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BenQ W10000 1080p Projector Review – Image Quality

Posted on January 7, 2013 By Art Feierman

The W10000 performs! As noted on the overview, the W10000 lives up to my expectations. In many ways, it’s just a higher resolution version of the PE-8720, with a sharper image and more detail. Since I was impressed enough with the PE-8720 to own one, you can understand why I am enthused by the W10000’s performance. Let’s get started, first with handling of flesh tones.

The W10000 home theater projector offers very good out of the box color. I found my evaluation unit to lean slightly towards the cool side (favoring blue) in its Cinema mode (designed for movies of course). Cooler temperatures are a better match for most TV/HDTV, however the Cinema mode is not quite that cool. It was very easy to adjust the Cinema setting to bring the color temperature down slightly to the desired 6500K to match normal DVD movie content. More on this in the calibration section.

The images below were taken after the minor adjustment I performed with my calibration equipment, however, the grayscale adjust I performed should be easily handled with a basic “end user” calibration disk, such as the AVIA disk which lists for only $50. I definitely would recommend picking one up when you buy your projector. If you are looking for perfection, however, with an investment in this price range, you may very well want to consider spending the $500-$1000 for a professional to fully calibrate your projector to get out every last bit of performance, including calibrating it to your room and screen. You will see a difference!

BenQ W10000 home theater projector - Color handling of flesh tones

First the usual images from standard definition DVD’s – from Lord of the Rings; Gandalf and Arwen, and from The Fifth Element – Leeloo, and Bruce Willis.

One more note: As I point out in all reviews, my digital camera cannot capture the full dyamic range of what the projectors put on the screen. If an image is properly exposed, the camera loses details in the shadow areas. Also, color accuracy from screen to camera to your computer screen, will shift colors a bit. So, remember, the images are here, to support the commentary, not the other way around. They have definite limits in helping you see the differences between different projectors’ performance.

Flesh tones are consistently natural, and, at the same time, you will notice a level of detail not found on similar images shot of the many 720p projectors reviewed here.

Moving to Hi-Def images, first is the image of Carlota from Phantom of the Opera, from HD-DVD. From a natural flesh tone standpoint, this image looks about as good as any from the other projectors reviewed.

One of my new favorite HD-DVD’s from the standpoint of great scenes to photograph, is AeonFlux (yep, another Sci-Fi flick). Unfortunately, it doesn’t support the bookmark capability of the HD-DVD player, so from review to review, you will see similar, but not identical frames. Here are a couple of images from the movie.

Below is an image of Clint Eastwood, from Space Cowboys (also from HD-DVD). The flesh tones in this image run strongly to red in every projector I have photographed, so attribute it to the movie itself.

BenQ W10000 Physical Tour
BenQ W10000 1080p Projector Review – Image Quality 2