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Input lag is the major curse for gamers. There’s little more frustrating to a gamer than when the vision just doesn’t respond fast enough to the controls. It can mean the difference between onscreen life or death, a lap record or second place or simply missing out on completing the level in time. With its class-leading 16ms response, the TK700 is amongst the fastest responding 4K projectors in its class. Now there is no excuse for not beating your rival to the draw. Prices valid in stores (all including VAT) until close of business on 28th November 2023. (Some of these web prices are cheaper than in-store, so please mention that you've seen these offers online.) Among the other notable features of the TK700 is 3D, which is actually very bright when triggered, though the projector does not offer any control to increase or decrease the 3D effect. Also, the TK700 includes BenQ's LumiExpert, which is useful for automatically adjusting perceived brightness by tweaking the gamma based on the ambient light in the room. This feature may prove useful if you place this projector in a multi-purpose room such as a living room that has a fair amount of ambient light that changes throughout the day or you like to watch with different levels of room lighting at different times. For full HD 3D, the TK700 supports DLP-Link glasses and offers a single 3D mode. I didn't notice any crosstalk in my tests and saw only a hint of 3D-related motion artifacts in scenes that tend to cause them. However, using two different DLP-Link glasses—including one from BenQ—I ran into a repeatable problem that I've never seen before. At specific points in one of our test clips, the colors first changed suddenly and then the glasses lost sync with the left-right alternation of frames. BenQ says it has not been able to replicate the issue, and that if it were to show up, it would be covered under the projector's warranty. The color temperature settings that were most accurate out of the box were actually Native and Cool, which provided a tighter grayscale until about 50% stimuli (brightness) and then starts to push blue through the remainder of the grayscale as it gets brighter. The Normal and Warm color temperature settings pushed red throughout the entire grayscale range. Measurements also revealed that Native color temperature put colors within the Rec.709 color space closer to being on target as well.
For home entertainment, and for gamers who want to move up to a big-screen 4K HDR image and the shortest input lags available, the BenQ TK700 can be a solid entry-level projector. If rainbow artifacts are an issue for you, however, be sure to consider the Optoma UHD35 instead, which offers slightly higher brightness along with essentially the same input lag times, and did a better job of avoiding showing the red-green-blue flashes in our tests. The second is that the high brightness levels make the TK700 usable in daytime. Sure, you lose some contrast, making it hard to make much out in the murkier dungeons of Elden Ring, but otherwise all is fine. What’s more, the projector is still usable in the Smart Eco setting, which doubles the Normal lamp life of 4,000 hours without reducing the brightness levels to a daft extent. SDR Viewing. I decided to watch Skyfall in 1080p and the presentation was good. In the scene where Bond meets Q in the Museum the flesh tones looked mostly right—not the best that I've seen, but very good. All the detail I was expecting to see was there as well, such as those in the design on the wallpaper behind them, the stripes in Q's white shirt, etc. Everything resolved perfectly. The only thing that was a little off was the color and flesh tones. It wasn't bad, but it was missing just a tad bit of saturation that I know should be there in Q's face.The TK700 utilizes a lamp based light source and Texas Instruments 0.47-inch DLP chip. Any single chip DLP projector has the potential for showing rainbow effects, but fortunately, during my time with the projector, I did not experience any in any content that I viewed. Of course, 4K projectors that use the 0.47-inch DLP DMD are not true native 4K. They actually utilize 4-way XPR (Expanded Pixel Resolution) pixel shift at 240Hz to take the DMD's native 1920x1080 resolution up to 8.3 million pixels on screen. The projector does accept a 3840x2160 resolution signal and it's actually quite sharp, to the point where only those with the keenest eyes would likely be able to see it is not native 4K. For viewing 1080p SDR movies and video, Game mode delivered nicely saturated color and acceptable color accuracy. When viewing in a dark room, it delivered good contrast and a sense of three-dimensionality in both dark scenes and more brightly lit scenes, along with almost all of the detail I know to look for in the shadows. It also maintained the dramatic visual impact that the dark scenes were designed to deliver.
HDR calibration for grayscale had similar results. Where HDR calibration will suffer though is in the CMS due to being limited to Rec.709 color space. There aren’t any specific gaming modes here, but the BenQ W1800 can run PC and console games at 1080p with a refresh rate of 120Hz or 240Hz. And while it’s no match for the UHD38 or TK700 on this ground, it’s still great for a spot of Destiny 2 or Elden Ring when you’ve finished watching films. You will need an external sound system, though. While the 5W internal speaker can get loud enough for casual viewing, the sound’s a little too flat and boxy for anything more. In HDR, changing Lamp Mode from Normal to ECO resulted in a 30% reduction of light output in any HDR picture modes, while Smart ECO resulted in a 27% reduction in light output, and Lamp Save resulted in 38% light reduction. BenQ TK700 ANSI Lumens Mode It can’t be stressed enough, though, that these response times on a projector are very novel indeed, and given this is a projector with native 4K you’re not going to find better than this performance at the moment. All but a small number of inveterate competitive gamers (or dyed in the wool pedants) are going to notice any input lag. Basically, you’re probably not going to get better performance than this. Designed for the fastest gaming response, the BenQ TK700 brings cinematic gaming, without compromise.
The TK700 comes with a wide range of preset modes to make the most of your projector. Featuring 3D, Bright, Cinema, Game, HDR, HDR Game, HDR10, HLG, Living Room and Sport preset modes with unique settings for each mode, it’s easy to tailor the projector to your ideal setting. User picture mode uncalibrated is 99.6% as bright as Bright picture mode and HDR10 picture mode is 99.2% as bright.
Users who are looking for an affordable, well-performing projector capable of taking advantage of the newest current-generation gaming consoles but have always been on the fence about projection gaming will be glad to know that this is a very suitable solution—assuming you can work around or live with some of the TK700's limitations. This short-throw projector requires at least two metres between the projector and the wall to reach the 100-inch mark, and while the TK700STi advertises a 100-inch maximum, we found that it could retain a perfectly viewable picture at 120-inches on the wall. In concert with its 3,000 lumens brightness – which is about as bright as you’ll want to get in a home environment – the 4K display is remarkably crisp and vibrant, thanks to its HDR10 support.
Gaming. I'll start with gaming since it is this projector's primary focus. All gaming was done using BenQ's Game mode with Fast Mode on and Details Adjustment on Low as I found that provided the best balance. During my time with the TK700 I played several games across multiple genres. I started with the Xbox Series X and Halo Infinite. Immediately upon just going into the Series X dashboard I was able to feel the responsiveness. With the Series X I had it set to output at 4K/60Hz, and while in game it felt great. It wasn't as fast as, say, a dedicated gaming monitor or a something like an OLED, but it was pretty good—to the point that I didn't have to change anything with how I play normally to adjust. The HDR added a great sense of depth and highlights. I didn't feel like I was missing anything and being able to play with that level of responsiveness at 100 inches was a real treat. Rivals have the W1800 beaten when it comes to HDR, brightness and contrast, then, but you’ll struggle to find another 4K projector at this price that delivers a more natural, cinematic image. Moving the Lamp Mode from Normal to ECO resulted in a 33% reduction of light output in any picture mode, while Smart ECO resulted in a 33% reduction in light output, and Lamp Save resulted in 33% light reduction while in SDR. It’s the colours that swing it for the W1800, though. Not only did this projector slightly exceed Rec.709 in testing but colour accuracy is fantastic by projector standards, with an average Delta E of 2.89. Its only serious rival here is the Viewsonic X10-4K and that’s slightly more expensive.
Calibrated image settings from any third-party do not account for the significant potential for sample-to-sample variation, nor the different screen sizes and materials, lighting, lamp usage, or other environmental factors that can affect image quality. Projectors should always be calibrated in the user's own space and tuned for the expected viewing conditions. However, the settings provided here may be a helpful starting point for some. Always record your current settings before making adjustments so you can return to them as desired. Refer to the Performance section for some context for each calibration. SDR
The BenQ TK700 is a great all-rounder that shines for big-screen gaming
Additionally, the TK700 includes one 5W chamber speaker that utilizes treVolo and Bongiovi DPS technology, which optimizes the audio signal in an attempt to add depth and immersion to the sound. This is available in the included Cinema, Music, Game, Sports, and User presets. I found the speaker suitable for some content such as watching YouTube or something of the like, however it was not really suitable for movies and an external audio solution is highly recommended such as a soundbar or AVR and speakers. The brightness limitation means the BenQ isn’t the best projector for use in brighter rooms. It is usable with some ambient light but it’s undoubtedly at its best in a darkened room. But there’s more to picture quality than brightness, as I’ll get to in a minute. For HDR, the TK700 supports both HDR10 and HLG. When using the HDR10 discs in our 4K viewing tests, it offered two color mode choices: HDR10 and HDR Game. For my tests, I chose HDR10 for its obviously better contrast. Colors were acceptably accurate, and shadow detail held nicely. I didn't notice any obvious improvement in picture quality compared with viewing the same scenes in their SDR versions, but the image quality was at least as good with HDR, which isn't true for all projectors. As with most models that have HDR support, the TK700 offers a setting—labeled HDR Brightness in this case— which you'll need to adjust for your room brightness, and possibly from one video source to the next, to find the best setting. The next game I wanted to try was Gran Turismo 7 on PlayStation 5. This game also required a small amount of time to adjust to the difference in latency, though it took less time than with King of Fighters. Unfortunately, GT7 does not have a 120fps mode. While running the game in its 4K/60 HDR mode I found that my breaking was slightly off when going around corners. Outside of that everything else virtually felt the same as when played on my OLED. This was another game that was displayed beautifully on the projector with rich and vibrant colors, great HDR, and pure immersion. Another treat playing at 100 inches in HDR. Users who would calibrate will be glad to know you can get a fairly accurate picture with the controls given. The controls provided within the projector are your standard fare of 2-point grayscale controls and CMS (color management system) to adjust RGBCMY primary and secondary color points. These same controls are available in HDR picture modes as well. Grayscale can be dialed in nicely, though given the gamut specification, color can't be dialed in to fully cover the Rec.709 color space, and there's no support for WCG (wide color gamut) for HDR.
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