BenQ W100 Digital Projector Review - Image Quality 1

Contrast and Black Levels

Note: When watching content on my light grey surface high contrast Firehawk screen (128" diagonal), I found both movie and cinema modes to be very acceptable. When I moved the BenQ W100 to the testing room, with a 1.4 gain white surface Carada "Brilliant White" (106" diagonal) surface, I definitely found the movie setting to produce "blacks" that were too bright a gray for my tastes, so in my opinion with white surface screens (without High Contrast), the Movie mode was definitely an inferior solution compared to the Cinema mode. This ties back to the fact that the W100 could/should have better blacks. Hopefully some of this issue with black levels relates to being pre-production, but I'm not going to count on it.

Immediately below is the pair of images from Lord of the Rings - the first, normally exposed, the second overexposed. The purpose is to see what details there are in shadow areas. Due to the digital camera's limitations, the camera cannot capture the full dynamic range of images from the source and projector, so if the medium and bright areas look good on the photo, then the dark areas lose detail. By overexposing, the brighter areas get "blown out", but we can capture with the camera, what the eye sees in the darker areas when normally viewing the content.

Overall the color dynamics of the W100 were very good. High impact scenes provided that "knock your socks off" impressiveness.