[Editor's note: this review is excerpted from John's write-up of the 2004 Projector Expo.]

Thanks to the valiant efforts of BenQ and Aaron at Cinelight, a BenQ PE8700+ showed up late on Saturday just in time for us to evaluate Sunday morning. Obviously there was no time to calibrate it, so when we turned it on Sunday morning we were getting pure out of the box performance.

There is not much new to say about the BenQ's picture that has not already been said on the forum. Smoothness, deep blacks, and great pricing are the BenQ's main claims to fame. Personally, I thought all of the HD2s looked pretty similar on their proper screens (in this case, the Carada Brilliant White) and the BenQ was no exception. There was great detail in the HD clips, the DVD clips were clean and colorful, and the BenQ displayed very deep blacks and good contrast on the white screen. (*Note* I would not say that the picture is very close to that of the Sharp 12000 - which some have compared it to - as the Sharp had even deeper blacks, more contrast, and more accurate colors). The BenQ did look very very good on its own - I can't imagine anyone being dissatisfied with the picture.

The only real weaknesses of the BenQ were color performance and brightness (if that's even a weakness). As has been reported before, flesh tones were distinctly reddish, and the red uniforms on THE REPLACEMENTS DVD clip were orange. We tried several different color temperatures, and the zero setting seemed to give the most accurate color rendition (if I remember right), but still resulted in the color anomalies I mentioned previously. In overall brightness, I would say it was brighter than the Sharp 12000 on high contrast mode, but not nearly as bright as the Sharp in high brightness mode. The BenQ fell somewhere in between.