BenQ W1350 Home Entertainment Projector

The BenQ W1350 is marketed as a home entertainment projector, which means it is aimed towards being used for television, sport, gaming and the odd movie. It features lens-shift, full HD picture quality, 3D content support, an internal 10 watt speaker and wireless connectivity (via a kit sold separately).

The front of the unit has the lens on the right and the exhaust vents for the hot air on the left. At the bottom of the front plate is a push button adjustable leg for altering the title and/or height of the projector (depending on the positioning of the other legs). The keystone and lens shift features allow this projector to be placed at almost any angle to the projection surface. Also it can be ceiling mounted so that it can be used while being out of the way.

There are 9 buttons for menu navigation and a power button on the top of the projector. Also there are three indicator lights to inform the user when the projector has power or if it is experiencing problems with the temperature or lamp. The projector is completely controllable with the included remote, which has separate on and off buttons and plenty of quick access buttons so you don’t need to navigate the menu. The remote has a solid weight to it and is of much better build quality than remotes which run off a single flat cell battery. This remote requires two AAA batteries.

The rear of the projector includes a great selection of connectivity ports. These include: two HDMI ports, a component port, a VGA connection and audio input/output with composite and phone sockets.

This projector was connected as a secondary display to a computer. The first test was done by running the benchmarking program Heaven. The projector gave a very pleasing and immersive picture to watch. However as this projector uses a RGBRGB colour palette there was experience of a rainbow effect when looking away from the display.

As gaming is one of the uses this projector is marketed for the second test was done by playing a few minutes of some AAA games. The display was found to be bright and immersive with no sign of the rainbow effect from the fast paced motion of the visuals. Finally the projector was connected up to a Wii U console and a few levels of Mario Maker were played. Again the colours were nice and bright without being oversaturated.

It was remarked that the internal 10w speaker (although not fantastic for home entertainment) was of much better quality than the speakers of other projectors in the market.

Conclusion:

Overall this is a fantastic home entertainment projector. There are plenty of connection options and the out of the box colours are very good, with some tuning the colours should be even better. The only downside that was seen with this projector was the rainbow effect which was caused by the RGBRGB palette used. This was only apparent when looking away from the display and not seen for fast paced visuals. This projector runs a lot cooler than other home entertainment projectors due to its two internal fans and the internal speaker is of a much better quality.