BenQ PE5120 - Summary, Pros, Cons

Posted on November 12, 2004 by Art Feierman

BenQ PE5120 - Summary, Pros, Cons

This is the best, easiest low cost home theater yet, and that earns it our Hot Product Award for Entry Level Home Theater Projectors.

The combination of very good color, brightness, and excellent contrast, is hard to beat. Better still, DVD performance is downright excellent, and the projector is very clean with HDTV sources, where the biggest distraction is likely to be the slightly visible pixels.

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I recommend sitting approximately 1.5 times screen width (or further), which, for example if you have a 110" screen would be about 140" back (less than 12 feet). At 2x screen width pixels are not visible (except maybe on the credits). If you don't mind a little bit of pixelization I would say 9-10 feet back will work with that, rather large screen.

The street price for the projector, which intially should be about $1400-$1500 makes this an excellent value!

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Pro's:

Low cost
Very good, natural color
Excellent contrast and black levels, especially for its price
No - brainer - the easiest projector to setup, so if you are non-technical, figure this is about as tough as a normal TV hookup, friendly menus
Longer warranty than most.
Small and relatively unobtrusive
Backlit remote, well laid out
Support for DVI-I/HDMI, and separate component video
Pixels are less visible than same resolution LCD projectors

Con's:

Lack of separate computer input (for those who want to have a computer and DVI source both hooked up)
No trigger to control motorized screen when projector powers up/down
Pixels are more visible than higher end projectors