BenQ PE5120 review

We almost dropped this projector in shock when we saw the price. It's rare to find a projector for less than £500 and even rarer to find one this cheap that performs decently.

The unit itself is tiny and perfectly formed, and the supplied backlit remote ties in well with the easy-to-use menu system. The widescreen chip is 854x480, which offers a 2,000:1 contrast ratio. It also boasts a nice, bright output of 1,100 lumens, which is lower than many rivals but still more than enough for your film-viewing pleasure.

Once powered up, it's a touch noisier than some others but still comfortable on the ears. We were pleased to see vibrant colours and good detail when used with films. The PE5120 uses a widescreen chip to help get the best film performance. However, if you feed the signal from your Mac, the result simply isn't as good, because scaling the resolution gives a slightly blurred look that takes the edge off desktop work and games. Plus this unit only runs a 2x colour wheel - giving a noticeable 'rainbow' effect.

The film quality is at a level that makes the price tag exceptionally tempting, coming in at a couple of hundred pounds less than the rest. And that can't be underestimated.

Despite our reservations about the performance with input from the Mac, not to mention the use of the 2x colour wheel, for a DLP projector colours are vibrant. There's also a slight problem with bright whites and colour oversaturating a little, but for film use the end results are very respectable.