Appotronics specializes in low power and highly portable projectors. They offer a wide range of projectors with connections to practically any source (VGA, HDMI, composite) as well as embedded SD card slot for direct media playback on select models.
The LP200 is an LED driven DLP ‘pocket projector’ (pictured left) with a very respectable 200 lumen output, 858×600 resolution, 2000:1 contrast ratio, a 30,000 hour bulb life, a built-in speaker and an SD card slot for an all-in-one media playback solution.
However, their newest projector (the Y|X) more than doubles the light output at 500 lumens and still only uses as much power as a typical lightbulb (60W).
Optoma’s latest pocket projector, the PK201 (pictured right), can literally fit in your pocket — it’s the size of an iPhone. It also uses an LED lit DLP and has a built in SD card slot for direct media playback. However, this model only puts out 20 lumens so it’s very limited in its application.
Microvision, one of the pioneers in the pico projector market, has also doubled the light output of their previous model meaning it can paint a surprisingly bright picture given its size. The ShowWX+ uses laser light to drive a micromirror (not DLP) at 858×480 resolution in a 16:9 aspect ratio. The good news — it uses lasers (!!!) which means you never have to focus. The bad news — it’s still only 15W, which means you won’t be running your home theater (or your closet theater) from it.
Oh, and laser light projectors still have ‘speckle’ — an artifact caused by light of the same wavelength destructively interfering which cause dark and light spots to crawl all over the projected image. Still, as seen on the left, the image is certainly relatively bright and punchy. The projector is even being powered by the iPhone that’s providing the video.
It’s a great sign that these low power microprojectors are doubling their light output but still maintaining very low power requirements from one year to the next.
In years past it was really hard to imagine being able to use a projector with a sub-100 lumen light output, but at 500 lumens we are really starting to see something you could use for small gatherings.