HARDWARE REVIEW

BenQ W1090 Home Projector Review

by Luke Walsh, February 9th, 2017

Home cinema projectors are becoming a much more popular choice as the main living room device to watch movies, play video games and catch up on Netflix. The BenQ W1090 home cinema projector is being aimed at people who want but for around £630 it falls short compared to its competitors.

The design on the W1090 is all white in slightly triangular curved frame which looks quite nice when others can be ‘blocky’. On the front you have the lens, with the fan on the right hand side. The top consists of the power button and the other buttons to control the unit if you decide to not use or lose the remote. On the back you’ll find; 2x HDMI inputs, 1x HDMI with MHL 2.0, Composite, 3.5mm jack input, 1x USB type A and 1 RS232.

You’ll find most connections needed but I always like to find a 3.5mm jack, as it is the easiest way to upgrade the speakers from the ones you have built in. That’s not to say the built in ones are bad, in fact they were actually pretty decent. When watching a movie or playing a video game they were loud enough you did not need to max them out, with noise distortion not being an issue. Plugging in a small pair of powered speakers though or an even more powerful system is still best, as you get better audio quality as the built in driver is only 10w.

The ‘on paper’ specifications detail upto 1080p video quality with the lamp being able to output up to 2000 lumens which is almost as much as the Epson TW-5210 (2,200 lumens). The age the bulb will greatly vary on how you use the projector, but is meant to last a minimum of 3000 hours on max according to BenQ’s website. In Eco mode the bulb drops down to around 1500 lumens and is said to be able to keep the lamp healthy for about 4500 hours.

Lower budget projectors can be quite prone to having noise problems, cheaper components mean louder fans but with the W1090 I was surprised. Running on normal settings, the fan was only making around 34- 35dBA of noise and set to Eco mode it was quieter at around 32dBA. Although the noise levels were decent on ECO mode the TW-5210 is able to get much quieter reaching only 27dBA.

You can tell this projector has been aimed at those who are just entering the projection space with one of its “selling points” being able to obtain a massive 300″ image with it only needing to be 2.5 metres away from the wall. Now if you have space to allow your projector to be on a table in the centre of the room this is fine. However, most household rooms won’t be like this and will need to allow for some distance, this is where I had some problems.

The W1090 has manual zooming which allows, depending on the distance to the wall adjust the size of the picture but if you have a long but narrow room you’ll struggle. Having the projector at the back of the room like the other projector reviews, even on the maxed out setting on the manual zoom the image was too big for the wall. Getting the right sized projection for the size of the wall meant that I needed to prop up the projector about a third of the way down even there the image barely fitted.

Another issue was the lack of horizontal keystone correction, for a projector priced at £600+ this was a weird choice not to include. Not only did I need to bring the projector forwards, it also had to be dead centre of the room which is not always a choice users will have. Having the projector at an angle distorts the shape and there is no manual correction or anything in the menu able to correct it. There is vertical correction if you have the W1090 on the ceiling pointing down or on the table pointing up, but is very disappointing you need it smack dab centre for a equal picture. Other competitors on the market are able to offer horizontal and vertical keystone correction, so why BenQ haven’t is baffling.

After setting it all up, I wanted to see how the picture would perform by booting up Final Fantasy XV which had recently been released. Picture quality was pretty damn good, I was impressed with the sheer sharpness of Xbox One home screen and the title screen of FFXV. The W1090 might have some annoyances in setting it up but the picture I really could not complain too much about.

Light colours were nice and vibrant and the picture just really popped, the only thing it lacks was in the black department. This is an issue on many budget projectors and the W1090 is not different, it was not bad but it could have been a lot better. The darker areas of any picture which you can see quite easily in the FFXV title screen were just not that dark, more a dark grey than deep black. This is partially due to the contrast ratio only being 10:001 while others in the same price brand can be around 30:001.

Like all other projectors, the picture in the darkness was good but in artificial lighting it was washed out, not really anything noticeable than any others tested at the same price. It is useable in the artificial light but you will take away from the colours and even more so from the blacks, so I would not advise it. Finally, something I did enjoy was the backlight remote control, some projectors seem to forget they work best in the dark and it is always a bonus to be able to see what you are doing.

Ultimately the BenQ W1090 projector is by no means a bad projector, the colours are great and it gives a clear image. The main issue is with the extremely frustrating set up of needing to have it so specifically places to get a decent straight picture. You might be able to forgive it but having to pay £600 removes that forgiveness when projectors like the Epson TW-5210 are cheaper and offer a better depth of blacks, horizontal keystone correction and is quieter. If it was £400 I’d recommend it but for the price, there are better projectors out there which can offer more which is a shame because it is a nice little projector great for first timers.