The BenQ AK900ST is the 4K golf simulator that takes the pain out of setup.
With 6,000 lumens, AI-enhanced golf imagery and clever automatic screen fitting, BenQ’s latest projector is built to make a simulator look as good as it plays
A good golf simulator should make you forget you’re standing in a shed, garage or spare room. The BenQ AK900ST gets surprisingly close.
The first thing that strikes you is the picture. This is a true 4K UHD projector, delivering 3840 x 2160 resolution with 6,000 ANSI lumens of brightness, and the difference is obvious once a simulated course fills a large impact screen. Fairways have genuine texture, trees are sharply defined and the transition between grass, sand and water looks far more convincing than the slightly washed-out images you often associate with simulator setups.
That is where BenQ’s Golf Mode 2.0 comes into its own. Its AI-enabled video processor works frame by frame to enhance textures and detail, while HDR processing improves reflections, shadows and sunlight. The result is an image with plenty of depth without looking artificially processed.
Colour is another big part of the appeal. The AK900ST covers 95 percent of the Rec. 709 colour space, with BenQ specifically tuning the projector for the demands of golf simulation. On screen, that translates into natural looking greens and convincing bunker and water tones. It is the sort of improvement you notice more the longer you play.
Then there is the clever bit: getting the thing set up in the first place.
Anyone who has installed a simulator knows that projector positioning can become an exercise in trial and error. The AK900ST takes much of that out of the equation. Auto Screen Fit 2.0 uses the projector’s camera to detect the screen and automatically adjust the image, while automatic focus measures the throw distance and sharpens the picture accordingly.
Two new aspect ratios (3:2 and 5:4) are specifically aimed towards easing the setup for golf impact screens. It also supports curved screens, which is a particularly useful feature for anyone building a serious home simulator. The camera assisted setup can help with screen warping and geometry, too, making the process considerably less fiddly than manually wrestling an image into place. Lens shift gives you additional flexibility when positioning the projector. The AK900ST can produce screen sizes from 60 to 300 inches, so there is plenty of scope to build a genuinely immersive setup.
And once the golf clubs are put away, it does not suddenly become redundant. Five scene memory profiles allow you to save different settings for golf, movies, sport or gaming, including picture mode, focus, zoom and geometry. With HDR10 support, 24p cinematic playback and up to 120Hz output, the same giant screen can become a home cinema or gaming display.
For golfers, though, the real attraction remains the combination of image quality and simplicity. A simulator projector needs to do more than produce a bright picture. It needs to make the virtual course look believable, keep fine detail sharp and work with the increasingly sophisticated simulation software available today.
The AK900ST ticks those boxes while taking much of the fiddling out of installation. With 4K resolution, 6,000 lumens, Golf Mode 2.0 and smart automatic setup, it feels less like a conventional home theatre projector adapted for golf and more like a
projector designed with the modern simulator in mind.
For anyone building a premium home simulator, that is a compelling proposition.
