Cinema Paradiso

No one tells you that staying true to the "filmmaker's intent" is an expensive affair. But BenQ has been chipping away at affordable accuracy for a while now. The W5800 is their top-of-the-line home cinema contender that is ready for a bout.

- Nishant Padhlar

₹6.5lacs/benq.com.

Whatever your requirement, BenQ seems to have a display solution for it, but home cinema purists are a bit snobbish about their brand’s pedigree. At the high end of the home cinema segment, BenQ has seldom ruled the roost, but their last attempt, the W5700 was one of our favourites for years. Finally, after all those years, BenQ has a worthy successor to it, the aptly titled W5800.

Retaining the formula of a centrally mounted projection lens flanked by vertical cooling slats, the W5800 is a fitting evolution to the erstwhile award winner. Sleeker, but just as purposeful looking, it maintains a modern aesthetic that would be appreciated whether mounted out in the open or behind a custom rack.

What makes us admittedly, fans of the brand is its consistency with out-of-the-box colour calibration, even for serious videophiles. The W5800 doesn’t dissapoint in that regard.

Much a do about lumens

With a single, 0.47in Texas Instruments DLP chip, it uses pixel shifting to achieve its “true 4K” resolution and a laser light source lights up the screen with 2600 ANSI lumens of brightness. This may not sound like a lot, but in a reasonably dark-ish room, it’s just about perfect.