Summary
All of this comes down to personal taste, but I liked the Cinema and Bright Cinema modes the most because they had the great contrast and bright colors I like. Thanos’ purple skin and Captain Marvel’s glowing white suit against the dark clouds in Endgame’s final fight scene were both true to life and looked great. On the V5000i, panning and fast-moving scenes also look good, with little motion fuzz and judder.
I watched some of Apple TV+’s Foundation (I guess I like space stuff). The season ending has a scene that I could use to switch between some of the picture modes, but don’t worry—I won’t give them away.
BenQ V5000i projector review
Again, Bright Cinema was my favorite because it had just the right amount of extra contrast and color vibrancy. During a certain scene in Foundation, I noticed this a lot: Brother Dawn’s blue suit and Queen Sareth’s blue dress were much brighter than they were in other places. The lens flare is beautiful and white in the middle of a scene where they are sitting at a port window with the bright sun behind them. The amber light on the sides is also much warmer and more red than in Cinema mode.
BenQ V5000i projector review: In the end
Really short throw (UST) screens are quickly becoming the best way to enjoy a big movie experience at home. Some may say they are more expensive than regular projectors, but the extra money will get you a machine with great color and clarity that can throw a picture 100 inches or more from just a few inches away. This means you don’t have to deal with difficult ceiling mounts or long speaker wire runs. You also don’t have to move your whole living room.
Since years, BenQ has made some of the best projectors you can buy. However, the company only recently started taking its UST products more seriously, releasing its second model, the V5000i, at the end of last year. The V5000i is BenQ’s first 4K HDR projector with an RGB triple-laser light source. It’s a beast of a projector, but then again, most USTs are. It may not be the best UST on the market, but its 2,500-lumen output makes it work surprisingly well even in bright rooms, which is an impressive task in and of itself.
It has great color and contrast right out of the box, but it’s also very easy to change for people who like to fiddle. Also, gamers will enjoy the V5000i’s Auto Low Latency Mode (ALLM), which works with 4K 120Hz. It also comes with an Android TV dongle, just like some other BenQ projectors, like the great HT4550i we tested last year. This makes streaming easy.
The BenQ V5000i costs $3,500, and that doesn’t include the extra $400 you should spend on the ambient light rejecting (ALR) screen to get the most out of the projector. BenQ was kind enough to send me one. I’ll talk more about it below, but for now, let’s just say putting it together almost killed me.
But after setting it up and making sure it worked well, my family and I used the V5000i as our main “TV” in the living room for almost a month. Everything was better with the 100-inch screen, from movie nights to marathons of Love Island Australia. The projector was easy for my 12-year-old son to use too, and the 40-watt speakers that came with it sounded good.
Does all of this make the big price tag easier to swallow? Let us find out.
BenQ V5000i projector review: Specifications and style
The BenQ V500i is a big ultra short throw projector like all of them. It’s 6.4 inches high, two and a half feet wide, and 14 inches deep. Also, it’s almost 30 pounds, so be careful when you move it. It is big, but the black outside and curved fabric speaker grille on the front make it look thinner than you might think.
The projector’s lens and power button are on top, but that’s it. Well, almost. There is a place to hide the Android TV dongle under a corner cover that can be taken off. More on this later. BenQ could have done a better job by including a lens cover like the one on the V5000i’s bigger brother, the single-laser V750i, to keep dust and pet hair out. Sadly, it’s not there.
There are four height-adjustable feet on the bottom of the V5000i that help you position the projector exactly where you want it during setup. There are also some clever retractable, telescopic rear rods that are slotted and measured to help you set the right distance from the wall or screen without using a measuring tape, though you should probably still use one.
There are many ways to connect to the V5000i on the back. It has two HDMI 2.0 ports (one with eARC), one HDMI 2.1 port for fast gaming, two powered USB-A ports, an optical S/PDIF out, and a 3.5mm AUX output for music.
When we talk about sound, this is one place where I was pleasantly surprised. For the most part, projectors with built-in sound aren’t very good. If you want a good sound experience, you should get a soundbar instead. But the V5000i has two 5-watt tweeters and two 15-watt woofers hidden behind its grille. The sound it produced made people scratch their heads. Even though I still think you should get a speaker or a real home theater receiver, I thought the V5000i’s built-in sound was clear, pretty full, and more than enough for my small living room.
I had some trouble shifting and adjusting the V5000i because its feet were on my living room carpet (I set it up on the floor instead of on top of a media unit). However, the V5000i has many of the same great auto screen fitting, alignment, and keystone features as many of BenQ’s other projectors, which makes it easy to set up, adjust, and re-adjust the image to fit the screen. Of course, there are also some pretty easy-to-use tools for hand adjustment and corner fitting.
Putting together the BenQ ALR Fresnel screen, on the other hand, wasn’t simple.
BenQ V5000i projector review: The screen for the ALR
I’ve reviewed a lot of projectors before, but this was the first time I did one with the suggested ALR screen that comes with the BenQ V5000i. Do I need an ALR screen to use a UST projector? No, it works with any screen or wall that is clean. But ALR screens are made to take in light from windows or other sources in the room and get rid of glare and shadows so that the projector’s picture is as clear as possible.
The BenQ SNS21 Fresnel screen is an ALR screen that costs $800, but you can get it with the V5000i for only $400, which is a great deal compared to other ALRs on the market. The thick material makes the screen big, strong, and beautiful, and it weighs about 30 pounds when it’s all put together. BenQ even gives V5000i users a free fitting service, which I strongly suggest because it was hard for me to put it together myself.
To be fair, the SNS21’s instructions for putting it together were clear, and the BenQ website has some great videos and other tools to help you. It should have been easy, and I’ve seen video reviews of this projector where putting together the screen looked like it was a breeze. While putting together the frame went smoothly, it was almost impossible to screw in the 20 or so spring-loaded screws that needed to be placed around the inside edge of the material to make it lie flat. I’m not going to go into too much detail because I don’t know if it was the unit I was sent or something else.
Additionally, it became clear to me that the white cotton gloves that come with the installation kit aren’t really for safely handling the fragile screen or frame parts. Instead, they’re meant to protect your hands from the frame’s very sharp metal edges. That was a hard lesson for me.
I was about to give up after battling with it for two hours when I decided to use trigger clamps, my power drill, and some hard work to connect the screws to their nuts.
Was it really worth it? From the point of view of a picture, yes, and I’ll talk about that below. But if you don’t want to use BenQ’s free installation service, you should really think about other ALR screen choices.
HDR, picture, and brightness
The BenQ V5000i is an RGB triple laser projector that can handle 2,500 ANSI lumens of light and works with HDR10, HDR10+, and HLG, but not Dolby Vision. Plus, it has local contrast enhancement that splits the image into 1,000 areas that are looked at instantly and changed to improve contrast.
It is possible for the V5000i to display a 4K UHD (3840 x 2160) picture up to 100 inches wide. Your FAQ page from BenQ says that you can make the screen bigger, but there may be some confusion. For my review, I used it with the 100-inch BenQ SNS21 ALR screen that came with it. According to BenQ, this screen was specially made for the V5000i. I found the picture to be great in almost all rooms and lighting conditions, which is mostly due to the ALR screen.
Color and contrast faded to a good level when the lights were on or when daylight came in through my small basement window. However, not nearly as much as with other projectors I’ve tried, like the BenQ H4550i. This is where I really saw how the ALR screen helped. It’s also no surprise that the V5000i has great light, contrast, clarity, and color in a dark room. It doesn’t have the brightest 2,500 brightness on the market, but it’s about the same as other TVs in the same price range, like the Samsung Premiere LSP7T or the Hisense PX1-Pro.
BenQ says that the V5000i can show 98% of the DCI-P3 color range, which is the final standard for the digital movie business, 95% of the BT.2020 standard, and 100% of the Rec.709 standard. The colors were great right out of the box, but I didn’t measure them.
The projector has a lot of custom calibration settings, such as an advanced color temperature tuning and a Color and Flesh Tone adjustment. It also has a Filmmaker mode, a Bright mode, a Bright Cinema mode, a Living Room mode, and several modes for HDR material. As I already said, this projector can be changed almost infinitely to suit your needs, which I really liked.
All of this comes down to personal taste, but I liked the Cinema and Bright Cinema modes the most because they had the great contrast and bright colors I like. Thanos’ purple skin and Captain Marvel’s glowing white suit against the dark clouds in Endgame’s final fight scene were both true to life and looked great. On the V5000i, panning and fast-moving scenes also look good, with little motion fuzz and judder.
I watched some of Apple TV+’s Foundation (I guess I like space stuff). The season ending has a scene that I could use to switch between some of the picture modes, but don’t worry—I won’t give them away.
Again, Bright Cinema was my favorite because it had just the right amount of extra contrast and color vibrancy. During a certain scene in Foundation, I noticed this a lot: Brother Dawn’s blue suit and Queen Sareth’s blue dress were much brighter than they were in other places. The lens flare is beautiful and white in the middle of a scene where they are sitting at a port window with the bright sun behind them. The amber light on the sides is also much warmer and more red than in Cinema mode.
In the end
The BenQ V5000i is a big and expensive 4K UST projector that looks great in both bright and dark rooms. It has brilliantly vivid and accurate colors and contrast, and it comes with some simple auto setup features that make it easy for anyone to set up (just make sure to have a professional install the ALR screen).
Also, if you like to be in charge, the simple options and manual adjusting features are the best there is. Even though I’m not a big gamer, the V5000i’s Game Mode and low input lag make it better than most other UST projectors. This makes it a good choice for people who like to use their thumbs and triggers.
The BenQ V5000i costs $3,500, or $3,900 if you add the ALR screen. This is why the price might be worth it. But there are other USTs on the market, like the Awol Vision LTV-3000 and Epson EpiqVision Ultra LS800W, that are about the same price but offer features like Dolby Vision and better light levels. This makes the decision more difficult.
Overall, though, the BenQ V5000i is a good choice because it has great picture quality, is easy to use, and can be customized.
