Amazon Customer
- Comment
Great little projector. Its bright and crisp. This is very similar to the Brookstone 200 lumens pro projector (the non-smart one). Theyre both 200 lumens and are powered by the DLP IntelliBright technology. In my opinion, theres no match. DLP wins hands down compared to LCD and LCoS. Its brighter, sharper, and has the best overall picture quality - but I digress. Now getting back to THIS projector. It is dimmer compared to the Brookstone projector, and the colors are a bit washed out. However, this is still a great little projector. Simple operation: just turn it on and plug in a streaming stick into the HDMI port and in no time youre watching your favorite movie/show. The only "settings" that are available are a keystone correction and a contrast mode selection (normal or vivid). Both are changed through a touch sensitive "button" at the top. There are two other soft buttons for controlling the volume of the built in speakers (decent, but youll need to connect to external speakers for sure). Its rated at up to an 100" diagonal image size, but you can definitely get bigger images if you move the projector back. Okay with a bit of ambient light in the room, but its much better in the dark. Most of these projectors are meant to be operated with little or no ambient light in the room. Now, its not a short throw projector and with a throw ratio of 1.66:1 ... youll have to be pretty far away from the screen to get a big image. With the built in battery, speakers, and a USB port for providing power to your media streaming stick, its truly portable. I didnt test the battery, but with its claimed 2.5 hours of battery, you should easily get through a movie. Here are some drawbacks; hence a 4 star review and Im returning it: 1. Its a tad dimmer than I had hoped. Like I said, the Brookstone 200 lumens pro projector (non-smart) is much brighter than this. 2. The focus wheel is just not good. Its loose until you start getting a sharper image, but then the wheel starts getting hard to spin, it starts getting tighter as the image gets sharper. Then, just when you think you have it, youve over-spun it because it was so hard to spin it just that tad bit to get it perfect. It takes a while to get a good focus. I guess if youre not moving it around too much, this is not a big issue. For me, this is somewhat of a deal breaker. 3. Keystone correction: Its a great feature. Just press the middle button on the top and the image is auto-corrected. But, to me, the aspect ratio of the corrected image didnt seem right. It seemed like the image was a tad too wide. Images were stretched a bit horizontally. I was comparing the image against the Brookstone projector (watching the same scene in the same movie side by side). Initially I was not sure if the Brookstone was off (causing slightly taller images) or if this projector was off (causing slightly wider images). But I played around a bit with various positioning of each projector and I felt like this projector was off a bit. Not sure if I would have noticed it if I werent comparing it to anything else. So, it may not be a problem at all. But for me, given my situation, it was a deal breaker. So, after all of that, I think Im going to stick with the Brookstone 200 lumens pro (non-smart) projector over this one. This one is much cheaper than the Brookstone one, so if youre on a budget, Id say give this one a shot. The Brookstone projector is not perfect, it does tend to be a bit over-saturated with its colors. So, if youve never used a Brookstone projector, just go with this one; its much cheaper and theres a good chance youll like it. UPDATE 3/27/2017: I did return it and got a replacement. The focus wheel on the replacement projector is smooth and doesnt have any issues. Im going to keep the replacement and use it in the bedroom. The brightness is good for my purposes. And the "minor" issue with the keystone is a non-issue based on the placement. Overall, this is a SOLID projector. Updating star rating to 5 stars!!