BenQ PB7220
Mar 1, 2004 12:00 PM,
By Jeff Sauer
BenQ PB7220
BenQ is probably better known for its LCD monitor business than for projectors and other large-screen display products. In fact, with a name that’s only two years old (the company was originally called Acer Multimedia), BenQ is the second-largest manufacturer of LCD monitors in the world. That gives the company both solid name recognition and a strong resale infrastructure. It also gives BenQ a significant opportunity to extend its brand to include large-panel LCDs, plasmas, and projectors. One of BenQ’s latest business projectors is the PB7220.The PB7220 sits right about in the middle of BenQ’s surprisingly broad projector line, which has grown from just a single home-theater projector to more than a dozen models in just over a year. These now range from tiny travel projectors to larger and brighter conference room units. At just less than 6 pounds, the PB7220 is small enough to carry and, at almost 2500 lumens, bright enough for regular conference and boardroom use.THE BASICSNot surprisingly, given BenQ’s vast industrial design experience, the PB7220 is housed in a handsome two-tone, magnesium alloy chassis of silver with black details. Manual focus and zoom rings for the recessed lens housing are easily accessible through a cutout in the top of the unit, and an elastic string tethers the lens cap to the projector so it never gets lost.Rather than four individual buttons, the four menu-navigation arrows on the unit’s top are actually the four ends of a single cross-shaped button. That will help you find them in a dark room should you need to do so. Four other dedicated unit-top buttons are Power, Source, Auto (adjust), and Blank (or “mute” video). The accompanying remote, on the other hand, has several direct controls, including those for keystone correction, wireless mouse functionality, aspect ratio, and for size, position, and source (S-video, composite, autosensing) control of a Picture-in-Picture (PiP) feature.While those dedicated remote buttons are helpful, drilling down into the on-screen menus offers several advanced features and controls. For example, though the remote lets you scroll through PiP size presets, BenQ offers even greater PiP control through the menus, including controls for exact PiP position and size, and PiP brightness, color, tint, sharpness, and contrast. There is also thorough general color and color temperature color, the ability to save keystone settings, an economy lamp mode for reduced light output and power usage, and full control of horizontal/vertical position, size, and phase adjustment.Somewhat awkwardly, I did have to use those image size and position controls to display a simple Windows screen properly from a fairly new notebook computer. The PB7220 initially shifted the desktop to cut off about one-third of the Windows XP Start button. That didn’t happen with other test computer feeds, but it raises questions about the PB7220’s automatic sync capabilities. On the other hand, the PB7220 had little trouble automatically recognizing a variety of inputs when cables were plugged in, though it scrolled a little slowly through each of the possibilities. In fact, unlike many projectors that accept component video input through a conversion cable to the 15-pin RGB port, BenQ’s model did not have to be told to switch from RGB to YPrPb.The PB7220 includes two 15-pin RGB ports, the second doubling as component video or HDTV input (conversation cable is an option). There are also ports for composite video, S-video, USB, and 8-pin RS-232 control. There’s just a single ⅛-inch audio input port for all the video inputs and a single 2W built-in speaker, so clearly BenQ expects users to send audio through some other external system or through that of a multimedia notebook computer.BenQ has chosen a short-throw lens for the PB7220, allowing the unit to fill a full screen when positioned 20 to 30 percent closer to the screen than today’s average projector. For example, most projectors fill a 60-inch diagonal from between 95 to 105 inches in a wide zoom position, but the PB7220 throws the same size image from just 78 inches. That’s particularly helpful, of course, in tight quarters.BenQ has also chosen Texas Instruments’ 0.7-inch, 12-degree double data rate (DDR) DMD, a native XGA (1024 by 768) digital light processing (DLP) chip that yields familiar DLP image sharpness. A standard four-segment color wheel (white, red, green, blue) helps the PB7220 achieve a good balance of brightness and color for data presentations. Texas Instruments and its partners use that white section to boost brightness and contrast ratio (cynically, for marketing purposes), and it means that color accuracy takes a back seat. Saturated colors are usually fine, and that’s the case with the PB7220. But pastels and especially darker colors get muddy and less distinct. For example, skin tones from the PB7220 lean toward red and aren’t as subtle as I’d like.PERFORMANCEBenQ claims a brightness specification of 2500 lumens, and at its peak the PB7220 does better than that. I measured just over 2900 lumens in the lower-center bright spot. However, a nine-point measure of ANSI brightness average dropped my lumen measurement down to 2178 ANSI lumens. That’s almost within a 10 percent margin of error of the manufacturer’s claim and, regrettable as it may sound, well within industry norms for brightness claims.The greater problem, indeed the Achilles heel of the PB7220, is between those peak and average measurements. The top corners of the picture are significantly dimmer than the unit’s bright spot, bringing that average down considerably and giving the PB7220 a brightness uniformity of just 59 percent. On the one hand, many of the projectors I’ve tested lately — particularly smaller units that try to squeeze more lumens out of smaller light engines — tend to put brightness ahead of uniformity. However, 59 percent uniformity is low by any measure. I also measured a full-on/full-off contrast ratio of 972:1, and that’s about half of BenQ’s claim of 2000:1. However, that full-on/off statistic is really a Texas Instruments marketing focus devoid of much real-world value. More significantly, I measured an ANSI checkerboard contrast ratio of an impressive 313:1.BRIGHT FOR THE BUCKBenQ has dropped the suggested list price for the PB7220 to $3,695 to match the rapid changes in industry pricing over the last few months. On the street, you’re likely to find the unit available for about $2,500 to $2,700, and that’s not a bad price if you’re paying by the lumen. If you need brightness, you may be willing to overlook the weaker brightness uniformity. There are now XGA projectors available for less than $2,000 (and SVGA ones for less than $1,000) but not with the brightness of the PB7220. As a price-per-lumen proposition, the PB7220 is a good choice.SPECIFICATIONSBrightness 2500 ANSI lumensContrast 2000:1 full on/offNative Resolution XGA (1024 × 768)Configuration 0.7″ 12 degrees DDR DMDLight Source 250W UHP lamp (rated 2,000 hours)Lens Manual focus, F= 2.6-3.1, f=23-27.6 mmZoom 1.2:1Projection Distance 2.6-32.8 feetScreen Size 22-300 diagonal inchesThrow Ratio 60″ at 6.6 feetKeystone ± 20 degrees verticalSpeakers 2W monoDimensions (H × W × D) 3.2 × 10.2 × 8.4 inchesWeight 5.6 lb.PRODUCT SUMMARYCompany: BenQ; www.benq.comProduct: PB7220Pros: Nice design, thorough on-screen menus. Good ANSI checkerboard contrast ratio.Cons: Poor brightness uniformity.Applications: Conference rooms and boardrooms.Price: $3,695
