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Look upon the ultrabright BenQ TH685

Ostensibly a gaming projector, the TH685 does a few things well and a few things just...OK.

Geoffrey Morrison
Geoffrey Morrison is a writer/photographer about tech and travel for CNET, The New York Times, and other web and print publications. He's also the Editor-at-Large for The Wirecutter. He has written for Sound&Vision magazine, Home Theater magazine, and was the Editor-in-Chief of Home Entertainment magazine. He is NIST and ISF trained, and has a degree in Television/Radio from Ithaca College. His bestselling novel, Undersea, and its sequel, Undersea Atrophia, are available in paperback and digitally on Amazon. He spends most of the year as a digital nomad, living and working while traveling around the world. You can follow his travels at BaldNomad.com and on his YouTube channel.
Geoffrey Morrison
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BenQ TH685

The TH685 from BenQ is a projector aimed at gamers. It can get very bright.

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Bright

The TH685 can get even brighter if you don't care about color temperature accuracy.

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Many fans

It's HDR capable, though don't expect much in that regard with any projector.

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Manual zoom and focus

The zoom and focus wheels feel cheap and don't have smooth movement. Throw distance is a bit shorter than some sub-$1,000 projectors.

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Buttons

The remote is not backlit, but the on and off buttons are color coded, which is nice.

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Inputs

Both HDMI inputs are HDCP 2.2. There's even a legacy analog PC input and output.

One of its strengths as a gaming projector is low input lag of 16.4 milliseconds.

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Speaker

Another fan and the single speaker.

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Lamp

In the right mode lamp life is a claimed 15,000 hours. At 4 hours a day that's more than ten years before you need to replace the lamp.

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Feet*3

All three feet are adjustable, making coffee table placement a bit easier.

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