GP1 Menus

Posted on September 28, 2013 by Art Feierman

GP1 Menus

Picture Mode

Wow! Menus just like a "big" projector. The GP1 has most of the typical adjustments found on business projectors, and also allows you to save settings. You will find all the usual suspects, including color mode selection, brightness, contrast, color saturation, tint, sharpness, color temp and other settings, as seen in this photo of the main picture menu.

In addition, you'll find other typical settings like the ability to move the menus to different locations on the screen, timers for auto power down function, and blank screen. Of course you can select sources from the menus as well. Other niceties include a high altitude mode (faster fan speed), aspect ratio (auto or manual selection), and a lot more.

Display

There's even a Presentation Timer. For those of you who don't do presentations, that allows the The display menu of the BenQ GP1 Joybee projector.projector to show the time a "slide" is in the screen, to help presenters time their presentations, and the time they spend on each slide. That's a very nice touch, that many folks who use the GP1 for presentations, will appreciate.

And here's a shocker: the BenQ GP1 has the full four projector postions available. You can not only use it the typical way - on a table top or tripod, in front of the screen, but also it can be ceiling mounted, and it can be used "table top" or ceiling mounted with a rear projection screen as well.

Photo

The rear screen abilities at first, had me intrigued, as a proper rear screen setup is barely affected by ambient light. File viewing capabilities of the BenQ GP1 Joybee projector.Then, however, I remembered the lens'es relative long throw. Normally in rear screen setups, you want an ultra-short throw lens, so the area behind the screen doesn't have to be really deep. I'm sure there may be some applications for rear screen, but, in reality, few will need it.

When you use the USB reader, you get a separate set of menus to control viewing. You can select between Photo and Movie, as well as setup. Once you select, say, photo, you'll get a screen showing folders on the left, and individual images inside the selected photo, on the right side. You can select and view a single photo, or run a slideshow.

Settings

The BenQ offers various transitions, as well as timing controls (i.e. change slides every 5, 10, 15... seconds).

If you look to the image above, showing the file management, you can see a "thumbnail image" of the highlighted file. Selecting "Select" on the remote control will result that image appearing full frame. Take a close look at the thumbnail image. You'll see the full size version in the Image Quality section of this review.

BenQ Joybee GP1 Remote Control

The GP1 comes with a very nice credit card sized remote control. The buttons, of course, are small, but they have a decent feel, much better than some credit card remotes with those soft "bubble" buttons. The layout is decently done, although the arrow keys could be better positioned. I repeatedly had trouble finding the left arrow button in the dark.

Along with all the basic navigation features, source selection, etc., you'll also find a Blank screen feature, Freeze feature, a digital zoom feature, Source, an Auto setup, Menu, and color Mode.

On the lower half of the GP1 remote control, there are what looks like DVD controls. They are there for navigating your slide shows, etc.

Click Image to Enlarge

BenQ GP1 Lens Throw

The lens is fixed - no zoom. The ratio of the lens itself is 1.92:1 - that is, the distance from the screen is 1.92 times the width of the projected image. To project a 40 inch wide image this BenQ projector needs to be placed 1.92 x 40 inches from the surface you are projecting on. In this example, 77 inches back. Just as an aside, the throw on the GP1 is almost identical to the Optoma Pico we reviewed a couple of months ago.

GP1 Lens Shift

There is no adjustable lens shift - not that anyone would expect it on a product like this one. The BenQ GP1, however, does have fixed lens offset, similar to the amount found on most business projectors. That translates to: If you set it up the Joybee with the projector about even with the bottom of your screen, you should get a very rectangular image without needed to engage keystone correction. And on that note, the projector does offer automatic keystone correction, which can be turned off from the menus.