With its predecessor TH681, BenQ had achieved considerable sales success. Now comes a new model with many detail improvements at an even lower price on the market. A worthy successor?
Pictures to taste
From a purely external point of view, a lot has been done with the model maintenance. The housing is now completely white and appears to be more subtle due to the gently rounded edges. For this purpose, the control panel on the device is more elegant and ergonomic thanks to a cursor ring. Yes, even the air outlet for cooling has been moved to the side, which means that less light can fall forward. As for the connections, the TH683 can have a second HDMI jack, which is MHL-capable, but does without the second VGA input, the monitor output and S-video. In addition, a USB-A socket supplies, for example, a Fire TV stick or Chromecast with up to 1.5 A current. If you then still the kinotauglich illuminated remote control into the hand, which replaced the fumbly cheapprinters of the TH681, one might think that the two models would have nothing at all.
Conclusion
However, there are clear parallels in the measurements of image performance, power consumption and noise development, but positive developments can also be observed here. At first sight, the consumption in the high lamp mode, Eco and standby is almost identical, but the improved SmartECO circuit saves costs and doubles the life of the lamp in the normal case 7000 hours. The bulb is automatically turned on only in bright scenes, whereas black (contrasts), heat (fan noise) and power consumption are shut down. However, the gamma curve bends in an unacceptable dynamic way for purists.
According to data sheet the light output increased to 3200 lumen, which we could not quite understand in the tests. Due to the lens identical to the predecessor (at least the zoom characteristics), however, more light penetrates better colors than comparable competitors. With Brillant Color, that is, using the white segment in the color wheel, almost 3000 real lumens are comprehensible, even if not in the cinema color temperature and with correspondingly light base colors.
You have to stand by BenQ that the picture modes are very well preselected and for the respective application really the optimum. Bright brings lots of light to presentations, "Football" shines the lawn in the richest green, and "cinema" improves black level and fan noise. Without BrillantColor and with ECO lamp, however, less than a third of the maximum brightness can be achieved on the screen. They then do so with a color match that is unique to the DLP price class. For the primary colors, green alone produces a shift, the secondary tones are accurate and the levels of all rich colors are in the correct ratio to white.
Even better: Our measurement of critical saturation levels shows surprisingly stable intermediate notes. A praise to the developers, which have given here a very neat factory adjustment. Those who calibrate themselves can achieve interesting compromises from brilliance and color fidelity. And with the predecessor via HDMI still no color, hue and sharpness adjustment possible progress. When playing in the YCrCb color model, all the settings fold up to the RGB balance - even the color space adjustment. In HDMI-RGB it is the other way round. In the visual comparison, the picture showed particularly sharp details, which also retained their hardness during movements. There is no expensive smoothing, of course, 24p is drawn cleanly without pulling down. In 3D mode, the color wheel goes up to full 144 revolutions.
Very easy for beginners, the installation assistant and the graphically successful simplified menus prove. Advanced users access classic menus that provide all parameters in good sort.
BenQ is a huge step in the hybrid class for optimized home cinema use.
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