BenQ LK936ST Review: A Superb Projector Most Churches Should Not Buy

It is not resolution. It is throw distance. A conventional long-throw projector needs to sit a long way back from the screen, and plenty of sanctuaries cannot provide that: a balcony intrudes, the structural mount points are all near the front, the ceiling drops, or the room is simply short relative to the screen size the back row needs. In those buildings the choice has traditionally been a smaller image than the room wants, or an awkward and expensive structural solution.

A short throw lens produces a large image from much closer, which turns an impossible geometry into a straightforward mount. The secondary benefit is that with the projector closer to the screen, there is less space in the beam path for people to walk through, which is a constant irritation with a long throw projector mounted over a platform. Placement geometry is covered at projector placement in a sanctuary and the trade-offs at short throw versus long throw.

Screen size should be driven by the back row, not by ambition. Under the six times rule, the furthest viewer should sit no more than six screen heights away for lyrics and sermon points. A 150 inch 16:9 screen is about 6.1 feet high, which serves a room about 37 feet deep. A room with a back row 60 feet out needs about 10 feet of screen height, which is a very large screen and exactly the case where a short throw lens becomes necessary. Work yours out with the projection screen size calculator.

The resolution line is the one to read sceptically; the throw line is the one to read carefully.

Say it plainly. The content a church projects is song lyrics, scripture, sermon points, the occasional video and a camera feed. The viewing distances are 20 to 80 feet. At those distances, with that content, the difference between 1080p and 4K is not perceptible to a congregation. Human visual acuity sets a limit on resolvable detail per degree of vision, and a congregation member 50 feet from a 12 foot screen is nowhere near it at 1080p.

What does make a visible difference, in order: how bright the image is relative to the room, the screen surface and whether it rejects ambient light, contrast, and whether the image is geometrically square and in focus. A church that spends $4,790 on 4K resolution and keeps a white bedsheet-grade screen under clerestory windows has optimised the invisible variable and ignored every visible one.

There are two legitimate reasons to want 4K here. One is a very large screen with viewers seated close to it, which is rare in a sanctuary. The other is a room whose feed genuinely carries fine detail, such as a video campus displaying a full broadcast production. Neither describes most churches. If the reason you are drawn to this projector is the short throw geometry, that reason is excellent and this is the right machine. If the reason is the resolution, spend less and put the difference into the right screen and the right brightness.

Published owner reviews describe image quality as excellent and installation flexibility as the standout feature, with the short throw lens repeatedly cited as the reason the projector was chosen over cheaper alternatives. Owners in venues, classrooms and large meeting spaces report that it fills large screens from positions nothing else could work from, which is precisely the problem it exists to solve.

The consistent criticisms are price and physical size, since a short throw 4K laser is a substantial unit that needs a correspondingly serious mount. Owners also raise the general single chip DLP points about color brightness and occasional rainbow perception. Notably, owners do not generally report that the 4K resolution transformed their experience, which is consistent with the argument above.

Buy this instead for most short-room churches: the Epson PowerLite 805F at $2,494.31 is an ultra short throw 3LCD laser at roughly half the price, with matched color brightness and an even more extreme throw ratio. For a church whose problem is purely geometry, this solves it for less.

Budget pick, because brightness beats resolution: the Optoma ZH551 at $1,499.00 delivers a bright sealed-engine 1080p laser for well under half the money, which on lyrics and scripture will look no worse to a congregation.

Long throw alternative, because your room may not be short after all: the Epson PowerLite L530U at $2,749.00 is the three chip laser for a room with the depth to mount it, reviewed at the L530U review.

Buy it if your room genuinely has no depth for a long throw projector, you need a large screen for a deep room, and the budget is real. Buy it for a video venue or a multi-campus room where the feed is a full production and the screen is large relative to the seating. The category is in projectors for churches.

Do not buy it because 4K sounds like the responsible future-proof choice for a lyrics screen, because it is not. Do not buy it before confirming the color brightness figure against a three chip alternative. And do not buy it while your screen is a painted wall or your room is full of uncontrolled daylight, because both of those will limit the result far more than any projector specification.