Epson QB1000 vs. BenQ W5800 Home Theater Comparison Shoot Out

A fair and fact-based comparison of the two most popular high end home theater projectors in 2025

Evaluating luxury home theater projectors is often like comparing a BMW M5 to a Porsche Panamera Turbo S.  Both are great cars, but the smaller differences between them may tilt your decision. For a luxury home cinema, the gold standard is to replicate the same experience at home as you would get in a commercial cinema.  Outside of buying a 3DLP cinema projector for your theater, the BenQ W5800 and the Epson QB1000 are the two most popular projectors that fit the bill and cost less than $10,000.  Both have advanced lenses, 4K resolution, and support HDR 10+.  We’ll compare these two projectors based on published reviews on websites like Projector Central, What Hi-Fi, Sound Advice, and Secrets of Home Theater so you can see how each model stacks up on the most critical specifications used in commercial cinemas.  We’ll look at the following performance measurements including:

• DCI-P3 Color Performance
• Out of the box color Accuracy
• Calibrated color accuracy
• Sharpness and visible pixels on the screen
• Other Factors

When the movie industry transitioned from Panavision Film to digital projectors, all the projectors installed in a commercial digital cinema had to meet the 100% DCI-P3 standard.  Every director uses the color space to create the visual effects used in a film, and the enlarged color space is what makes going to a movie different than watching one on TV.   The BenQ W5800 both specifies and delivers the entire 100% of the DCI-P3 color gamut according to multiple reviews, ensuring that even the most subtle shades of the movie are reproduced on your home cinema screen.  The Epson QB1000 doesn’t specify any DCI-P3 color on its specification sheet and fell substantially short of covering all the colors used in a commercial digital cinema in third party review measurements.  Here are some of the DCI-P3 color gamut measurements between the two from different website reviews.  In both cases, they showed that the BenQ W5800 had the best color coverage of the two models.

Since both projectors are at the top of their price range, how do they look when pulled out of the box?  According to Cnet, the cost of having a display calibrated runs around $250, but can cost much more depending on your setup.  Most review sites measure the color accuracy before calibrating the projector, and here you’ll find that the BenQ W5800 is highly accurate right out of the box.  The review on What Hi-Fi highlights that “…every W5800 actually ships with a factory-calibrated mode that’s confirmed by a certificate in its box to achieve greyscale results so accurate that no human eye will be able to detect any errors.”  Other websites measure the out of the box (OOTB) color accuracy using the average error (Delta E) and the maximum error on both models.

The BenQ W5800 was substantially more accurate out of the box due to the fact that it’s calibrated at the factory before it is put into the box.  As you can see by the chart below, the Delta E – or average color error of the projector on standard colors out of the box is lower on the BenQ projector than the Epson QB1000 by a significant margin.

Despite the high cost of calibration, all commercial digital cinemas and most premium home theater projectors are calibrated for color accuracy when they are installed.  This is especially important for maximizing HDR performance that will enable the projector to simulate the color dynamics of a commercial projector.   According to the Secrets of Home Theater, the reviewer shares that “I have measured many wide-gamut projectors, televisions, and computer monitors. The W5800 is the most color-accurate HDR display I have tested to date.” Projector Central calibrated both projectors using the same equipment and techniques and published the data on both models that showed the BenQ W5800 significantly outperforming the Epson QB1000 in HDR mode due to its ability to cover the entire DCI-P3 color space.  This means that the projector will look much closer to what the director intended as they edited and colorized the original movie on a 3DLP commercial cinema projector.  Here are the numbers from Projector Central.

The Epson QB1000 and the BenQ W5800 use significantly different technologies to create the 4K UHD image on the screen.  The BenQ W5800 uses proven DLP technology originally built for commercial cinema (introduced with the Star Wars movie “The Phantom Menace”), and the consumer 4K chip had its first critical review by industry analysts in 2017.  By contrast, Epson’s first LCD 4K home theater projector is quite recent, appearing just a few years ago in 2022 and Epson is the only brand that uses LCD technology for 4K resolution home theater projectors.  By contrast, over a dozen different brands are using DLP 4K chips, and four different brands are using LCOS technology. For Digital Cinema projectors, all new projectors sold use DLP technology due to Sony discontinuing their LCOS digital cinema projectors due to its inability to maintain color accuracy over time.

According to Projector Central, the LCD technology used in the QB1000 has the problem of being able to see the projector's pixel grid from approximately six feet away. This means that if your seats are close to the screen, the pixel grid becomes apparent and potentially distracting. In addition, if the projector is paired with a woven screen whose weave that happens to match the size of the pixel grid, moiré patterns may become visible regardless of the seating distance.  Neither of these phenomena have been seen on the BenQ W5800, or for that matter any of the other 4K UHD projectors that BenQ has produced since 2017. Note that the DLP technology used by BenQ has a very high fill factor, meaning that each one of the 8.3 million pixels is almost entirely filled with light, which minimizes risk of seeing the grid pattern even when standing directly in front of the screen.

_{Dust Blobs vs. Sealed Engine}

The Epson QB1000 uses traditional open optical architecture that requires filters to keep the dust out of the projector.  According to Sound Advice, this creates the risk of dust blobs entering the area behind the lens and degrading the image.  By contrast, the BenQ W5800 uses a sealed dustproof engine that has been certified under the industry standard IP5X dust testing.

_{Maintenance and Warranty Limitations}

The Epson QB1000 requires regular filter cleaning that will vary according to the amount of dust the projector has to filter over time.  Epson recommends cleaning these filters every 5000 hours, or more often in a dustier environment. The filter must be removed, tapped to shake out the dust, then vacuumed to remove the remaining dust.  Replacement filters cost $69.  The BenQ W5800 uses a sealed laser engine that is dustproof, so no filter cleaning is needed over the life of the projector.

One other significant difference is that the Epson has specific limitations on “excessive” and “continual” use of the projector that can void the warranty.  Essentially, if you use the projector too much, the projector can be damaged.  In addition, failure to regularly clean the filters per the maintenance schedule above can also void the warranty.  The BenQ W5800 does not have any usage limitations in the warranty, nor maintenance requirements so you don’t have to worry about voiding your warranty due to too much movie binging on Yellowstone episodes.

_{3D Support}

Only the BenQ W5800 supports 3D technology, so when you want to dust off your Blu-Ray’s of Avatar and Toy Story 3, just slip on your 3D glasses and enjoy a truly immersive home cinema experience.

Both projectors have their strengths and have won numerous industry awards from the toughest reviewers.  While Epson has a higher street price and has a higher lumen specification than the BenQ, the color performance and advanced technology of the BenQ W5800 offer true digital cinema color accuracy in a home theater without having to constantly worry about cleaning filters or sitting too close to the screen.  Plus, if your family is prone to binging on Taylor Sheridan shows like “Yellowstone” or “Landman” you don’t have to worry about voiding the warranty of your BenQ projector due to “excessive use.”  

If you have any questions on which home theater projector is right for your media room, let us know and we’ll be happy to help you!

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