Review: Benq MP770 projector

The MP770 from Benq is a flexible projector that performs well in a variety of situations. It has plenty of power for presentations and, with a maximum brightness of 3,200 Ansi lumens, it's bright enough to project a large display without the need to dim the lights.

It also has optional wireless support, digital zoom and two-dimensional keystone correction for easy setup.

The supplied remote control is a full-sized affair and includes a useful laser pointer and a button for blanking the screen. You can also freeze motion video input; the resulting screenshot can be used as the projector's start-up image.

To get the maximum light output from the MP770 you have to set it to operate in Brightest mode. This does indeed result in a significantly brighter picture, but at the loss of some image quality; most noticeably with lighter shades being bleached out and appearing white.

A somewhat less extreme version of this is seen in Presentation mode.

For better colour response you’ll need to select either Video or sRGB/Photo mode. Here you’ll be rewarded with very good colour performance that is rich as well as subtle. Unfortunately, the image is considerably dimmer in these modes.

The System menu includes two user-defined presets, among others, which can contain your own preferred settings. Navigating the various menus is, however, a little slow.

The MP770 is sRGB certified so colours look natural when connected to a PC. We were very impressed with the colour reproduction, which is far better than would be achieved by a projector aimed solely at presentations.

Although it’s a 4:3 aspect ratio projector, the MP770 does a pretty good job of scaling to 16:9 widescreen and will also accept a 720p high-definition input over DVI or up to 1080i over component video, via a D-Sub adapter.

In short, the MP770 can turn its hand to just about anything and do a pretty good job of it. With brightness and convenient presentation-friendly features along with superior quality for video, it’s useful both at work and in the home.

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