BenQ TK800 Home Theater Projector Review – Performance

No question about it, BenQ’s TK800 is a good deal brighter than its “home theater” twin, the HT2550.  The TK800’s RGBW color wheel pumps out a lot more white lumens, although probably slightly less color lumens than the HT2550, to create a home entertainment projector that can cut through more ambient light.  BenQ definitely succeeded!  Consider:

The HT2550’s brightest measured mode was their Bright mode, at 1793 lumens, while this TK800’s least bright mode was even brighter:  Cinema mode at 1976 lumens, almost exactly twice as bright as the HT2550!

Bright mode on this TK800 is 2850 lumens – 50% brighter than the same mode on the other BenQ.  that’s true of most modes on the TK800, except Cinema with the even bigger difference.

The TK800 is truly a light cannon, compared to most competitors.  Even calibrated for “best” mode it managed 1007 lumens, but our 4K HDR calibration came in at 2090 and the Bright mode for non 4K HDR, manages to  dazzle, with 1933 lumens measured!   While 1007 lumens isn’t that much more than the HT2550s (20% more), remember, 1000 lumens is officially enough to fill a typical 150″ diagonal screen in a fully darkened theater.  (Call it an easy 130″ with brightness to spare).

Perhaps more importantly is the good color combined with just over 2000 lumens for HDR, where the extra lumens are really appreciated (and called for)!

With a target of 6500K, for greyscale balance, post calibration the BenQ TK800 is close to ideal, with a nice tight range, only a bit warm in the very darkest areas (10 IRE), where you are very Not Likely to notice.

From any color mode, switching from full power (High) to Low power mode, results in a measured drop in lumen output of about 29%.

That, I should point out, is pretty typical with almost all projectors dropping between 25 and 35 percent when going to Eco (Low).

I’m saving some time here.  This chart is populated with the measurements from our HT2550 review.  Consider that the two projectors have the same lens, and also that the difference between wide-angle and telephoto brightness will be minimal on projectors with very little zoom range (1.2:1 in this case, which is very minimal).  Turns out on the HT2550 the brightness variation as you zoom from wide angle (closest placement to your screen), to the furthest (tele zoom) is only 7%.  Since that is barely visible, I didn’t bother to do the same measurements on the TK800.