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BenQ HT6050 Home Theater Projector Review – Performance

Posted on November 17, 2016 By Art Feierman

BenQ HT6050 Projector Review – Performance: Brightness, Affect of Lamp Power Settings, Image Noise and Audible Noise

Due to the limited zoom lens, there was less than a five percent brightness difference between full wide angle, mid-zoom, and full telephoto on the standard lens, within any given mode.  Since a 5% shift is barely detectible to the eye, as is the case with other projectors with zooms with below 1.3:1 zooms, we do not provide a chart showing the slight differences.

HT6050 Brightness in Lumens - By Color Mode

HT6050 Brightness by Color Mode: Default settings, lens at mid-zoom
Mode Lumens Color Temp @100IRE (white)
Bright 1858* 7933K
Vivid 1215 6625K
THX 935** 6625K
Game 1218 6623K
User 1, 2 935 7728K (in eco mode)

*All the measurements in the chart above are for lens at mid-zoom, except Bright mode which is at full wide angle.  All are with projector set to Full lamp power.

**Engaging Brilliant Color in THX mode increases brightness to almost exactly 1200 lumens.

Affect of Lamp Power on Brightness

Brightness as affected by Lamp mode – Vivid Mode
Full Power 1215
Eco 804

Note there is a Super-Eco which does involve lamp dimming.  However, it is not practical to measure that mode, as maximum brightness in that mode can vary – i.e. it would tend to measure brighter on an all white image than say a white rectangle in the middle and the background black (as found on most calibration discs).

Vivid mode is very nicely bright, even in Eco mode, with just a tad over 800 lumens, enough to nicely light up a 120″ diagonal 1.3 gain screen.

Image Noise

Overall very good.  As expected, being a DLP there’s a little more mosquito noise than found on projectors using other technologies, but all considered the BenQ was cleaner in this regard than I expected.  I do not adjust the various image noise settings – I always stick to default settings.  No obvious motion artifacts.

CFI aka “Motion Enhancer” exhibits small amounts of artifacts around the area where fast objects are moving, but for the most part, you have to go looking for such minor distortions to find them.  A non issue in my book.  Also, I consider CFI a nice extra, but not an important performance aspect – more of an “nice to have it” feature.

HT6050 Audible Noise

Well, since the auto iris doesn’t work in any mode but Bright – which most of us will never use, any iris action noise is a non-factor.

Fan noise is reasonable for a home theater projector.  BenQ claims 31 db at full power, and 28 db in Eco.

We do not measure, but since I always have multiple projectors to compare against, let me put it this way.  At full power it’s slightly quieter than Epson’s HC5040UB, and most others in the range except the Sony HW65ES.  In Eco mode, it is quieter still, but even the noisier Epson is no noisier than the BenQ.  Still, only the most “noise adverse” would complain about the normal fan noise in Eco mode.  In Super-Eco mode, the fan noise can vary so consider about the same as running full power. Once in a while (in Super-Eco) you might notice the fan speed change.

Our calibration pages, which normally follow this page in the review, were not ready at the time of publication.  They will be added when done.  (However, this little note will probably live on, forever). -art

BenQ HT6050 Home Theater Projector Review – Picture Quality 2
BenQ HT6050 Projector – Calibration & Settings