Shockingly good. This BenQ is one of those rare projectors whose picture tends to both look good, and be forgiving. The BenQ really is a projector that you can take out of the box, turn on, and most people will have no problem with the color or the picture in general.
Lo-def TV, which I generally avoid like the plague, even looks reasonably good on color, even if as expected, it's not as vibrant as HDTV.
Post calibration the skin tones have to be considered very, very, good. No, maybe not, maybe I should say truly excellent!! I could get away with "excellent" but for one thing. As is the case with most single chip DLP projectors, this BenQ W1070 has Brilliant Color. BC is a suite of "adjustments" to the image. BC comes from TI, the maker of DLP chips. It's a system that can be customized by each manufacturer.
But, as noted on the first page, the color palette shrinks, contrast goes up with BC. Turn it off for a more natural image. The thing is, it will calibrated slightly differently. Thus you could use one User for calibrating with Brilliant Color On, and another with it off. If you've got the gear to calibrate, or the money to spend. If you are happy with BC on, try our calibration settings - they sure worked great for us.
Let's look at some assorted images, starting with good examples of skin tones. Above and below, our usual suspects - Gandalf and Arwen, from Lord of the Rings, on Blu-ray.
As is usual, we have three James Bond images from Casino Royale, to demonstrate that skin tones vary a lot in different lighting conditions. Here we have full sunlight, the second image is indoor fluorescent, and finally, filtered sunlight in the third image. And as one would expect, that causes noticeable changes in the skin color. In each scene, considered by itself and the setting, the skin tones are believable. But when you look at, for example, the second and third, the visible difference in the color is significant.