BenQ W7500 Home Theater Projector - Summary

Posted on March 18, 2014 by Art Feierman

W7500 PROJECTOR - SUMMARY: Placement, Brightness, 3D, Color Positioning the W7500 Projector In Your room...

❮ ❯

As far as the BenQ W7500 projector's placement flexibility is concerned, it's at least very good. It should work in most setups. The 1.5:1 zoom is a good amount of range, but some competitors have up to 2.1:1.

What that means to you, is that this BenQ can't be placed quite as close to any given sized screen, as the most flexible, nor can it sit as far back, from that same screen as the best. Many projectors let you place in the 9.5 to 10.5 feet as the closest for a 100" diagonal screen. The BenQ is almost 12 feet back, or as far as 17 feet and change, bus those with maximum going as much as 21 feet back - same screen size.

Still that's plenty of range if you are ceiling mounting, unless your room is wider than long, in which case with the W7500 projector you just might not be able to place the projector as far back as is needed for a larger screen. On the other hand, BenQ's longer than typical throw distance for a DLP and the lens shift make it one of the few that can rear shelf mount in most rooms.

Lens shift also is very good, but not as much range as some competitors. Give the W7500 credit, as the overall design of 3 chip projectors lens it self better to lots of lens shift than do single DLP designs. Those with the most may offer an extra foot or so of ability to place the projector above the top, or below the bottom of the screen. Still, considering that most DLP projectors that cost less, have zero, or very little lens shift, it's nice to be pretty well endowed among DLP projectors.

Brightness - The W7500 Light Canon

It doesn't get much better than the BenQ W7500 in terms of a serious home theater projector that has lots of brightness - combined with a great picture. With the W7500 coming in almost exactly at 1750 lumens post calibration, that's bright.

In the 2D world that's an easy 150" diagonal screen, which few of us have room for. On paper, with a 1.3 gain screen, in theory 200" diagonal is movie theater bright enough.

There are over 400 more lumens available to the BenQ in Dynamic mode, but as that runs native lamp - it leaves much to be desired, with a heavy greenish yellow caste to the picture. Save it for the worst of lighting, since this BenQ has an already exceptionally bright picture when calibrated!

W7500 3D Brightness

Thanks to all those lumens under the hood, the W7500 can do a reasonably bright job of 3D on a 100" diagonal screen and definitely be watchable at the full size of my 1.3 gain screen which is 124" diagonal. I do wish it was a bit brighter still when I'm filling the screen in 3D, but not bad.

Click Image to Enlarge

Picture Quality - Color, Black Levels, Transparency

❮ ❯

Rich saturated look to the picture. Color, post calibration looks darn good, but it's not as close to dead on as some others. We're quibbling among fanatics. Awesome works as a good description of how the W7500's picture could be described by more "normal" folks. You know, the people who are happy with the pictures on their LCDTV, that they've never adjusted.

Black level performance is one area that could stand a little improvement, the BenQ does a nice job - "ultra-high contrast", but the best of the competition can do a noticeably blacker black. Considering how bright this projector is, that also means the "blacks" are a lot brighter, so more noticeable on the darkest scenes.

Watching some Olympics on the W7500 was most enjoyable. The sharpness of the image really shows on that bright digital content. Count sharpness as a real strength. I mostly left Detail Enhancement at it's default setting of 1, which provides a subtle change. Even at 1, I shot side by sides with the Epson UB's Super-Resolution at 2, vs. the W7500's at 1. I'll give the edge to the BenQ. Both look very nicely crisp, but the W7500 looks more so.