BENQ X1300i GAMING PROJECTOR REVIEW-PERFORMANCE

Posted on February 17, 2021 by Philip Boyle

BENQ X1300i Gaming Projector Review – Performance: Out Of-the-Box Picture Quality, Pre/Post Calibration Measurements, Skin Tones

OUT-OF-THE-BOX PICTURE QUALITY

There are two out-of-the-box (OTB) modes on the BenQ X1300i. They are Gaming and Entertainment. FYI, you can tell you’re in Gaming Mode because the menu highlights are hot pink.

Gaming Menu	GameMaestro Options
HDR Game	Off, FPS, RPG, SPG
HDR 10	Off, FPS, RPG, SPG

Entertainment Menu
Bright	Off, FPS, RPG, SPG
Living Room	Off, FPS, RPG, SPG
Sports	Off, FPS, RPG, SPG
Game	Off, FPS, RPG, SPG
Cinema	Off, FPS, RPG, SPG
User	Off, FPS, RPG, SPG

In Entertainment mode, the X1300 menu takes on purple highlights. In this OTB mode your options are: Bright, Living Room, Sports, Game, Cinema and User. Six modes are available in the Entertainment menu., See the chart above. For each of these modes, you can use any of the four Game Maestro options as well.

BenQ has tuned audio settings to each of these modes as well. It's not one size fits all, but that’s why there’s an Advanced menu where you can adjust all aspects of the video from brightness, color, sharpness and more. In the Advanced menus, you are able to customize the projectors gamma and color settings in detail. Advanced gamers with just a little knowledge of what they want out of the projector can go into the Advanced options and dial in exactly the video and audio experience needed for the specific game they are running. BenQ is an industry leader in gaming displays, and it’s clear with the X1300i that they’ve brought their knowledge of the gaming display market into their projector business.

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The bottom line regarding out-of-the-box performance is that it’s really very good. Hardcore enthusiasts looking for near-perfect color will calibrate, but most users will be more than satisfied with the OTB presets. I’m very impressed by the out-of-the-box picture quality on the BenQ X1300i.

We did take the time to calibrate the USER Mode on the X1300i for SDR. Since your room and screen material has a major impact on the overall picture, I don't recommend using someone else calibration adjustments. If your room is brighter/darker or your walls are a different color, copying someone else results can cause more harm than good. However below are the before and after results in Phil's room.

Pre Calibration Measurements

Out of the box, the grayscale was deficient in red, especially at higher brightness levels. The white balance was very good and was only 100K of my D65 target. Bright Colors were slightly over-saturated.

Picture Mode: User
Color Temperature: 6650K
Grayscale Average dE: 5.56
Color Saturation Average dE: 3.75

Post Calibration Measurements

X1300i Calibration Post Results - Projector Reviews Images

I placed the COLOR TEMP setting to Normal and made some quick adjustments to the red gain settings in the Color Temperature Tuning menu to produce excellent D65 white balance.

The achieve my gamma target of 2.2 in my room, I set the GAMMA setting from BenQ to 2.3.

I used the CMS adjustments to adjust the color saturation of Red, Blue, and Magenta at higher percentages to finetune the unit's color tracking.

Picture Mode: User
Color Temperature: 6459K
Grayscale Average dE: 1.6
Color Saturation Average dE: 1.41

Delta E grayscale/color accuracy measurement of 3 and under is considered ‘Excellent’ and imperceptible by the human eye. After calibration, the X1300i had an average grayscale dE of 1.6. The color average dE was 1.41 which is outstanding. While it only took a short time to calibrate, the image quality was even before any adjustments so the calibration improvements were slight. Most customers would be more than happy with the picture quality right of the box.

SKIN TONES

When it comes to skin tones, the BenQ X1300 does a commendable job. Cinema Mode makes skin tones look the most natural. Be mindful this is dependent on your room's lighting situation and screen formulation. My lab allows me to test in both complete dark as well as a more typical living room environment. Candidly, a lot of lower-cost home entertainment projectors do a poor job on color, specifically skin tones, presenting them as pinkish or some other unnatural shade. This is not the case on the X1300i. This projector has some of the most natural skin tones I've seen on a DLP. Take a look at my breakdown in the slideshow below.

Bright mode is designed for rooms with lots of uncontrolled amibant light. The picture does get Blue/Green. When you have so much uncontrolled ambient light you have to expect to sacrifice some color accuracy for increased brightness.

Living Room mode gets you into a more natural color pallet without going nuclear on the lamp output. This allows you to compensate for some uncontrolled ambient light without sacrificing more natural skin tones.

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It’s hard for me to express how impressed I am at the performance of this $1299 projector. BenQ could have only focused on gaming color and not worried about how it looks as a home entertainment projector. However, to their credit, they paid as much attention to how movies, tv and streaming content looks on the X1300i. With the BenQ X1300i, you’ll enjoy movies, TV, sports, and video games with good color performance all around.