BenQ W1200 Projector - Performance-3

Posted on June 3, 2011 by Art Feierman

Light Leakage

The BenQ W1200 leaks minimal light out the side vents. Light leak through the lens is strange. There's a ring of light leaving the lens, that will hit your front wall floor and maybe ceiling. The ring of light isn't bright, and it's miles from the actual screen image. In fact it's about a screen width away. It certainly won't interfere with the projected image, but you might notice a touch of extraneous light wherever that beam might hit some light or reflective object in the front of your room. All considered, not really an issue, and certainly not in a family room or bonus room type environment. The light is easily visible when viewing in my theater - not so easy to spot in my testing room when the room is set to be more like a family room.

Image Noise

I saw only one problem with Image noise, and that was some sort of issue at the bottom of the screen when watching 1080p. It would have to be described as a motion artifact. It appeared almost if looking at the last inch or so at the bottom was looking through a bevel. Seems to be a timing issue when viewing 24 bit. I haven't seen anything quite like this in a couple of years. A minor distraction, but I did notice it repeatedly when watching the latest Narnia last night. The thing is, I didn't notice it at all, as I took the usual 100s of photos for a full photo shoot.

Audible Noise

Another reason I consider the W1200 a family room projector is that in the "family room" isn't necessarily a quiet zone, unlike a theater. The BenQ's fan noise varies - all by itself. And that can be a distraction.

Yes, most of the time it's reasonably quiet, but, when it feels the need to be cooler, the BenQ W1200's fan speeds up and the noise level goes up substantially. When it's in this louder mode, then the BenQ is definitely louder than we would like to encounter in our single chip DLP projectors.

After firing up a cold W1200, with fan running on normal, it took about 25-35 minutes before the fan might accelerate. Now my theater tends to stay around 72 degrees or even a touch more.

I'm not really noise adverse so I only notice it speeding up sometimes... Others it might drive crazy, those most noise adverse. But again, this is a casual home theater projector for movies sports, Disney features, whatever you like.