BenQ W100

If you want big, bright, cheap images, check this Benq projector out.

The government has just cut off your dole payments, the cardboard box you call home is developing a severe case of soggy-itis, and you can’t remember the last time you ate anything more substantial than week old bread. Yet, thanks to BenQ, you can now afford a decent projector to go alongside your shiny new 360, which is currently in use as a pillow.

The W100’s native resolution of 854 x 480, supplied courtesy of the DDR DMP x1 digital mirror device, is not going to be suitable for crazily large screens, unless you’ve got a thing for giant blobs of pixels. But it’ll still give you a good 65 inches or so of joy before the screen door effect whacks you in the eyeballs.

Thanks to the use of DLP technology, the contrast and colour quality of the images is excellent, especially for this price point, and in this regard makes most low end LCDs look distinctly lacking. We calibrated the projector using Digital Video Essentials (every home theatre owner should have this disk!) using the simplistic image controls, and found the picture to be excellent. It wasn’t the brightest projector to dazzle our retinas, with a brightness rating of 1300 Ansi Lumens, but most projector users are happy to view in darkened rooms.

What was most impressive about the DLP technology employed is the fact that this projector is the first in its class to use a speedy 7 segment, 4x colour wheel. As a result, even to my highly sensitive, gaming-honed Mk 1 eyeballs the rainbow effect was hard to pick out, one of the major problems that plague DLP projectors at the low end of the market.

If you shop around you’ll be able to knock a couple of hundred dollars off the price of the W100, making it an absolute bargain. Sure, it’s not HD, but if you expected HD at a little over a grand, you’re obviously from the year 2010.