken off our screen: Elunevision Reference Studio 4K 100 (gain 1).

Benq advertises that the W2000 has preset that is already calibrated after the norm REC 709. We were excited to see if our measurements confirmed that claim and they did! The mode cinema has a gamma value around 2.26 and an average CIE94 dE of 1.4 for the colors and 2.0 for the grayscale. Thus a calibration is not necessary for the high lamp mode (our calibration below is in ECO mode).

Ideally, you would like to have a flat gamma curve of 2.2 and a CIE94 DeltaE under 2 for all colors and the grayscale. With that, the black will not be crushed, the white levels will not be clipped and the color will be natural and as close to to the movie producer’s choice as possible.

Here are the Chromapure results for the grayscale and the CIE diagram for a saturation of 100% and brightness amplitude of 100%. The projector is positioned with zoom MAX. The lamp has 30 hours.

The picture width projected on the screen was 245cm for all these measurements.

Out of the box: predefined mode detailed analysis:

Cinema

Bright

Vivid

User 1

User 2

Game

Calibration of the projector

The measurements were taken off our screen: Elunevision Reference Studio 4K 100 (gain 1).

The calibration is based on the “Cinema” mode with the lamp brightness put on ECO.

For the color calibration, we used  patterns of 75% saturation and 75% brightness.

• Grayscale & RGB analysis:

The Grayscale after calibration of the mode User 1 shows an almost perfect behavior with a CIE94 DeltaE below 2 from 20% APL level to 100% ADL level. For 10%, this is probably our calibration sensors showing their limit for very low brightness level.

Grayscale (pre=Cinema & Post=calibrated):

• CIE and color management analysis:

The colors in the CIE after calibration of the mode Cinema shows a very good behavior with an average CIE94 DeltaE of 0.5 for 75% brightness and 75% saturations.

CIE chart at 75% saturation (pre=Cinema & Post=calibrated):

• Gamma analysis:

The gamma curve is pretty linear around 2.2.

Gamma (pre=Cinema & Post=calibrated):

In-depth analysis of all saturation levels after calibration:

For 75% brightness, the Benq W2000 shows a very good tracking within the CIE diagramm!

You can see that our calibration is valid not only for 75% saturation, but all the other saturation levels as well! The average dE for all colors is still below 1, which is a perfect result!

We would like to congratulate Benq for the very good work on the “out of the box” colors in the high lamp mode and on the possibility to calibrate perfectly the Benq W2000 in low lamp mode as well.

Brightness & Screen size recommandation

The Benq W2000 is bright even after calibration on the low lamp mode: 899 Lumens with maximal zoom. This is perfect for a screen width between 2.6m and 3.5m.

The highest number of Lumens is achieved in the Bright mode with 1798 Lumens! It could be useful to watch football on a bright day.

Please click on the table below to get the brightness for all predefined mode and the calibration. A recommandation for the right screen size is also given.

Advanced contrast measurements

A great number of contrast measurements were made to deliver you results that are unique in the world. Actually, in the different tests of projectors around the world you can often find native contrast measurements (ON-OFF with one picture completely black and one completely white) and sometimes ANSI contrast measurements (checkerboard with 50% white and 50% black).

The problem is that these contrast values are two extremes, but most images from movies are in between.

Have a look at our article where we made a big brightness analysis of 53 movies:

http://projectiondream.com/en/movie-brightness-adl-contrast-measurements/

Therefore we have created appropriate patterns in order to give you contrast curves BETWEEN 0% and 50% white in the middle of the screen:

Also our optimized room has the advantage of being transformable into a room with white walls and ceiling. Thus it is easy to compare the contrast performance under very different conditions:

• with opened curtains (comparable to a living room with white walls, reality of home theater in many homes)
• with closed curtains (optimized room with black floor, ceiling and walls)
• measurement at the lens (highest contrast possible, but not reachable in any room)

Illustration of our reversible room:

Left: opened curtains / Right: closed curtains

In the following table are the contrast results measured in the middle of the screen for the Benq W2000:

 

To visualize these numbers, here the resulting 3 contrast curves.

The scale on the contrast axis is logarithmic to represent the perception of the human eye. For example your eyes will see the same difference between a contrast increase from 1000:1 to 2000:1 and a contrast increase from 10000:1 to 20000:1.

 

The curves confirm the impression we had when we tested the Benq W2000: It has an incredible ANSI contrast! In our optimized room we measured a 50% contrast value of 529:1! This compensates for the On-off contrast of around 1600, which is typical for a DLP projector.

Remember our results from the ADL analysis (with a gamma of 2.2) of 53 famous movies:

• 90% of all movie pictures have a brightness below 20% (ADL=% of white)
• 80% of all movie pictures have a brightness below 13%
• 50% of all movie pictures have a brightness below 5%
• The average brightness/ADL of all analyzed movies is 8%

The contrast measurements of the Benq W2000 show that the projector has a very good performance for a DLP projector of its price class! Its contrast in dark scenes without bright spots is not very high and the black looks grey but as soon as there are some bright spots in the picture, the Benq W2000 lets you forget the black level, because of  the flashing bright parts of the picture.

CONCLUSION

The projector Benq W2000, currently sold for 1299€, gives a very nice and enjoyable home cinema experience not only for beginners. If you are planning to buy a projector in the price class 1000€ – 1500€, the Benq W2000 is a very good choice with a great price-performance-ratio.

Sharpness and motion:

The Benq W2000 delivers a typical DLP-sharp picture. The motion handling is good, but of course it would be better if the projector had a frame interpolation system.

Contrast:

The contrast behaviour is incredible for a DLP projector of 1299€. It has the maximum 50% contrast that we measured so far (529:1)! As a result the picture is great not only in very bright scenes, but also in dark scenes with some bright spots. Only in very dark scenes without any brightness, you notice the DLP black level.

Silence:

Clearly Benq has been working on the volume of the projectors, because the Benq W2000 is silent unlike its predecessor W1070.

Out of the box colors & calibration:

As advertised, the Benq W2000 is calibrated out of the box! If you are looking for a projector with natural and realistic colors, but don’t want to pay for a calibration, the W2000 is one of the best choices.

Brightness & Recommended screen size

The projector is bright even after calibration on the low lamp mode: 899 Lumens with maximal zoom. This is perfect for a screen width between 2.6m and 3.5m.

Positive

– the price of 1299€

– the sharpness

– the high brightness for projection in daylight

– the great ANSI contrast

– the Rec 709 preset

– the controls for calibration

– the small size

– the presence of a small vertical lens shift

Negative

– low contrast in dark scenes

– no frame interpolation

– picture noise in dark scenes

 

• To learn more about us, have a look here at our presentation: The story to our blog

   

• If you like our work and would like to discuss with us, please join us on Facebook here!!