The BenQ TH685P ($799) is a great example of why specs don’t tell you everything you need to know about a projector. An updated version of the BenQ TH685, which it replaces in the BenQ line, has nearly identical specifications to its predecessor. They differ only in the absence of two VGA ports – for a PC input and a passthrough monitor – which are almost obsolete today. But while both offer the ability to accept 4K HDR input and convert it back to their native 1080p with HDR, the TH685P is the only one of the two that delivered a noticeably better picture with HDR input in our tests, a notable plus. in a gaming and home entertainment projector at this price.
A step beyond entry-level projectors
The TH685P is a step up from the TH585P, BenQ’s cheapest gaming and home entertainment projector. Like its entry-level model, the TH685P offers a lumen rating of 3,500 ANSI and is built around a single 1,920 by 1,200 pixel DLP chip. The nominal native resolution of 1080p is based on the projector illuminating a maximum of 1,920 by 1,080 pixels at a time, with the additional 120 rows of pixels used to add a vertical digital shift. Menu commands allow you to move the image slightly more than 5% up or down from its vertically centered position, eliminating the need to rely on vertical keystone adjustment, which can add artifacts to some images.
The chip is mated to a six-segment color wheel that adds white, yellow, and cyan panels to the three primary colors (red, green, and blue). The white panel is a standard addition for DLP projectors intended for use in ambient light, as it delivers a brighter image than you would get from an otherwise identical projector without it. The yellow and cyan panels help restore some of the color accuracy normally lost when using a white panel.
(Credit: BenQ)
The TH685P weighs 6.2 pounds and measures 4.3 by 12.3 by 8.9 inches (HWD), making it both light enough to carry for a gaming session and easy to handle, whether for permanent installation or is an ad hoc configuration. The 1.3x zoom and digital image shift also make setup easier by adding flexibility for positioning, and I found it much easier to control manual focus than with the TH685 to get a sharp image across the entire screen. Connection options are limited to the two HDMI 2.0b inputs, which allow you to connect most current image sources, including most PCs, but not older sources that require other types of connectors.
On the plus side, the TH685P’s room speaker delivers much more robust sound than you’d expect from its 5 watts. It offers quite usable sound quality and a high enough volume to fill a large family room. For stereo or higher quality, there is a 3.5mm stereo audio output for an external sound system.
Good color accuracy, contrast and shadow detail
The TH685P offers five predefined yet customizable picture modes—Bright, Living Room, Cinema, Sports and Game—plus two user modes. Bright mode, as with the brightest modes of most projectors, has a noticeable green drift. The default settings for all other modes provided color that was accurate enough that most people will find them more than acceptable. If you want to enhance the default settings, the menus provide all the settings you need, including a color management system to adjust each primary and secondary color individually for a complete calibration.
After some preliminary testing, I chose Cinema as my preferred viewing mode with 1080p SDR input. Game mode slightly outperformed Cinema with shadow detail, making it preferable for games where seeing details quickly in dark areas makes a difference. But it also showed a slight blue bias. The Cinema mode’s more accurate colors, combined with good contrast, made it the clear winner for watching most movies and videos. It also handled shadow detail well enough to see what happened in the most challenging dark scenes in our test suite, even in a room with moderate ambient light doing its best to wash out the image.
(Credit: BenQ)
The TH685P supports both HDR10 and HLG HDR. More importantly, in the pleasant surprise category, it fared remarkably better with 4K HDR input than many, if not most, 1080p projectors claiming HDR support. In too many cases, the 4K HDR version of a movie on disc looks worse rather than better than the 1080p version of the same movie. The TH685 was an exception, but as I mentioned when I reviewed it, while the 4K HDR version looked like it might have improved a bit over the 1080p SDR version, the two were so similar I couldn’t confirm in the absence of a side-by-side comparison.
The TH685P far outperformed its predecessor in our tests. In our standard comparison of the same movies on both 1080p SDR and 4K HDR discs, the HDR versions delivered such a marked improvement in contrast and shadow detail that I didn’t need a comparison to make sure. It also maintained good color accuracy.
(Credit: BenQ)
One 3D picture mode for Full HD 3D supports DLP-Link glasses. I saw no crosstalk in my tests and only saw the moderate level of 3D-related motion artifacts typical of 3D projectors.
The TH685P’s input lag at 1080p/120Hz is 8.4 milliseconds (ms), measured with a Bodnar meter – fast enough for the most demanding gamer. For 1080p/60Hz, the reading was 16.4ms, which is consistent with the 120Hz reading and still short enough for most gamers. However, for 4K/60Hz, the delay was 33.1 ms. While that’s better than many projectors can handle for 4K, it’s a bit long for serious gaming. We’ve seen other projectors with delay measurements as low as 16.7ms at 4K/60Hz.
(Credit: BenQ)
A potentially serious problem for those who see and find the red-green-blue flashes in single-chip DLP projectors (“rainbow artifacts”) disturbing: they were much more common and much more apparent in our tests with the TH685P than is usual Today. As always, if you’re concerned about the issue, buy from a dealer that allows easy returns.
Based on the recommendations of the Society for Movie and Television Engineers (SMPTE), 3,500 lumens is bright enough to fill a 270-inch, 1.0-gain 16:9 screen in a darkroom. In moderate ambient light, that’s enough for a 150-inch screen. In my testing, even the lower brightness Cinema mode delivered a bright 90-inch image with nicely saturated colors in a dark room. With the lights turned on, the image was a bit blurred, but still bright enough to distinguish shadow details even in dark scenes.
Verdict: A Top 1080p Pick For Those Who Don’t See Rainbows
The only problem that keeps the BenQ TH685P from being an Editors’ Choice choice for an entry-level gaming projector is that it exhibits rainbow artifacts both more frequently and more clearly than most current-generation DLP projectors, a problem it shares with both the TH685 as the replaces and the cheaper TH585P. If that’s something you want to avoid, you probably prefer a projector with fewer or no flashes, even if it comes at the expense of other strengths.
Two options are the Optoma HD39HDR and Optoma GT1080HDR, which provide essentially the same input lag as the TH685P at 1080p and also produced fewer rainbows in my testing. Another is the Epson Home Cinema 2250, which is guaranteed to be rainbow artifact free. However, neither Optoma model handled HDR as well as the TH685P in our tests, and the Epson model has a longer input lag and doesn’t support HDR or 4K input at all. For those who are not bothered by rainbow artifacts, the BenQ TH685P offers a combination of low input lag and excellent picture quality for both SDR and HDR, and even excellent built-in audio. It’s a standout choice for the price.
Pros
It comes down to The BenQ TH685P is a solid step above entry-level gaming and home entertainment, and one of the few 1080p projectors that can handle HDR color well.
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