BenQ W7500 Projector - Performance

Posted on March 18, 2014 by Art Feierman

BENQ W7500 PROJECTOR - PERFORMANCE: Brightness, Effect of Eco-Mode, Effect of Lens Position, Pre-Calibration Color Temp, Post Calibration Color Temp across the range, and Calibrated Brightness, Gamma. Also: Plus Projector Input Lag Times for Gaming with the W7500 Projector

BenQ W7500 Projector Brightness

W7500 Projector - Brightness and Color Temp of Modes
Color Mode	Lumens	Color Temp
Cinema	1741	6774
Dynamic	2203	8450
Standard	1787	6978
User 1	1787	6805
User 2	1787	6791
User 3	1787	6797

The W7500 has to be counted a light canon. Basically there are 3 Preset modes and three identical User modes (1,2,3). The differences in color temp are well within the margin of error. Nice to see a projector that easily exceeds its brightness claim, even if the BenQ's Dynamic mode isn't very pretty to watch. The point is there's over 400 extra lumens available if lighting conditions demand it.

W7500 Projector - Effect of Eco Mode

We measured the Brightness of Cinema mode, both at it's default setting, which is Eco-mode, and at full power.

The 1741 lumens at with full power works out to about 21% brighter than eco-mode which measured 1431 lumens.

Conversely, Eco-mode is about 18% less bright than full power.

That's a relatively small change. Most projectors shift brightness by about 30%, and few less than 25%. What does that mean? Not much, of course. Only that this is still an especially bright projector (assuming Brilliant Color is turned on), even in Eco-mode.

W7500 - Effect of Lens Position

Lens Position vs. Lumens
Wide Angle (largest image per distance)	2340
Mid-point on zoom	2203
Telephoto (smallest image per distance)	1897

Going all the way from wide angle to full telephoto only results in a loss of about 19%, which is pretty good, less than some others. Merely going from the closest position to the mid-point of placement (and zoom) is a mere 6% barely worth noting.

The short version is, where you place the BenQ W7500 relative to your screen isn't going to have a significant impact on overall brightness, so you might as well place it where it otherwise works out most conveniently for you.

W7500 Projector - Pre - Post Calibration Brightness, Color Temp

Pre-Calibration
IRE	Cinema	User 1,2,3
100 IRE (white)	6784	6819
80	6697	6890
50	6752	6910
30	6906	6976

W7500 Post Calibration Color Temp, Brightness
IRE	Color Temp	Lumens
100 IRE (white)	6733	1749
90	6534
80	6599
70	6634
60	6572
50	6569
40	6611
30	6489
20	6328

As you can see from Mike's calibration numbers, pre-calibration the projector maintains almost perfect color temp from 100 to 30 IRE, varying by less than 100K.

The lower table (above): Calibrating the projector is a bit challenging, in as much as white doesn't really want to change as much as the other ranges. Calibrating actually widened the color temp range . As a result whites are just a touch cool, and 20 IRE very dark grays are a touch warm. Everything in between, though manages to stay in a nice, tight 150K range! BTW, although the extra blue is pretty slight at 100 IRE, at least it tilts the balance in a way that tends to appeal to sports viewers.

Gamma measured in at 2.15, very close to the target of 2.2.

When it makes sense, Mike takes the brightest mode, and tries to improve the color and overall picture quality as much as possible without giving up a lot of lumens.

In the case of the W7500, by the time Dynamic mode started to have really good looking color, the brightness was already down to right around the other modes. In other words, not worth the bother. Save Dynamic for when every last lumen is needed, but it's just not dramatically brighter.

W7500 Input Lag Times

The BenQ W7500 surprised me. I generally expect DLP projectors to turn in really excellent lag times. I haven't seen an LCD Projector or an LCoS one, that normally comes close to what most DLP projectors can do.

Thus when I measured 51 ms lag time agains my MacBook Pro, I was surprised, I had really expected mid-30s at worst, and perhaps a lot better.

I tried. Some features, especially creative ones that look ahead to the next frame, can quickly slow down the speed. I went through menus by menu, turning off everything in site. FI (frame interpolation) 3D Auto, even Gamma was set to it's default, I tried Brilliant Color both on and off. I even turned off the dynamic iris.

The speed never budged, none of those controls had any impact. One feature that one can turn off that yields a reduction on some other brands of projectors, is shutting off Deep Color (basically color depth greater than 24 bit (16.7 million colors). That's a small price to pay for a a serious gaming projector.

So the bottom line here is that the BenQ is right there at 50 ms. That's virtually identical to the Epson 5030UB, and 4030. Therefore, I'll say exactly the same thing:

It would seem that the general consensus is that 50 ms is acceptable to many serious gamers. By 80 ms, many are really starting to notice the lag. It would be better if the BenQ was in the mid-30's or half of that. Still, it's fine for everyone but the really hardcore gamers that are particularly sensitive to longer lag times. There will definitely be some folks who will find the BenQ's 50ms range time to be too slow, but that should not be very many people.