5 Questions When Selecting A Projector

All of us must have the experience of dreaming about a happy weekend when you relax on the sofa and enjoy a movie on the home theater with a large-sized screen. As the price is getting more affordable and the projector is no longer for large-sized rooms only as more and more small families or even singles living in a studio apartment would buy a projector. However, when choosing a projector, besides the price and performance, you need to consider your own demands to find the most ideal projector. There are so many models in the market and all these projectors would claim they have the best features and quality, Full HD or high price-performance ratio. How should you choose when it looks like every projector can address your needs? The following 5 questions can help you decide which type of projector you need quickly and easily.

Generally, projectors can be categorized into 2 types: commercial projector and home projector. A commercial projector is mainly used in the office, conference room or even a meeting center for over 100 participants. This kind of environment is usually not a completely dark room and the main purpose of the participants is to view the presentation. So the projector should be bright enough to make all contents clear and easy to read. And “lumen” is the unit of projector brightness. Basically, the brightness of a commercial projector for a small to medium conference room can reach 3000~3500 lumen. And the brightness of a projector for a large meeting center for 100~200 participants or large screen used for an outdoor show can go up to 6000~8000, even tens of thousands lumen.

As for the projector used on a home theater system, it mainly serves certain purposes including watching the movies, dramas and variety shows. Most dramas and variety shows are produced with sufficient light to achieve vivid colors, so the performance on the projector shows less variation. However, if you want to watch the movie, even the drama shot in a movie-like fashion, you need to consider if the projector can display saturated and real colors, fine detailed image quality, high contrast and outstanding low-light performance. BenQ’s short throw and home theater projectors adopt the RGBRGB color wheel to efficiently separate the 3 primary colors forming the image and restore the most natural movie colors.

The projector can offer the best image display quality in the room with sufficient shading effect. However, we know that most rooms are not completely dark. Take the living room in your home for example, there’s always some dim light coming from the outdoors. So when selecting a projector, we recommend that you choose the model with a higher lumen (around 2500~3000).

If you’re particular about viewing quality and have already established an audiovisual room with sufficient shading effect, then what you need to focus on is the resolution, color and gray scale performance. The BenQ home projector offers the most precise color and various color performance, lowers lamp power consumption and extends lamp life.

For a budget within 1,000~1,300, the BenQ CineHome series Projector is your best choice; this projector brings you a giant screen cinema experience right away when installed on a flat white or gray wall. With the budget of 1,000~2,000 more, you can experience a home theater with home multimedia speakers or 5.1 channel front sound bar as well as a pull down projector screen. If your budget is 1,500~3,000, our recommendation is the BenQ CinePrime or CinePrime series projector. With a branded home theater system and a quality woven screen with smoother texture, you can easily enjoy the private theater experience at home.

You can pursue the best visual experience, such as adding overhead speakers, if your budget is over 3,000 or even higher. We suggest that you seek advice from professional AV service providers when combining the BenQ CinePro series projector to multichannel sound system, including main speakers, middle speakers, sub-woofers or even satellite speakers. You can choose a screen with a smooth texture or an electric tension projection screen with precise color temperature to experience a home theater system that is even better than the cinema. Try to convert the cost of building a home theater system into the movie ticket price; in the long-term perspective, the price of a home theater is still more economical. (For example, current average movie ticket price in Taiwan is around NTD300; if you buy 2 tickets every time, you can only enjoy up to 50 movies given a budget of NTD30,000. In other words, the home projector is a more economical choice if you watch more than 50 movies a year. )

Large rooms such as a conference room or living room have a longer projection distance and therefore the location where the projector is placed is comparatively free. However, users still need to pay attention to the throw distance; images can be too large or effected if the throw distance is too long or the focal length is too short. For small and narrow rooms such as studio apartments or bedrooms, you need to check the projection distance. We recommend using a short throw projector. The BenQ short throw projector can project an image of up to 100-inch with only the distance of 2.5m and is the best choice for singles living in small places. For average small rooms, a 60~80-inch projection can provide full visual coverage; compared to a 60-inch TV in the market today, the projector, with a more affordable price, higher portability and the display size that can zoom easily, is an AV equipment with a higher price performance ratio.

Usually, you need to have the room for cables in advance when installing a home theater system, especially when you’re installing multichannel surround sound system. So we recommend discussing this with your interior designer before decorating; you probably even need to invite the plumber, electrician, projector and professional sound system technician to achieve the best performance. You can also avoid renovations because of the poor projection quality resulting from bad communication If you don’t want to do a wide-ranging renovation, we suggest that you choose the projector with a large zoom and lens shift features to maintain the best quality or the one that can be placed on the table or throw by the side projection when placing at the corner. This kind of projector enables you to enjoy outstanding audio and video experience at home easily without any remodeling.