I am very curious to see of the HT5550 bests the HC4010 in black level performance. Then there are the Epson HC4010 and PC4050 – costly less, more flexibility, just as 4K capable but a 1080p pixel shifter with 3LCD, so not quite as sharp (but excellent image processing might fool you). That LG is a laser projector, but it is strictly home entertainment, it cannot match the BenQ in terms of color and its black levels are pure entry level. The HT5550 does have some real competition, and some of it looks like this: For a little more, you can choose an LG HU80KA. True BenQ has HT projectors up near $10,000 list, but the HT5550 will be their volume projector for those looking for a serious projector with good black level performance. Motion is very smooth.Īrt’s bottom line: BenQ, welcome back to the “serious, but affordable” home theater space. No 3:2 pulldown here through a bit of ingenuity on BenQ’s engineering team. It also carries on the HT3550 tradition of natively handling 24hz content. The result is impressive and among the sharpest, I’ve seen from these 1080p ‘shifters’. This chip has a native 1920×1080 micromirror array that uses a 1080×4 ‘wobulation’ to put a 4K image with 8.3 million uniquely represented pixels on the screen. This eliminates the dreaded gray border of last year’s. Definitely not practical to go widescreen. Now that might work if you are 6 foot 6 inches and have this projector mounted to an 8-foot ceiling, but, at 5 foot 8 inches tall, I need a step ladder to reach the controls of my ceiling mounted projectors (8-foot ceiling). To switch back and forth from Cinemascope to HDTV’s 16:9, you would have to get up, manually adjust the zoom, manually adjust the vertical lens shift (and maybe refocus). This is a projector likely to be ceiling mounted, and that means no option to own/use a Cinemascope “widescreen” (like I have in my theater). The other limitation is that the lens and shift are manual, not zoom. A couple of those do cost less than the HT5550, but most cost from a little to a lot more expensive. Consider: The 1.6:1 manual zoom lens provides a lot of placement range, but, it is very unlikely that you will be able to place the BenQ far enough back to sit high on a rear shelf, a feat many 3LCD and LCoS projectors have no trouble doing because o 2.0:1 or greater zoom lenses. There won’t be many setups the HT5550 won’t be able to accommodate.Īrt’s note: There are some limitations in terms of placement, despite offering far more flexibility than any other 4K capable DLP projector near the price. ![]() It has a generous 1.36 ~ 2.18 throw ratio, which works out to a 1.6x zoom, and a near-best-in-DLP-class 60% +/- vertical and +/- 23% horizontal lens shift. ![]() The BenQ HT5550’s placement flexibility is very good. After taking delivery of all that 4K content, then spending a fair amount of time with the HT5550, I’m sad to report that the future is bleak on my wallet as it relates to the money I spend on movies…simply because HDR is even better on the BenQ HT5550.Ĭompared to its little brother, the HT3550, the HT5550 offers a larger and more refined black chassis (handsome), an upgraded 11-element 6-group lens (focus uniformity!), and an upgraded RGBRGB color wheel that sports their ‘Precision Pure-Color Coating’. ![]() As a result, I’ve spent hundreds since then on updating my libraries to 4K HDR. This was due in large part to it’s auto-tone-mapping, or in other words, “making HDR look good on any scene”. I called it the “among the best projectors I’ve seen at handling 4K HDR material”. While I enjoyed 4K HDR on last year’s TK800 (among other models) because of its brute force handling of HDR with high brightness, the HT3550’s handling of HDR actually made me turn into a 4K HDR snob. Take it away, Scott:Ī little background: I recently reviewed the BenQ HT3550 and I gave that model very high marks on its ability to create a bright and vibrant HDR image. I’ll let Scott tell you his impressions with me throwing in my two cents, to add a second perspective – not from reviewing the HT5550, but from having seen it previously. In the meantime, I asked for Scott’s feedback since he’s been playing with his for a bit. We will be publishing our full HT5550 review in the upcoming two weeks or so.
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