BenQ TK800 True 4K UHD HDR Home Entertainment Projector, DLP, 3000 Lumens, HMDI, Football Mode - White/Blue

Product Information

Projectors may not have the native contrast of a flat panel but the extra depth is more than obvious. It doesn’t set itself out to be a home cinema projector or one that movie fans could use day in day out, it just doesn’t offer a decent enough performance to fulfil those users goals, and there are better machines out there for that. The 3D effect is convincing and subtle, black levels look remarkably good, and the TK800’s exceptional light output means that 3D visuals don’t look starved of brightness, which can be an issue with low-cost 3D projectors. The TK800 does have a small speaker for playing basic sounds — probably suitable for an office presentation — but we highly recommend you use outboard speakers whenever possible. Unfortunately, the TK800M offers no lens shift, which is a far better solution to problematic placement than keystone correction.

respectively, we found that using the picture mode User 1 with colour temperature Normal and gamma set to 2. If you’d rather go for a dedicated theater model, check out my review of BenQ’s HT2550 published recently. The 5W speaker – and resonant sound chamber it’s housed in – deliver a clean, well-rounded soundstage. Dropping the unit into Economic mode will render the fan very quiet with just a low buzz that you can detect in a silent room.Whether that market needs faux 4K as opposed to ‘just’ a 1080p model is a question for the intended end user to think about and decide on.

Luminance readings were taken with a Spectracal C6 tri-stimulus colorimeter facing a 92” diagonal Stewart Filmscreen Luminesse with Studiotek 130 material, gain 1. With Brilliant Color on, color brightness is only 46% of white, so there is some loss of color saturation. The TK800 has a fixed projection angle that throws an image such that the bottom edge of the projected image is a few inches (or about 10% of the image height) above the centerline of the lens. That ratio is high because there is a fair amount of clipping of both highlight and shadow detail in this mode. Just remember to manually turn 3D off once you’re done, so that the TK800 reverts back to supporting 4K (you can’t have both together).Because we reviewed the TK800—which won Best in Class for Bright Room Home Entertainment in last summer's Best Home Theater Projector Report —we probably won't do a full review of the TK800M, which is similar in many ways. The BenQ TK800 is an excellent looking and extremely versatile home theater projector that ranks among the best we’ve tested.

In hopes of inspiring others to use the metric system, I’ve moved to quoting output levels in nits (AKA cd/m2, or candelas per square meter) rather than foot-Lamberts.There’s no way around this: the brighter the bulb, the more heat it produces, and the more cooling is required. This instantly kills fine detail and can cause other issues such as moiré effect on solid lines etc. The TK800 also uses a color wheel, which restricts its range of colors, especially where HDR is concerned. BenQ talks rather vaguely in its notes on the projector about a trio of HDR-based processes designed to retain more brightness, shadow detail and natural colour tones than HDR models customarily provide. Bringing total visual enjoyment for all your home entertainment BenQ colour expertise perfectly balances high visual brightness and vivid colours for well-lit environments especially for exciting sport matches.

There’s no lens shift, but there is an extendable foot at the front of the projector, towards the bottom. We could tell from testing the TK800 that the color wheel did limit the range of colors that it could deliver, but BenQ have done a good job of mapping HDR content to the projector’s native capabilities. If we put on the Ultra HD Blu-ray of The Revenant, the image was incredibly detailed and the brightness really lent itself to the snowy landscapes. There’s a touch of judder in camera pans during Black Panther’s final battle, but motion within the frame generally looks fluid and cinematic.Gamma is also tracking slightly high (dark) from the mid-tones upwards to white, which is not ideal, but also doesn’t result in any major issues at all. Contrast is rated at a respectable 10,000:1, while a
new colour wheel with 'ultra-precise' red, green and blue coatings – and brightness-boosting white elements
– claims an impressive 92 per cent coverage of the REC. Its image clarity is easily on-par with native UHD models and though it doesn’t have the black levels of those much-more-expensive displays, HDR material looks quite good with excellent depth and dimension.