Home cinema projectors vary widely in both price and performance. It is often the case that you get what you pay for. High-end projectors that replicate the cinematic experience can cost upwards of $6,000. On the lower end, you can easily find a room projector for under $1,000, 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 key selling point for this 4K projector appeals to gamers, who will appreciate its low-latency performance and larger screen size. When you watch James Bond on a 12.5-foot screen while playing 007 First Light on Xbox, you will wonder why you did not make the upgrade sooner. Being a short-throw projector, it is also nice to be able to use the TK705STi in almost any room in your home. You can place it a few feet from a wall or across the room, offering great flexibility.
That said, the TK705STi is not for everyone. Movies and TV shows did not look that impressive using this projector — certainly not compared to the top-rated Leica Cine Play 1, which costs about twice the price. I also dealt with a few system quirks with auto-keystoning; once I figured out how to manually adjust the screen, this was fine but still an annoyance.
Overall, I recommend the TK705STi for gamers who do not need high-end home-cinema image quality, as the overall performance of this projector is decently average.
Living the Short-Throw Dream
The BenQ TK705STi is a short-throw projector designed to sit close to the wall. The TK705STi has a throw ratio of .8:1, meaning you divide the wall size by the short-throw ratio. To get a 10-foot-wide image, for instance, you would place the projector about 8 feet away, which is exactly what I did in my windowless test room. (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.)
When I set the projector in place, I noticed its legs were a bit shaky. Not wobbly, but lacking the stability I would expect for a midrange projector like this one. If I bumped the desk, the projector would jostle around fairly easily and even trigger auto-keystoning again — a feature I found to be finicky at best, often mapping incorrectly to the wall or screen. (For what it is worth, BenQ representatives said this is not typical and may have been related to my projector screen.)
