BenQ W20000 Home Cinema Projector Review: General Performance

Posted on October 7, 2013 by Art Feierman

W20000 Menus

Nothing overly exciting here, as the menus on the W20000 are almost identical to BenQ home theater projectors three and four years old. The overall layout is very good.

I better point out now, that on one of the menus not shown, the Display menu (aspect ratio, and more), there is also a PIP - Picture In Picture feature. This can be accessed directly from the remote control as well. The BenQ W20000 is one of the very few projectors that can do Picture in Picture to view two sources at once.

The Lamp power is still isolated from the image settings, but that is the way most companies do it. I prefer to see lamp power on the primary menu, as it is one of those things that many will adjust at least occasionally, just as they will often adjust image settings, such as changing the preset from Cinema to Dynamic or Standard, as they switch from movie watching to HDTV and sports.

Shown to the right is the First - Basic - Picture menu. It starts with selecting one of the picture modes (Cinema, Dynamic, the User saved modes, etc.) There's the usual brightness contrast and more.

The more complex goodies are on the second main menu, the Picture Advanced menu. From this menu, you can set the RGB color temperature, from the standard settings (Warm, Cool...) You'll also find gamma controls, and individual color controls (color management).

Then there are the two controls for the irises. Dynamic Black, engages the dynamic iris, while IRIS lets you control the regular iris. Closing it down will lower brightness, but also slightly increase contrast.

The last menu I'll show you is the Advanced Setup menu. It provides access to the Lamp controls, and also has reset for the filter counter, as well. There's password control for security, and finally password access to the ISF service menu, reserved for ISF certified projector calibrators, and, of course hard core enthusiasts, who manage to find their way in, and can't resist. There's also an Information menu that shows current source signal (such as1080p 24fps), preset mode, lamp hours, and more

W20000 Menus slide show

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W20000 User Memory Settings

Over the last year, they have made one change with their menus, that's really not for the better. But, let me start at the beginning. The BenQ W20000 projector is ISF certified, which means it's got 2 memory slots; one for ISF Day, and one for ISF Night. There are three User Memory settings, but if you have your projector professionally calibrated by an ISF calibrator, they will be using two of them.

Where my complaint lies, is that in the past, most BenQ home theater projectors not only had the three user memory spots, but you could officially save them. With the W20000, instead, you can put your settings into any one of the three, (they will be saved, even after you power down), but if you decide to adjust any settings in the user memory you are using, those become the new saved settings. That means if you have User 1 set up for movies, after, say, a basic calibration, and everything normally looks great, the time will come when you put on something that doesn't look right - it might be a standard DVD. You might find that the overall color for that movie is way oversaturated, or has too much red, or, well, anything that you don't like, and can quickly correct away most of the problem

And there's the problem. Now that you have, say, reduced the color saturation of User 1, it's going to remember that adjustment, and the next time you use User 1, for better content, it will be under saturated. Hopefully, they will go back to the "hard" user save ability, from older models. Of course, if that is the biggest issue I have, then we have a great projector. The ultimate cure for this is to be sure to right down your settings, just in case.