Path to enlightenment
The W1200 will throw a 65in picture from just 2m and is bright enough to comfortably go larger if you have the room. One sop to its budget price is the lack of a vertical lens shift option, so you’ll need to have a reasonably straight projection path. However an auto keystone correction function works well and there’s manual keystone correction if you need to make more adjustments.
More living room than boardroom
With its default settings, the projector is a tad noisy. The DLP cooling fans generate around 27dB of grumble. However, engaging the lamp’s Economic setting reduces this to just 22dB. There’s no significant brightness hit in a light controlled dark room.
Power consumption also falls by 20 per cent. This is quiet enough to be masked by a decent sound system when you’re watching movies. Lamp life is quoted at 4000 hours in eco mode. Replacement is a user friendly job.
This is not a difficult projector to calibrate. Within a few minutes I was happy both with its black levels and clarity.
The 4,000 hour bulb will get you through about 2,500 movies
This BenQ delivers bright, ziggy reds and yellows, courtesy of TI’s BrilliantColor processing. The vibrancy of these hues may be too much for some cinephiles, but I thought they looked great, particularly on the Blu-ray animation of Chico & Rita. The W1200’s picture is also low on noise, with effortless gradation – the latter courtesy of a not-to-shabby 10-bit colour processor.
Next page: Shining example
COMMENTS
Shockingly good
A product as good as rivals costing three times more. And therefore a score of...80%?
What is it with Reg reviews that everything comes in between 60-90%, with the majority at 70 or 80? Just get rid of the %'s and use stars out of five.
£1,000 is budget priced
I think £1,000 is perfectly reasonable for a budget projector of this specification.
Clarification
Under Resolution, you listed the supported resolutions, but not the native resolution. I mention this because the company I work for has had more than a few projectors that "support" HD resolutions but are actually 800x600 projectors -- and their downsampling is really crappy.
Fortunately, that's not the case here. From BenQ's product site:
Native Resolution 1080p (1920 x 1080)
So which is it?
1080 lines or 1200 lines.
The spec list says 1200 whereas your text says 1080.
I had to laugh at the 'light controlled dark room' :) :) :)
Nearly 3 years ago Optoma briefly sold a projector with similar specs and for the same price. I'm lucky to have been in the market for one and snapped it up. It has taken that long for prices to drop to what I call more reasonable levels.
Oh, and a Canon Xeed does not cut the mustard. I've compared the Optoma and the latest Xeed and its chromatic abboration is truly awful. For a company that makes optical kit I am very surptised.
This seems like a nice bit of kit.
It is a real pity that there is nowhere in the UK where you can actually go and see a whole load of projectors side by side and compare them for the sort of use you are going to make of them. You basically have to buy sight unseen.
If El Reg knows of a place, please let us know.
Got excited by the W in the model name
I thought El Rej had leapt to the the forefront of cutting edge tech and were reviewing a Wireless projector but alas not
Any chance of you doing one?
