So how does the TK850i look out of the box? Pretty good! Like most lamp based projectors, the color space seems to be more narrow than a laser or LED-based projector, because it is. While Laser and LED projectors do have an advantage, the TK850i does a really good job out of the box.
More to the point, skin tones look excellent compared to other DLP projectors I’ve reviewed. Is the color perfectly balanced? No, it’s not. While that may leave some of you disappointed on some content, overall, BenQ has done very well with the overall color balance. BenQ has been perfecting their color science for years. The TK850i tone and color mapping combined with BenQ HDR-PRO technology really makes a difference in the TK850i out of the box picture quality. In the end, skin tones might look a little better in some scenes than in others. With a perfect calibration (assuming excellent production values in the content), skin tones should look equally good, no matter the scene.
Let’s talk a little about HD content, especially YouTube and live action streaming. During my testing this content I found that this specific HD content looks a little soft. This was less noticeable with 1080p movies, but I found it a little distracting. Here’s the deal folks, if you're reading this review, your priority is not 1080p but 4K, and out of the box, this DLP projector performs better than most DLP. Colors are a “little” skewed to the reds and oranges, but that is to be expected from DLP.
The TK850i has plenty of horsepower to deal with watching sports in rooms with moderate ambient light. I definitely liked to see the deeper blacks that the projector produced along with the brilliant colors and wider dynamic range on the TK850i.
The BenQ TK850i unitizes the Texas Instruments 0.47” DMD chip, so it won’t look as sharp as the other 4K UHDs that use the 0.66” DMD chip. Still, the image is nicely crisp. During my testing, I did note a little softness at the corner of the image, but you would have to be very close to the screen to spot that.
