I live in a typical DDA LIG flat. The living room TV is almost always occupied, mostly playing regional shows, news, or devotional content. If I wanted to watch something else, I had to rely on my laptop. It works, but it never feels as immersive as watching it on a big screen. That got me thinking: what if I could get a bigger screen for my bedroom? A TV was the obvious option, but then another question came up: what if I try a projector instead? There may be many of you in the same or a similar situation, considering or curious about a projector. Well, I spent time researching the category and also spoke with Rajeev Singh, Managing Director at BenQ.
Around the same time, the company sent over the BenQ TK705STi, a premium 4K HDR short-throw projector priced at Rs 2,25,000. This is not an impulse buy for most people. But it represents what a high-end projector experience looks like today. So even if you are exploring cheaper options, this should give you a benchmark.
The BenQ projector came in for a few weeks, and here’s my experience with it. Read on to find out if it made sense for me.
The BenQ TK705STi has a compact boxy cube form factor with 229.2 x 168.2 x 249.7 mm dimensions. It is made of a premium polycarbonate shell that looks and feels like metal. Also, possibly because of the plastic build, the thing weighs only 3.8 kg and can be moved between rooms without much effort. The power adapter is bulky and one more thing to carry along with the main machine.
The projector has built-in stands on top and bottom. On the base, there are three legs which can be rotated to lengthen their height. If you take them out completely, you can use the holes to mount it on a ceiling. You’ll have to buy the ceiling mount separately. Neat! Meanwhile, to eject the top stand, you have to hold the projector upside down and press the oblong button on the back of the projector. At first, I didn’t understand that these were cleverly stashed in. I followed BenQ’s guides on YouTube to know how they work. Well, you can also refer to the videos on the company’s official channel in case you have any doubts.
Prop it opposite a vacant wall or screen, connect it to a power source and use the remote to turn it on and manage the rest of the controls. The light and slim black controller resembles TV remotes. It has the buttons to control the projection’s zoom, orientation, volume, and navigation. You also get Google Assistant and hotkeys for streaming platforms like Netflix, YouTube, Prime Video and Live TV. BenQ also allows remote control via a smartphone app. More on that later.
On the left side of the projector, you get the basic controls to use the projector. On the back side, you will see pores for heat dissipation. This silver colour, metallic finish and pores give it a very Apple Mac Pro-like industrial design. It looks very upstate.
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On the back of the device, below the grille, there is a small cavity, where all of its ports are situated. You get the power port, 12V trigger, two HDMI 2.1 ports (one of which supports eARC 7.1 channel for soundbar), a 3.5mm audio output jack, USB-A 2.0 port for media sticks, and a USB-C (DP/PD charging at 30W) port. You can connect a laptop or handheld console like Nintendo Switch through this port for both display and charging purposes.
For wireless connectivity, it has dual-band Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) and Bluetooth 5.2. There is also support for Apple AirPlay and Google Cast, if you plan to cast something from your phone to this projection.
In regular use, I would just plug it in and play some content on YouTube or any of the streaming apps I subscribe to. The projector takes a few seconds to boot and reach the main Google TV homescreen. This is a familiar and simple UI. During the course of my usage, the projector received a 1.13GB system OTA update with some bug fixes and also a recent Android security patch.
I didn’t encounter any major bug or hiccup. The UI and navigation felt smooth. I found the MediaTek MT9676 quad-core chipset paired with 2GB of RAM and 16GB of internal storage, fine. On a high-end TV that costs this much, I would expect stronger hardware, but this is the most you get on projectors around the Rs 200,000 price range.
As soon as we start the BenQ projector, the orientation is corrected. You can manually adjust it, but the auto keystone correction is fine if the machine is set flat on a surface. You can use the built-in stands to better angle the projection. TK705STi uses a ToF sensor and a built-in camera to understand how far it is placed from the wall, and corrects the orientation and focus.
Once that’s all set, you can watch the content you like. Over long-term use, I didn’t hear any noise. If you touch around the ventilation area, you’d find it a little warm. So, it handles heat and noise quite well. So, you can comfortably watch movies, series or even play games at 4K 60 fps. The rated input lag is 5ms, which should feel instant and ideal for fast-paced games. You also get ALLM (Auto Low Latency Mode) to prioritise speed over graphics. Overall, this should be suitable for casual console gamers.
The images below give you an idea of the visual performance, but it looks better in person.
The BenQ TK705STi is branded as a 4K short-throw projector. It uses a 0.47-inch DLP projection chip/system and possibly pixel shifting to achieve a UHD (3840×2160) resolution. It can project up to a 150-inch image from a range of 2 meters (about 6 feet). You can zoom out for a smaller-sized image, too. At smaller sizes, the picture looks sharper. The larger sizes, like 100 or 150 inches, are immersive, but sharpness and contrast fall slightly short of a good 4K TV.
It supports brightness of 3,000 ANSI lumens, and in a well-lit room, projected on an off-white wall, the image looks washed out. It is visible, but for something worth enjoying, you’ll have to turn off the light in the room.
There is out-of-the-box support for 4K HDR playback on Netflix. You can watch HDR content on formats like HDR10, HDR10+ and HLG. The sharpness, details and contrast don’t match the 4K TV I have, but it is still respectable. I had a fine experience bingeing the last few episodes of Fallout S02 on Amazon Prime Video. This was an HDR10+ content, and the difference was noticeable. But in the underwater scene in Mission: Impossible- Final Reckoning, where Tom Cruise’s character tries to escape from the falling submarine, the colours look fine, but I could not clearly make out the edges of the submarine, and there were some instances of banding in a few areas.
I was watching all content in Cinema mode, which has close-to-natural colours, among the available presets. This BenQ projector features 98% coverage of the Rec 709 gamut, which is the standard colour space for most streaming content.
Like in TVs, here too, I had MEMC turned off as I don’t like the TV-serial-like smoothness in movies and other content I watch. But, if you like that, you can enable it in the expert display settings.
As for audio, the dual 8W speakers are loud enough for room use, and dialogue comes through clearly. The bass, however, is only average. If you have a soundbar, it is better to connect it via HDMI to get fuller, uncompressed audio. Like picture modes, here too, I preferred the Cinema mode.
The BenQ TK705STi projector is not trying to replace every TV. It is trying to solve a specific problem, getting a very large screen in a space where a traditional setup is not practical. Whether it makes sense depends on how you plan to use it.
If your situation is similar to mine, wherein you need a personal screen in the bedroom, but don’t want to dedicate a space for a TV, a projector starts to make sense. You can place the BenQ projector on a table, project a 100-inch screen from a short distance, and have a private viewing setup without installing a large TV on the wall. When you don’t want to use it, you can easily move it to a different spot.
While using the TK705STi, its Google TV interface, native Netflix support, and smooth day-to-day performance make it easy to use. You get 4K visuals with natural colours, good brightness for its class, and decent detail at typical viewing distances. It also works well if you are a console gamer. The low input lag and stable 4K 60 performance make gameplay feel responsive.
However, it is not built for competitive high refresh rate gaming. And for watching anything, the lighting conditions in the room matter a lot. For the best experience, you’ll need to use it in a dark environment, which may not be something you always prefer. Also, if you are used to a good 4K TV, you will notice that sharpness, contrast, and black levels are not at the same level, especially at larger screen sizes. The audio output from its built-in speaker may also leave you wanting more. Well, the ports choice is plenty to plug in accessories or auxiliary devices like a speaker.
So, the BenQ TK705STi is a loaded projector and the best you can get for the asking price of Rs 2,25,000. It is worth considering if you understand what it is designed for. It doesn’t beat a TV on all fronts. Instead, it offers a kind of convenience; a large, immersive screen in spaces where that would otherwise be difficult to achieve.
Keep reading Digit.in for similar review.
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