BenQ W7500 Home Theater Projector Review Hardware Tour

Posted on March 18, 2014 by Art Feierman

BENQ W7500 HARDWARE TOUR: Overview, Lens Controls, Control Panel, Inputs and Connectors The BenQ W7500 as noted, is a single chip DLP projector. It's definitely medium sized, a good bit larger than the BenQ W1070, and most under $2000 DLP projectors. It's more in line with, say a Panasonic PT-AE8000U or the Epson UB series, taller but not quite as wide. It certainly would not be described as a large projector. So, it won't overwhelm moderate rooms if ceiling mounted. The finish is a shiny black piano type finish. The area around the lens is large, and shiny silver with a rough finish.

W7500 Projector Hardware Overview

From the front of the W7500, there’s a large imposing centered lens area (with some silver trim) for the 1.5:1 manual zoom lens, which provides a good deal of placement flexibility. Both the focus and zoom controls are rings on the lens itself. If you are facing the W7500 projector’s front, to the right of the lens is a joystick for controlling the lens shift. As is typical of single chip DLP projectors (those that even have any adjustable lens shift), the amount of total vertical and horizontal lens shift is less than that of most lens shift equipped 3 chip projectors, be they LCD projectors, LCoS projectors, or even those really expensive 3 chip DLP projectors.

That pretty much covers it for the front, except of course for the not particularly obvious front infra-red sensor for the remote control.

The BenQ W7500’s control panel is located on the top of the projector towards the back. All of the inputs and other connectors are located on the back of the projector.

The lamp door is located on the left side (if looking from the front), so, if you have ceiling mounted this projector, there’s no need to unmount the projector in order to change out the lamp.

The W7500 has four screw thread adjustable feet on the bottom, for those using it on a table top or equivalent surface.

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BenQ W7500 Control Panel

BenQ's impressive looking control panel is primarily a round configuration of concentric rings. Purple being BenQ's official color there's a fine not overly bright lit up trim ring around the control panel area. There are three indicator led lights for Power, Temperature, and Lamp.

Below, and slightly to the left of the Power indicator, is the Power button. Press once for on, twice for off. Opposite it (to the right, is a button for selecting from the Preset modes (Cinema, etc.) There are three more buttons on the curve. Lower left, is Source bottom is Menu, and Exit is to the right.

That only leaves the center, where the four navigation arrow keys are also in a round formation. In the center of them is the Enter button.

Also of note, the up and down arrows double as keystone correction controls when you are not in the menus. Of course, we suggest avoiding using keystone correction unless really needed. Keystone should be used only if lens shift can't get your image right, as it has more of a detrimental affect on the image quality.

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Inputs and Connectors: W7500 Projector

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No surprises on the back. The selection of inputs and other connectors is pretty typical. Let's start from the far left and work across. Cleverly, BenQ labels each connector right side up, and upside down. A nice touch for connecting cables when the projector is inverted for ceiling mounting.

Far left is the rear IR sensor for the remote control. Next come two HDMI 1.4 inputs. (I always like to point out a 3rd one would be nice for a lot of us. Realize though there's only one HDMI circuit, the rest is switching. (If there were two complete HDMI circuits it would be easy to allow one to fill the main image while the other does the picture in picture.)

Next up is a composite video (RCA jack) and S-Video (DIN connector).

For other connectivity, there's a USB input next, and that's followed by an RS-232 serial port (DB9 connector).

The W7500 has one 12 volt screen trigger, which could obviously be used to control a motorized screen or external lighting. What I don't see, though is a way to use it to control a motorized sled with an anamorphic lens. BenQ supports such lenses from Panamorph. Since the W7500 has both needed aspect ratios for using an anamorphic lens without sled, that's the way you would do it. No sled.

We're almost done. There's the three color coded RCA jacks (red, green, blue) for the component video input, and finally, furthest to the right, is the analog computer input - the usual HD15 connector. That input can handle the usual analog computer signal, or, instead, function as a second component video input.