There are two main aspects of a color wheel for any lamp based single chip DLP projector. The color segments on the wheel, and the speed of the wheel.
The TK800 uses an RGBW color wheel, which I think of as a business education projector color wheel, or perhaps, in this case, a “home entertainment” color wheel as opposed to a “home theater” one (implying a more serious projector).
As mentioned at the beginning of the review, the main difference between this projector and its HT2550 sibling, is that wheel. The other BenQ has the “home theater” RGBRGB wheel, less white lumens, but slightly more vibrant colors.
No problem with that, BenQ offers two models, same price, pick the right one for your room setup and viewing habits.
The other aspect is the speed. For those of us who are “rainbow sensitive,” we see flecks of rainbow color when white objects pass in front of dark objects on the screen (or vice versa). The slower the wheel, the more frequent we see them. With a fast color wheel, which both these BenQ’s have, I rarely can spot a rainbow. Oh, sometimes if I move my head quickly while watching those high contrast motion scenes, I can spot them, but, by comparison, the rather excellent Acer VL7860 – a laser 4K UHD projector (my previous review), has a slow wheel, and I saw the artifacts more often than not. I recommended that projector, but as I said, I could never own one because of the RBE. (RainBow Effect.)
BenQ does not publish a speed, but I figure 4X or 5X. Many projectors are still using 2X or 3X speed wheels, and for me, those don’t cut it!
Fortunately, most folks aren’t RBE sensitive. How many are? There’s no good info, but I figure 5% or a bit more.
Well, if you are one of us RBE folks, be cheered, these BenQs have nice fast color wheels, so RBE should be fairly rare.
The bottom line on the color wheel: Fast which is great! Segments – the TK800s setup delivers very good color and extra (mostly white) brightness. If you are going into a room where there’s almost always more than minor ambient light, the TK800s configuration should be the way to go. If you have that cave/home theater, and like your movies with no significant ambient light at all, then the HT2550 is for you. It’s that simple since this color wheel is the only real performance difference.