Winner - Best in Class (Under $2000): BenQ W1070

Posted on August 17, 2014 by Art Feierman

The BenQ W1070: Why It Won

An impressively good projector for a sub $1000 price. The W1070 is capable of excellent color making it a top choice for the bucks in more of a home theater environment than family room/living room. Although the W1070 would work there as well, there are brighter alternatives, better suited for tackling ambient light.

The BenQ W1070 lacks a dynamic iris, so black level performance is basic DLP, which isn’t bad, but not even remotely a match for the other projector that this year shares the award of Best In Class Under $2000. Shadow detail is very good, and the feature set is typical for the price. Overall, credit the W1070 with solid performance overall. Warranty of 1 year parts and labor, though is pretty standard for the price range, but far from the best, and one year warranties make me nervous.

Note that the W1070 has a couple of siblings, including the short throw W1080ST, but while we appreciate the idea of a short throw lens, which many may prefer, the W1080ST costs more and it suffers from a lot of light leakage, which can definitely be visible in a theater type environment, so we didn’t consider it an equal, nor a contender. BenQ’s W1500, another sibling, costs perhaps 500 more for which the primary benefit is wireless HDMI. Since that can be bought for less than $300, we didn’t consider it near the value of the W1070, despite being newer.