Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “BenQ TK850i 4K HDR Projector with Android Smart TV”.
What’S up folks how’s it going, this watch hope you guys are all doing well and today we’re going to be talking about setting up your own home theater experience at home, and now we know home entertainment is bigger than ever, especially this year. In fact, warner brothers just announced that they’re going to be streaming all their 2021 films exclusively on hbo max at the same time, they’re going to come out in theaters. That might mean the death of mainstream cinema, as we know it, and perhaps more importantly, you’re going to have to step up your home entertainment setup. A couple of notches now.
Tvs are always great for convenience sake, but if you’re looking for a real sense of immersion, i think bigger is always better and that’s where projectors really shine and today we’re going to be taking a look at this thing. This is a native 4k resolution. Hdr certified dlp projector by benq. It’S called the tk850i now projectors for me, have always been super appealing in the sense that you can replicate a huge image for a relatively low price. But there’s always some challenges that you need to face in the sense of controlling your ambient lighting in your room.
You need a specific projector screen by the way, if you’re interested in making your own, we made a video several years back that still pretty relevant. If you want to make an affordable, large projector screen check that out in the description below or click on the card. The other challenges that you’re going to have to face with is a related to cable management. You’Re going to need to set up your audio and all your video equipment and then feed all those cables up through the ceiling.
If you have the projector ceiling mounted and it’s always been kind of a mess from a connectivity and setup perspective. However, in this era of smart tvs and wireless connectivity, most of those connectivity related issues has been pretty much solved with this benq hdmi smart android tv dongle. That actually has a specific compartment in the projector where it lives and gets powered through and coupled with this attachment, your projector now becomes a smart projector has full access to the android tv apps library, which is effectively the android.
A library has bluetooth wireless connectivity, so that means you can connect any kind of bluetooth speaker or headphones to the projector itself, which is super handy and convenient. In addition to the ac wi-fi connectivity, which allows you to stream 4k content through a multitude of popular streaming services, whether that’s amazon, video, prime disney plus youtube, you also have a live tv options. The only thing really missing is the native netflix app, but you can cast netflix content via your phone tablet or a laptop, since this thing also doubles as a full on chromecast that also allows screen mirroring and screen sharing as well. Now. What this all means is that, if you’re a fan of clean and simple setups, all you really need to do is power, the projector and that’s it for your setup.
You have access to all the 4k content. You pretty much need in terms of films and movies. If i were, you do want to connect some of your existing hardware to the projector. You do have a decent amount of connectivity options at the back, including two hdmi 2.0 connections.
You also have a usb 3.0 type, a connection. If you want to connect this thing to a external, hard drive or thumbstick, that you want to show some content on and that’ll play through the android, a tv system, there’s also some audio out options, including an analog 3.5 millimeter out, as well as a digital multi-channel Out, if you want to connect this thing to a avr receiver, on the other side, you have a mini a usb service connection as well as an rs232 connection. If you want to control and manipulate some of the settings of the projector of remotely, as well as a 12 volt trigger output via a 3.5 millimeter connection, which is typically used to control motorized projector screens, now, let’s talk about some of the core feature set and Specifications of the tk850i now this is a native, a dop imaging chip that has a resolution of 3840 by 2160. Now the projector is powered by a 245 watt lamp which, in normal brightness mode, will get you around 4000 hours in eco mode you’re.
Looking about 10 000 hours and it’s most efficient setting in its smart eco mode, you’re, looking at potentially 15 000 hours on the lamp itself, now the brightness difference between normal and the eco modes is fairly negligible. I would say you would only use normal mode in a situation where you can’t really control the ambient lighting in your room. But if you do have control over that or if you’re watching at nighttime, it’s perfectly usable and in fact the black levels are even better. In the eco mode, now back in the day, home theater projectors sounded like a hair dryer going off with their cooling system. But luckily the thermal management system on this benq is a lot more efficient and super quiet. It’S whisper quiet, even in normal mode, which is nice to see. Furthermore, benq has done a lot of work on the optics of this projector.
It’S a 10 element, 8 group lens array that has a zoom range of 1.3 times. The throw distance is actually relatively short from a ratio range of 1.13 to one point, one four: that means you can get a 120 inch screen size from a distance about 10 to 12 feet away. Now the lens actually has manual adjustments for both focus and zoom, and the cool thing about the focus is once you’ve set it. You can actually change the zoom distance and it’ll automatically mirror the settings so you’re, always in focus no matter what zoom setting you’re in. Furthermore, on top of having plus or minus 30 degrees of freedom on the automatic or manual keystone correction, you also have a 10 vertical lens shifting capability. So you can essentially get the perfect image onto your projector screen. No matter what vantage point you’re, setting up your projector at and in terms of the placement of the projector, you can either set it up on a flat horizontal surface like a table top.
You have three adjustable feet to get the right positioning for that. Based on your screen – and you have the standard three-point mounting points for a ceiling mount attachment now when it comes to actual image, quality and overall experience of using this projector in terms of sharpness, we know it’s going to be sharp. It has native 4k resolution over 8 million pixels to play with and if you don’t blow up the screen too much, it’s extremely sharp and as good as any tv will be at the specific size.
But when it comes to color rendition and dynamic range. There’S some interesting features on the lens itself: it has a dynamic iris which can fluctuate the opening of the aperture from f 1.8 to 2.4, essentially creating uh scenes a little bit darker retaining some of the highlight information coupled with the hdr10 and hybrid log, gamma certification. You have the ability to reproduce over a billion colors and cover the rec 709 color space up to 98 percent and when you’re using the projector in a normal mode, the lamp can output up to 3000 lumens, giving it a contrast.
Ratio of over 30 000 to 1 – and all this really means is that the image looks pretty darn amazing, especially if you’re viewing the right content. It’S obviously going to be super sharp and the colors are extremely dynamic, vivid and bright. It’S probably the best projector that i have encountered thus far.
Furthermore, in terms of watching sports or even gaming, you do have a motion enhancer built in which will interpolate frames in between sequences to get an enhanced kind of 120 hertz. Look to make the 60 frames per second, a video look a little bit, smoother less jittery and less blurry during fast motion now. Lastly, when it comes to the control interface, there’s actually two sets of remote controls that comes with this projector.
If you get the android tv dongle, one is for the projector itself. The other one is for the android tv dongle. Luckily, the android tv, a dongle controller, can pretty much do everything uh that the main projector remote control can do. Unfortunately, it does not have a backlight, which is probably his biggest downside, but you can also download the benq remote control app for the projector and do pretty much everything through the app itself, which is pretty nice and obviously backlit through the smartphone. Now one last thing that i didn’t mention is that this is also a 3d 1080p projector. You do need special glasses that don’t come with the projector in order to view 3d content.
I unfortunately don’t have those glasses and really don’t care about 3d at this point, but if you do care about 3d uh, you do have that feature built inside of this thing and beyond that, in terms of warranty, you have a three-year limited parts and labor coverage From benq, which is definitely not too bad. Furthermore, from an overall value perspective, if you’re gon na get the projector alone without the android tv dongle, it’s actually around the 1500 mark, which is definitely fairly competitive, and especially when you talk about uh tvs that are over a hundred inches with 4k hdr certification. That’S gon na be a well beyond anything in this kind of price bracket. So from a large uh 4k display perspective, i think projectors are still the best way to go, and certainly the best for replicating that home cinema.
Like experience on that guys, that’s really definitely check out the description down below for more details about the product. We’Ve talked about big thanks to thank you for supporting us and providing this projector for our video we’re going to be doing some more testing on it. So look forward to some future content with this thing, thanks again for watching give us a thumbs up. If you haven’t already and subscribe to the website, see you real soon in the next one.
Take care. .