BenQ TK700 Review

The BenQ TK700 home entertainment projector has a lot in common with the BenQ TK700STi, but not as much as you might think from their similar names. The "ST" is BenQ's shorthand for short throw, while the "i" indicates smart TV features, but the difference isn't just that the TK700 has a different lens and comes without BenQ's Android TV dongle. It's also limited to a single game mode rather than multiple predefined settings, while adding a slightly higher maximum brightness and a lower cost: $1,499 list and widely available for less. Among the features it shares with the TK700STi are 4K (3,840-by-2,160-pixel) resolution, HDR support, and exceedingly short input lag times. Still, some picture quality issues, including rainbow artifacts and color accuracy problems, keep the TK700 from being a recommended entry-level 4K gaming projector.

As with all current 4K gaming projectors, the TK700 is built around a 1,920-by-1,080-pixel DLP chip that uses TI's fast-switch pixel shifting to put 3,840 by 2,160 pixels on the screen. Like most, it also uses a lamp, rather than a solid-state light source, and its eight-segment color wheel—red-green-blue-white-red-green-blue-white—includes white panels. The advantage of the white panels is that they boost brightness, so the image will stand up to higher levels of ambient light. The disadvantage is that they can also hurt color accuracy, which is an issue that crops up for the TK700, but just barely. (More on color accuracy later.)

The design emphasis on gaming shows up in the TK700's ratings for input lag. For any game where reaction times matter, a shorter lag equals quicker effective reaction time, and the TK700's ratings, as well as its results on our tests, are among the shortest lags available for projectors at this writing. (We'll come back to the results a little later when discussing Game mode.)

At 6.8 pounds and 4.3 by 12.2 by 9.6 inches (HWD) the TK700 is small and light enough to be easy to handle during setup as well as serve in the traditional role for gaming projectors that are portable enough to bring with you. Setup is standard, with a manual focus, manual 1.3x zoom, and two HDMI 2.0b ports on the back panel. There's also a USB Type-A port for power only, which lets you power an HDMI streaming dongle easily. (Note that the Source Menu showed 3 HDMI ports in my tests, but BenQ confirmed that there's no hidden third port.)

For audio, the onboard 5-watt chamber speaker delivered sufficiently high quality to be usable at high enough volume to fill a small to medium size room. For better quality, you can connect an external audio system using the 3.5mm audio out port or the one HDMI port that offers audio return.

The TK700 menus offer five predefined picture modes for SDR input, plus a user-defined mode. The brightest mode, Bright, showed an obvious green bias in my tests, as is the case with many projectors, making it best avoided unless you absolutely need the top brightness. None of the other modes qualified as having top-tier color accuracy for the price, however, and some hues were more accurate in one mode while other hues were more accurate in another. For my viewing tests, I picked Game mode, which came in a close second to Cinema mode for overall color accuracy, while offering noticeably better shadow detail and contrast.

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.

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.

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.

Regardless of your preferred mode for movies and video, Game mode is the obvious choice for gaming, both for the better shadow detail—the faster you can see what's happening in the shadows, the faster you can react to it—and for its state-of-the-art short lag times for projectors. My Bodnar meter timed the input lag for 4K 60Hz input at 17.0 milliseconds (ms). For 1080p, the lag was 16.9ms at 60Hz, 8.5ms at 120Hz, and 4.3ms at 240Hz.

Unfortunately, rainbow artifacts, which any single-chip projector can show, are a potential issue for the TK700. I saw them far more frequently throughout my SDR and HDR testing with the TK700 than is typical, and they were also unusually obvious. If you see these red-green-blue flashes easily and find them bothersome, be sure to buy the projector from a dealer that allows easy returns without a restocking fee, so you can test it out for yourself.

The 3,200 ANSI lumen rating for the TK700 is enough to fill a 260-inch diagonal, 1.0 gain 16:9 screen in a dark room, according to Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) recommendations. Using the lower brightness Game mode, the image was easily enough for a 90-inch 1.0-gain screen in a dark room, or an 80-inch screen in a family room at night with lights on. In the daytime with the same 80-inch screen and light streaming through windows, the image was watchable, but washed out.

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.

If you want a 4K gaming and home entertainment model at a step beyond entry level, consider the TK700STi or Optoma UHD55 as well. The TK700STi's short throw lens can deliver a bigger image in a small family room or other tight space, and along with its Android TV streaming features, it adds three game modes—for first-person shooters, sports, and role-playing games—to let you adjust both audio and video settings easily for each type. The UHD55 lacks the multiple game modes, but offers higher brightness than either BenQ model does, essentially the same lag time, fewer rainbow artifacts, and top-tier color accuracy for the price class.

The BenQ TK700 is an entry-level 4K gaming and home entertainment projector that delivers short input lag, but its frequent rainbow artifacts could prove annoying for many viewers.

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