BenQ W1200 Projector Calibration and Settings

Posted on June 3, 2011 by Art Feierman

We calibrate every home theater projector that we review. The BenQ W1200 received the usual treatment. I "played" with the W1200 for a couple of days, passed it off to Mike for calibration and measurements. 24 hours later, I'm back to watching it.

Ours is a pretty standard calibration, there's always more done by some of the "hi-end" calibrators. Our calibrations, including the BenQ W1200, are normally limited to a grayscale calibration, along with brightness, contrast, color saturation, etc. Only in very special circumstances will we calibrate the individual colors, in which case we discuss why.

Let's take a look at the numbers:

BenQ W1200 Color Temperature

Before we provide our settings, let's see what we started out with: Pre calibration, these are the color temperatures over the grayscale range:

Color Temp over IRE Range (Various Modes)


	Cinema	Standard	User 3
30 IRE	5964	6859	6312
50 IRE	5999	6908	6350
80 IRE	5961	6903	6273
100 IRE	5972	6928	6334

Conclusion was that User 3 is the best uncalibrated mode to start a 6500K calibration from

W1200 Lumen Output and Color Temp at 100 IRE (mid zoom)


Dynamic	1008 @ 8775
Standard	942 @ 6928
Cinema	643 @ 5972
User 1	1152 @ 8163
User 2	1085 @ 7021
User 3	975 @ 6334 with Brilliant Color On, with BC off = 824

W1200 Lumen Output (Eco Lamp On, Dynamic): 746

That represents a drop from 1008 lumens at full lamp power. The math says that's full power is 35% brighter than Eco-mode, or, looking at it from the other direction: Eco mode is 26% less bright than full power.

BenQ W1200 Home Theater Projectors Basic Settings

In addition to calibrating Red Green and Blue for a correct grayscale balance (6500K), there are a number of other settings that come into play. Typically Contrast and Brightness (white balance and black balance), need to be done first. Color saturation and gamma also need adjustment.