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If you're after a quickdraw projector, there are few more versatile or as accurate for Blu-ray than the W2000. It's not perfect, but it is hugely impressive – and great value.
At £749 the BenQ W2000 is a good value beamer that's able to pump out excellent 1080p visuals.
We liked
It's not just that colours impress in their accuracy right across the board, it's that they do them right from the off without much tweaking.
With Cinema mode engaged, skin tones, vivid colours and subtle shades are handled very well. And while the built-in speaker is awesome (and great for occasional gaming), the W2000 in operation is also very quiet; I measured the W2000 at a whisper-standard 54 decibels.
Reasonably easy to set-up and compact enough to store in a cupboard or even in an AV rack for a quick home cinema stint, the W2000 is a projector created with practical considerations in mind.
We disliked
Although set-up proved reasonably straightforward, for a projector to be truly fit for a coffee table it needs horizontal lens shift levers. That allows wildly off-centre placement, which sadly isn't possible on the W2000 (though is on the step-up W3000 – here's hoping for a trickle-down for this feature in 2016).
Without that, and with BenQ's Wireless Full HD kit merely optional, it's hard to argue that the W2000 can be used anywhere, anytime.
However, the curvy and surprisingly small W2000's specs do cause us a bit of a conundrum. How can a projector designed for exactness of colour also be a quickdraw beamer ripe for projecting on to walls and ceilings?
For instance, tucked away in the menus of the W2000 is an option to tint the light output to project accurately on to pink, light yellow, light green or blue walls. Great – nice feature – but what shade of pink? Turquoise green or pea green?
It jars with the W2000's other USP, that Rec. 709 standard.
As an aside – but an important one – I did see some evidence of rainbow effect as I scanned my eyes across an otherwise exquisite-looking Gravity.
Verdict
The gold standard for an affordable projector with a quickdraw design? A modicum of DLP rainbow effect, some so-so black levels and a hint of film judder can't prevent the W2000 from offering one of the loveliest, most involving Blu-ray performances so far from an affordable quickdraw DLP projector.
A host of convenience features – most notably an excellent built-in speaker – help make it easy to live with, too.
But however outstanding its colours are, is Rec. 709 a bit behind the curve?
This particular international standard for HDTV colour reproduction dates back to the 1990s, and finds its pinnacle on Blu-ray. If we're talking about the future of colour, that belongs to the fit-for-4K HDR, but since most home cinema purists are watching Blu-ray quite happily, I think the W2000 is well-judged.
Though perhaps a little late …
