Review: BenQ TK705STi 4K Projector
Home cinema projectors are all over the map in terms of price and performance. It’s often the case that you get what you pay for. High-end projectors that mimic what you see at the local cineplex can cost upwards of $6,000. On the lower end, you could easily pay less than $1,000 for a home projector, but you may sacrifice brightness, contrast, and color quality. Many of our favorite projectors sit somewhere in the middle in terms of price and quality. That is certainly true of the BenQ TK705STi short-throw projector.
The main cost-justifying reason to consider buying this 4K projector appeals to gamers, who will appreciate its low-latency performance and larger screen size. Once you see James Bond on a 12.5-foot screen while playing 007 First Light on Xbox, you’ll wonder why you didn’t make the upgrade sooner. Being a short-throw projector, it’s also nice to be able to operate the TK705STi in just about any room in your home. You can position it a few feet from a wall or across the room, allowing for great flexibility.
That said, the TK705STi is not for everyone. Movies and TV shows didn’t look that impressive using this projector—certainly not in comparison to the top-rated Leica Cine Play 1, which costs about twice the price. I also dealt with a few glitches with auto-keystoning; once I figured out how to manually adjust the screen, this was fine but still a pain.
Mainly, though, I recommend the TK705STi for gamers who don’t need high-end home-cinema picture quality, since the overall performance of this projector is just average.
Living the Short-Throw Dream
The BenQ TK705STi is a short-throw projector that’s designed to sit close to the wall. The TK705STi has a throw ratio of .8:1, which means you divide the wall size by the short-throw percentage. To get a 10-foot-wide image, for example, you’d place the projector about 8 feet away, which is exactly what I did in my windowless test area. (Later, in a brightly lit family room with big windows, I increased the screen size to 12 feet wide by placing the projector 10 feet from a wall.)
After I put the projector in its spot, I noticed its legs were just a bit shaky. Not wobbly, but lacking the stability I would prefer for a midrange projector like this one. If I bumped the table, the projector would jostle around quite easily and even start auto-keystoning again—a feature I found to be finicky at best, often mapping incorrectly to the wall or screen. (For what it’s worth, BenQ reps said this is not normal and could have been related to my projector screen.)
On the plus side, I liked how easy it was to find the power button on the side of the projector, and it was also a breeze to adjust the digital zoom. The cloth fabric on the front of this all-silver, cube-shaped projector is a nice touch.
The TK705STi has two HDMI ports, one USB 2.0 port, and one USB-C port, which you can use for attaching a thumb drive or a hard drive. There’s a 3.5-millimeter headphone jack, but no digital optical port or Ethernet port. It supports fast-operating Wi-Fi 6, but not a 120-Hz refresh rate or a variable refresh rate (VRR). However, it can switch to a low-latency gaming mode, disabling extra image-processing, which could cause slowdowns. For color gamut, the TK705STi doesn’t try to compete with the big guns. This model hits 98 percent of the older Rec. 709 standard, but there’s no data on the current BT.2020 scale.
Its remote is fine but not remarkable. All buttons are in logical spots, with an Input button that’s easy to find, a centered Home button you can locate even in the dark, and configuration buttons for picture and projector setup.
I like when projectors use Google TV, because I know the UI will be intuitive. While setting up the TK705STi was indeed easy, there’s a known Google TV glitch where the QR code doesn’t work, so I had to manually enter my Google login information. Aside from that hiccup, I was able to quickly load apps and was ready to roll in about 10 minutes.
Loading Up the Games First
First and foremost, this projector is for a gamer, with its low-latency gaming mode (which the TK705STi calls ALLM for Auto Low Latency Mode). Whether I connected a gaming laptop or an Xbox Series X, I found the responsiveness to be stellar.
I noticed the gaming performance boost while playing Forza Horizon 6 on Xbox and PC. My controller nudges felt immediate, and the entire game flowed with precision, as if I were on a gaming laptop screen instead. This was even true when I cranked up the graphics settings and played at a 10-foot size.
In HDR gaming mode, colors were crisp and vivid (albeit at a lower contrast than on a higher-end cinema projector), making the cars and wintry mountains in Japan look more realistic. The built-in speakers were not that impressive, though, compared to a cinema model like the Hisense XR10. During some epic battles in the game Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II on Xbox, the rain sounded like sandpaper, and it was hard to hear the background music. I solved that problem by connecting to an AV receiver and using floor-standing speakers.
I was sold on the gaming aspects of this Benq even after accepting that the picture quality would never match the high-end projectors I’ve tested, including the Xgimi Titan Noir Max.
Movies, Benchmarks, and Everything Else
Most of the movies and TV shows I watched on the TK705STi didn’t look outstanding. Hoppers on Disney+ looked a bit flat, and the reds were slightly dull compared to the amazing color fidelity on a projector like the Leica Cine Play 1.
Contrast was also lacking. The movies I used to test dark scenes (Awake on Netflix, The Creator on the Fandango at Home app, and Tron: Ares on Disney+) all looked too dark. Raising the brightness level only grayed out the movies, but didn’t add detail. By comparison, when watching Tron on the Hisense XR10, you can see subtle gray and white shadow details on the main characters’ uniforms. Not so much here.
Daytime viewing was not outstanding. Movies and shows looked washed out at best, or not even that viewable in a few cases. I watched an old ’90s thriller called No Mercy on Tubi and, during some bright daytime scenes in a swamp, could not make out the faces on the screen.
Casting to the screen worked fine after one failed attempt using HBO Max. The Hulu app via my iPad 12.9 also worked, but once again revealed some contrast and brightness issues. I watched the show The Bear, and several scenes looked too dark.
I watched several World Cup matches on YouTube TV in 4K, and several looked clear and bright; however, the colors still looked a bit flat. A news broadcast had a similar look—clear and crisp, but lacking an abundance of color.
Taken together, the BenQ TK705STi’s capabilities put it firmly in a midrange category—and that’s not necessarily a terrible thing. At this price, I like the design, and Google TV is easy to use. Setup was painless and quick for the most part, even if the auto-keystoning didn’t always work. The gaming performance was consistently smooth and responsive. And for the right person, this makes up for its merely adequate showing for movies and shows.
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