Home cinema projectors are all over the map in terms of price and performance. It’s often the case that you get what you pay for. High-end projectors that mimic what you see at the local cineplex can cost upwards of $6,000. On the lower end, you could easily pay less than $1,000 for a home projector, but you may sacrifice brightness, contrast, and color quality. Many of our favorite projectors sit somewhere in the middle in terms of price and quality. That is certainly true of the BenQ TK705STi short-throw projector.
The main cost-justifying reason to consider buying this 4K projector appeals to gamers, who will appreciate its low-latency performance and larger screen size. Once you see James Bond on a 12.5-foot screen while playing 007 First Light on Xbox, you’ll wonder why you didn’t make the upgrade sooner. Being a short-throw projector, it’s also nice to be able to operate the TK705STi in just about any room in your home. You can position it a few feet from a wall or across the room, allowing for great flexibility.
That said, the TK705STi is not for everyone. Movies and TV shows didn’t look that impressive using this projector—certainly not in comparison to the top-rated Leica Cine Play 1, which costs about twice the price. I also dealt with a few glitches with auto-keystoning; once I figured out how to manually adjust the screen, this was fine but still a pain.
Mainly, though, I recommend the TK705STi for gamers who don’t need high-end home-cinema picture quality, since the overall performance of this projector is just average.
Living the Short-Throw Dream
The BenQ TK705STi is a short-throw projector that’s designed to sit close to the wall. The TK705STi has a throw ratio of .8:1, which means you divide the wall size by the short-throw percentage. To get a 10-foot-wide image, for example, you’d place the projector about 8 feet away, which is exactly what I did in my windowless test area. (Later, in a brightly lit family room with big windows, I increased the screen size to 12 feet wide by placing the projector 10 feet from a wall.)
After I put the projector in its spot, I noticed its legs were just a bit shaky. Not wobbly, but lacking the stability I would prefer for a midrange projector like this one. If I bumped the table, the projector would jostle around quite easily and even start auto-keystoning again—a feature I found to be finicky at best, often mapping incorrectly to the wall or screen. (For what it’s worth, BenQ reps said this is not normal and could have been related to my projector screen.)
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