BenQ W1500 Projector - Warranty

Posted on December 26, 2013 by Art Feierman

BENQ W1500 WARRANTY INFORMATION

The BenQ W1500 comes with a one year parts and labor warranty. For projectors selling between $1000 and $2500, that's worse than average. One year is the minimum found on today's projectors anywhere near this price range.

The lamp warranty is 500 hours or 180 days. Not great, considering BenQ used to offer 90 days or 500 hours years ago, when their lamps were rated 2000/3000 hours. It is typical in the industry, that lamp warranties haven't been extended as much as lamp life.

I would estimate that about half of the projectors in the range have one year warranties, but several manufacturers do way better.

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Let's look first, at the direct DLP competition, Optoma also offers one year, as does Acer. Viewsonic though offers a three year parts and labor warranty. Panasonic is at two years, but does have a limit on hours, that would shorten the warranty for heavy users. Epsons multiple projectors in that range of prices offers up 2 years parts and labor, and the only rapid replacement program of any brand (for both years). One of theirs has 3 years, and 3 of replacement.

I don't like one year warranties, for fear that a warranty type problem in your second year of ownership, will probably be expensive without warranty. By comparison, a failure in the 3rd year of operation has a silver lining - you just might be able to by a much better replacement, for far less.

3rd party warranty programs are pretty inexpensive. I don't have as high a confidence in them, in general as I do for manufacturer warranties, as I was aware of occasional issues, when I owned a large online projector sales company.