BenQ TK860i

Verdict

Whereas there are a few important flaws to work spherical, the TK860I’s spectacular brightness, sharpness, sound and aggressive strategy to HDR make it a great choice for hard-to-black-out rooms

Introduction

The BenQ TK860i comes sizzling on the heels of the W2710i. Whereas the TK860i definitely shares some DNA with that mannequin, it’s in the end fairly a distinct beast, aimed toward a really totally different person base.

Whereas the W2710i sits in BenQ’s CinePrime collection, aimed toward film followers prepared, prepared, and in a position to correctly darken a room for a critical film nights; the TK860i belongs to BenQ’s House Leisure collection for extra informal customers searching for a projector to make use of in comparatively typical (as in, not blacked out) room circumstances with a wider vary of potential content material sources.

The W2710i fitted its temporary to tee, so hopefully the TK860i can do the identical.

The BenQ TK860i prices £1,699 – precisely the identical because the W2710i. This underlines how BenQ sees the TK860i not as a less expensive various to the W2710i, however a mannequin that’s hopefully as able to doing as efficient a job for a distinct goal market.

The £1,699 worth appears to be like affordable worth in immediately’s market for a home-focused projector that claims 4K decision and excessive dynamic vary capabilities.

You may get a model of the TK860i, the TK860 (minus the ‘i’), that doesn’t ship with a wise Android TV dongle. This prices £100 much less, and ought to be well-liked with individuals who have already got an exterior good streaming gadget reminiscent of a Hearth TV stick or Apple TV field.

The TK860i will likely be accessible to order within the US from the tip of Could, for $1,799.

Design

• Hidden good adaptor bay
• Crisp white and gray end
• Espresso-table pleasant measurement and sculpting

At first look it’s arduous to tell apart the BenQ TK860i from the W2710i – or any variety of different earlier BenQ house projectors. It has the identical compact rectangular form, the identical softening rounded edges and corners, the identical white end for its high and left/proper sides, and the identical contrasting darkish entrance edge containing a lens at its right-hand facet.

Whereas it won’t be an authentic design, it’s a superbly nice one which causes minimal disruption to your espresso desk.

It’s a really sensible design, too, with its management buttons on its high edge and easy zoom, focus and optical picture shift wheel changes tucked beneath a slide again cowl above the lens barrel. Its three screw-down ft additionally make it comparatively simple to each get the TK860i’s picture in the appropriate place in your display screen, and proper for unevenness within the floor the projector’s sitting on.

BenQ has helpfully offered a bay beneath a detachable cowl on the TK860i’s high edge into which you’ll be able to match the offered good dongle.

The one actually apparent methods of distinguishing the TK860i from the W2710i are that the TK860i encompasses a white rear panel whereas the W2710i encompasses a darkish gray one, and that the TK860i sports activities an orange border round its lens.

The TK860i ships with two distant controls: one for the projector, and a separate smaller one for the good dongle. The principle projector distant does truly allow you to entry all of the apps and providers without having the good one, although, and is even outfitted with a mic for Google Assistant voice management.

Options

• Single-chip DLP optical system
• 3300 Lumens claimed peak gentle output
• Android TV dongle included

The BenQ TK860i ticks all of the bins you’d hope to see with a projector aimed toward a comparatively informal person base. Its 3,300 lumens of claimed peak brightness ought to be far more efficient at punching by ambient gentle than the W2710i’s 2,200 lumens. It could additionally assist the TK860i get extra worth out of its claimed help for top dynamic vary playback.

I ought to add that actually no projector can ship a ‘true’ HDR expertise in the best way that high-end TVs (for which HDR was developed) can; projectors simply aren’t constructed that method. The extra brightness a projector has, the extra of an opportunity it has of delivering a minimum of an honest step up from SDR. Offered that brightness doesn’t get in the best way of different extra conventional image parts.

The TK860i could be very simple to arrange – helpful for a projector of this type, which can properly discover itself being introduced out of a cabinet each time a family desires to make use of it. Three screw down legs enable you get the picture stage and in the appropriate place in your wall or display screen, and an honest vary of optical vertical picture shifting is available to assist carry or decrease the picture with out leaving you with angled edges. An automated keystone correction system is offered to type out picture geometry if the opposite arrange instruments haven’t achieved the job already.

The zoom and focus rings above the lens really feel responsive with out being calibrated so tightly which you can’t make very effective changes to them, and the onscreen menus are fairly easy for probably the most half. Particularly when you can handle with their simplified out of the field presentation, fairly than switching them into their Superior mode.

Rounding out the TK860i’s informal enchantment is a in-built 2 x 5W sound system designed with BenQ’s TreVolo audio division that can – if it’s any good – prevent the difficulty of getting to search out an exterior audio answer.

The TK860i’s connections are principally spectacular for its cash. Particularly it carries three HDMI inputs fairly than the 2 you get on the overwhelming majority of rivals. You don’t want to make use of any of those for the included Google TV dongle, both, which, as I’ve defined already, has its personal separate connection.

The HDMIs solely help 120Hz refresh charges with full HD decision feeds; there’s no playback of the 4K/120Hz photographs accessible from the most recent consoles and premium PC graphics playing cards. Neither is there any help for variable refresh price gaming, and HDR format help is proscribed to HDR10 and HLG; the TK860i doesn’t share the W2710i’s help for the lively HDR10+ system, which provides further scene-by-scene image data to the info stream. It does be a part of the W2710i in not supporting the Dolby Imaginative and prescient HDR format.

Comparatively few projectors help 4K/120Hz feeds (even gaming projectors), and even fewer help HDR10+ (or Dolby Imaginative and prescient). So having three HDMI ports alongside the good dongle bay, a 12V set off port, an RS232 management port and a USB media participant port stands as an above par effort.

The TK860i’s superior onscreen menus comprise a powerful array of image arrange options. These embrace a fulsome color calibration system, and a return of BenQ’s HDR-Professional system, full with its Native Distinction Enhancer engine. This breaks the picture into greater than a thousand separate zones, after which tweaks the picture’s look in every zone to attempt to get the optimum picture efficiency – whereas additionally remembering to maintain issues balanced between the totally different evaluation zones.

There’s a devoted Sport preset that delivers enter lag under 18ms with 4K/60Hz sources, and a Cinema preset designed to ship the projector’s most ‘correct’ footage with movie sources. There isn’t any Filmmaker mode as discovered on the extra movie-focused W2710i, and the TK860i’s extra informal strategy additionally sees it ditch the W2710i’s help for ISF skilled calibration (although for DIY calibrators there’s nonetheless each two level and 11-point white stability adjustment, plus a full 3D Color Administration System).

The TK860i additionally lacks BenQ’s CinematicColour system, which makes use of Waveform evaluation, particular color wheels and manufacturing unit calibration to ship correct colors out of the field. BenQ claims the TK860i can cowl 98% of the Rec709 customary dynamic vary color palette (versus 100% on the W2710i), but it surely doesn’t be a part of the W2710i in claiming 95% of the DCI-P3 digital cinema color vary.

It does retain a dynamic iris to regulate the quantity of sunshine emitted at any given second in a bid to enhance black stage response, in addition to a strong body interpolation system that may come in useful when watching sports activities broadcasts and streams. Additionally retained from the W2710i, regardless of the TK860i not being such a devoted film machine, is a True Cinema 24p mode for extra natural-looking playback of 24Hz sources.

The TK860i’s good dongle, lastly, builds into the projector an honest model of Android TV. This helps voice management/search, and offers a big selection of streaming service apps – the overwhelming majority of that are native, which means they’ll detect its capabilities and adapt their streaming high quality accordingly. Another projectors, by comparability, solely entry primary on-line variations of streaming providers, which find yourself delivering poorer, unoptimized image high quality in consequence.

There are one or two holes within the good TV system; the ITVX app throws up a message saying it could’t work on this gadget. There’s an argument, definitely, for opting to avoid wasting £100 by getting the TK860 with out the ‘i’ dongle and including a Hearth TV or Google Chromecast stick as an alternative. Although don’t neglect {that a} third social gathering streaming gadget gained’t conveniently match contained in the bay constructed beneath the projector’s high edge like BenQ’s devoted dongle does.

Efficiency

• Distinctive sharpness and element
• Vivid sufficient to be used in common dwelling rooms
• A few HDR points

The BenQ TK860i actually is a distinct image beast to the W2710i. Its further brightness just about hits you within the face. I began off my assessments in a darkish room setting, by which the TK860i’s footage, particularly with excessive dynamic vary sources, critically exploded off my display screen – regardless that that display screen solely deploys a impartial acquire. This makes footage look extra intense, punchy and, I suppose, HDR (although I have to stress once more that no projector can do full justice to HDR).

The spectacular brightness helps colors look extra vibrant and voluminous, particularly whereas utilizing the TK860i as a gaming show. The additional brightness additionally helps the TK860i’s footage punch by (inside cause) ambient gentle, confirming that as billed, it’s a way more efficient informal use/front room choice than the darkish room targeted W2710i.

A constructive attribute the TK860i’s footage share with the W2710i is their excessive sharpness. Native 4K sources actually do look 4K in my humble opinion, fairly than like some kind of mere souped up HD. Together with the W2710i, the TK860i delivers probably the most detailed, crispest-looking footage I’ve seen on any projector for anyplace close to the £1,699 worth level.

And this element stays pleasingly intact when there’s movement within the body, no matter whether or not you’re utilizing the body interpolation system with 50Hz body interpolation, a 1080p 120Hz gaming stream, or a 24fps film supply.

Color copy isn’t as refined or refined as it’s with the W2710i, and nor are tones typically fairly as pure wanting utilizing the out of the field presets (particularly with HDR sources). There’s an exception, although, on the subject of pores and skin tones, which look actually spectacular with minimal handbook interference, whereas the TK860i offers sufficient calibration choices to allow you to considerably enhance out of the field color flaws too.

Whereas the TK860i can pretty be thought of an excellent SDR projector for movie, streaming and gaming functions, its brightness may cause a number of HDR hiccups when you look previous the initially eye-catching positives.

Black ranges seem infused with noticeably extra greyness with HDR sources than they do on the W2710i. This dampens the sense of distinction within the image, too, regardless of the large brightness rise, and makes darkish scenes look typically much less convincing.

The greyness obvious in darkish areas can conceal just a little extra shadow detailing in darkish areas than the W2710i does, too. Although it’s value stressing that the TK860i’s fairly gray black ranges are much less noticeable within the comparatively shiny front room settings the projector is designed to sit down in than they’re within the kind of darkish rooms the W2710i is meant for.

My largest challenge with the TK860i’s default HDR settings, although, is that they trigger fairly excessive clipping within the brightest areas of aggressive HDR masters. Within the famously shiny 4K Blu-ray switch of Pan, as an illustration, in the course of the sequence the place Peter first arrives on the flying ship to Neverland, the orange clouds stand out like radioactive materials from their environment, whereas the white-ish reflections on the floating water bubbles they sail by are so missing in refined shading they seem like white holes ripped out of the picture.

The one adjustment I might discover that principally mounted this challenge – whereas additionally finding out a problem with exaggerated color noise – was to cut back the TK860i’s BrilliantColour setting from its default 10 stage to as little as stage three and even two. Doing this, although, makes the image look considerably much less shiny and punchy. A lot in order that it does considerably undermine the TK860i’s credentials as an informal shiny room choice.

Lowering Good Color a lot to unravel the glowing/detail-losing peak HDR drawback additionally reduces the TK860i’s distinction, since brightness is misplaced with out delivering a noticeable enchancment within the projector’s black ranges.

The TK860i’s further brightness makes the rainbow impact (the place stripes of pure pink, inexperienced and blue can flit in your peripheral imaginative and prescient or over stand-out shiny image highlights) barely extra distracting than it’s with the W2710i, too.

One different challenge with the TK860i’s out of the field footage is one I additionally noticed with the W2710i. An inclination for the dynamic iris’s default Excessive setting to be hyperactive, inflicting each aggressive shifts in brightness throughout cuts between darkish and shiny pictures and, worse, inflicting the picture’s brightness stage to fluctuate and flicker inside a shot.

Each these issues will be very distracting. Thankfully you possibly can enormously scale back their influence just by turning the Dynamic Iris right down to its Center setting – however as with the Good Color discount required to cut back color glow and clipping, dropping the Dynamic Iris to Center does value the picture just a little extra of the brightness that’s on the coronary heart of its front room enchantment.

Whereas it’s a disgrace it’s a must to tweak its settings and compromise on among the TK860i’s brightness to take pleasure in a constant and subsequently involving HDR expertise, although, the outcomes of your tweaks are nonetheless pleasant to look at in even a fairly shiny front room setting.

Sound High quality

• 2 x 5W of energy
• Properly projected sound
• Properly rounded tone with out distortions

The TK860i’s sound, delivered by a 2 x 5W speaker system created with BenQ’s Trevolo audio division, appears just about equivalent to that of the W2710i. Which is sweet information, truly, because it means a repeat of the W2710i’s well-rounded, richly detailed, distortion- and harshness-free sound.

The sound is pushed an honest distance away from the projector’s bodywork, too, in order that when you’re sat behind the projector the sound appears a minimum of vaguely linked with the onscreen motion – a uncommon luxurious with built-in projector sound techniques.

There isn’t a lot bass to underpin the motion, however the TK860i nonetheless sounds much more satisfying than most projectors.

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