About this deal
When in cinema mode in a dark room, the projector creates shockingly beautiful images, especially when adding in HDR-processed highlights. Provided you stick with the projector’s adaptive Smart Eco lamp mode, those surprisingly effective black levels can be joined by some strikingly punchy bright highlights. While we preferred the better color accuracy of cinema mode, which brought out the most depth and saturation in the content we we viewed, Vivid TV mode did the best to compete with ambient light, and we’d not hesitate to choose this mode if we weren’t easily able to darken our space or wait until sundown to watch our favorite shows and movies. Replacing a bare bulb in the original projector lamp housing is more challenging than replacing the entire lamp housing.
My only wish was for deeper black levels but that was only apparent in the darkest nighttime scenes.BenQ also state that the TK800 has auto HDR optimised colour rendition technology which matches the content to the native capabilities of the projector, to try and give a bright and more colourful image, over normal HD material.
So again, it is worth cutting through some of the marketing to get to the actual performance parameters. It is true demo-worthy material and easily exceeds the quality I’ve seen in countless tradeshow presentations of super-high-res material filmed with state-of-the-art cameras that are either stationary or panning slowly. Rather than making huge changes to the RGB sliders, I chose to leave Brilliant Color on and tweak the Normal preset. It is also possible to place the projector on a rear shelf or stand behind the seats and project over the heads of the viewers. The main selling point of the BenQ TK800 is that it supports 4K and while this is true, it’s worth pointing out that the projector’s DLP chip is not 3840x2160 pixels.Also, while its enhanced colours outperform rival HDR projectors, Fury Road’s deserts can look a little radioactive, and its skin tones can look slightly orange. When watching Netflix-produced shows like Chef’s Table and Stranger Things, we were shocked at the intensity with which it was able to deliver deep greens and sharp reds, transporting you to each show’s universe like a 100-inch window in your living room.
We have a good set of calibration controls present with the TK800 and should be able to correct the greyscale and colour gamut for HD viewing to D65 and Rec. Again for the majority of users this is not an issue at all with such a machine, but if you are looking for accuracy – and the marketing states the projector does aim to cover Rec.That, coupled with the TK800’s prodigious output, helps create a solid image when the lights are on.