Pico projectors in the market and upcoming: Price and specs
One may be unfamiliar with the term Pico Projectors, but you are going to see a lot of them around in 2009.
A Pico projector can project videos in your PMP or iPod on a fifty inch screen – give or take a few inches. Sometimes you have SD card expandability, and that makes things even better.
You can plug you iPod on to the projector in a dark room to enjoy your pictures and videos on a reasonably large screen. The picture quality may not live up to what you get out of a proper professional projector; but it will do in a pinch. And things are getting better too. Not to mention that pico projectors are real affordable.
Pico projectors are real tiny and can easily flop around in your pocket. The RXS Redshift PPR4803 or 3M MPro11 measuring just 115×50x23mm are examples.
The Pico projectors are not meant for T.V viewers as their batteries can only support battery back up to 2 hours. So what you can actually watch are short movies, documentaries, clips downloaded from the Net and so on. Lengthy movies are not what pico projectors are meant for.
Light source of pico projectors are not powerful. That is expected from their tiny size – people even complain often about the brightness of pictures from HDTV projectors – so you can imagine. So to really enjoy the videos, you need to be in a pitch dark room. They bring out the best in a pico projector – but again then you are not uring the little projector for what it was meant for – quick, casual viewing.
Some of the projectors that are available in the market and that will be launched in the near future are discussed below:
BenQ GP1 pico projector
Pic: BenQ GP1 pico projector
The BenQ’s palm top projector powered by Texas DLP Pico chipset is one of the few pico projectors that support USB media playback on the go. Thanks to the USB reader the projector can coast its feature as it supports a number of useful applications such as photo slideshow, video playback (format compatibility is uncertain), or PowerPoint presentations. BenQ GP1 has a lifespan of 20,000 hours, according to the company. For a little pico projector, the 2,000:1 contrast ratio also looks good. 100 Lumens is quite good too for a pico projector.
Connectivity options of the BenQ GP1 pico projector include a composite video input, D-sub. It also has a detachable iPod dock station and built-in speakers. The BenQ GPI can project a 80 inch diagonal image.
BenQ GP1 price: $599.
WowWee Cinemin pico projector
WowWee, the maker of cute little robots, is also now in the pico projector market with a portable tiny projector. The WowWee Cinemin range of pico projectors are powered by Texas Instruments’ DLP technology for good picture quality.
There are three WowWee Cinemin pico projectors, in fact. The Cinemin Swivel pico projector is a light-weight projector that is the candy bar. Offering a 3-hour battery life so you can watch a decent movie, the WowWee Swivel can also twist itself at it shinge to project videos on the ceiling.
The WowWee Cinemin pico projectors can be connected to LCD TVs, movie projectors and classroom projectors. There is also connectivity to the mobile devices such as the Apple iPhone and iPod.
The Cinemin Stick pico projector is also pretty tiny, offers internal memory and an expandable SD card memory slot.
The third pico projector in the WowWee Cinemin line-up is an iPod docking station and media center.
WowWee has not announced any prices for any of its pico projectors as far as we know. We expect pricing to be copetitive to the other pico projectors here though.
Price: Not available.
Toshiba pico projector
Not much info is available about this one. Toshiba, at Europe’s IFA 2008, showcased their cool-looking LED pocket projector. The device is able to throw 10 lumen of light. We hear that it is the size of a normal smartphone. Apart from that, all we know about the Toshiba Pico Projector is the weight which is just 100 grams, the expected size of 10 x 4.5 x 1.7 cm. All that could change by the time it makes its appearance in the market.
Price: Not available.
Acer K10 Pico Projector
Acer K10 Pico Projector which is now available in UK. The pico projector offers 100 ANSI Lumens, a decent 2000:1 contrast ratio and can prject both widescreen as well as TV-type 4:3 aspect ratio images up to 60 inches diagonally. We have to say it is not exactly a great looker, unlike the Toshiba or the WowWee pico projector models featued above.
It is the first pico projector to use an LED lamp tech though DLP is also an option.
Dimensions of 127 x 122mm the projector weighs just over half a kilo and has a lamp life of 20,000 hours.
Acer K10 Pico Projector price: £401.35 (UK), approx 624 $, (USA).
3M Micro Professional Projector MPro 110
Pretty longish name for a little projector. But looks like 3M is targeting it as a businessman’s tool. The 3M Micro Professional Projector MPro110 uses LCoS (liquid crystal on silicon) chip and LED lamp. Light levels are nothing great, at a rather low 7 ANSI lumens. As expected, picture quality is low too.Think about this as an emergency projector to carry along, and for quick, short uses only. You would not want to watch a movie on this pico projector from 3M. A small-ish presentation in a dark would be fine, otherwise. The image resolution is 640 x 480 image. The 3M pico projector has both composite and VGA inputs. Battery backup is only around 1 hour. No movies, just powerpoint, guys. Does the job.
3M MPro pico projector price: 300 $ to 36 $
Forever Plus Pico Projector
Forever Plus 720p pico projector photo
Forever Plus Pico Projector – whoever thought up a name like that? – does nto obviously survive forver, giving you 720p projection pleasure. But the resolution that this pico projector would offer will make any AV guy drop his pants. At 1,280 x 768 resolution, it offers much for for the quality-conscious buyer than the other pico projector models in the market with 800 x 600 or even 640 x 480. Strangely, the initial information called it ideal for business presentations. Wha…? Watch al the movies you want with this, guys. It uses an LED as a light source, HDMI, RGB inputs, and gives you true 16:9 viewing. This is pico projector heaven! It weights .8 kg and 30,000 hours of lamp life. You can connect it to HDMI, computers or video devices, iPod, IPhone, Wii, DVD players… Wait till it comes to the market.
Price: Not available.
Maradin Pico Projectors
Maradin’s miniaturized laser-diode projector (MLP) technology has a ot of promise. But we will see it only in 2010.Its MEMS projector tech uses a low-powered laser beam to produce high-resolution video playback. The official spiel for the Maradin pico projectors goes thus:
“Maradin’s MLP utilizes a unique proprietary actuation method, overcoming the biggest challenge of developing an adequate torque. Combining electro-magneto and electro-static actuation, a unique control scheme of the actuators along with a novel fabrication process, facilitated a true raster scan of the highest quality”
The company has managed to raise $3m from a private Swiss investor to fund MLP development and commercialization.
Maradin prototypes are ready, and first commercial pico projectors from the company are expected to be here by early 2010. For such cool tech, what would the price be like? On the higher side, we are afraid.
Price: Not available.
Samsung MBP200 pico projector
This one is a pico projector phone. Official launch of the Samsung MBP200 Pico Projector phone is expected to be in May 2009.
While not much is known about this, for a phone equipped with a pico projector, the price tag of $637 which is rumoured about sounds reasonable. Initially the phone would be available in Europe, to be shipped to other regions within two months of its release. Not much information is available about the projector, or the phone for that matter
Samsung MBP200 PIco projector phone price: Not available, rumoured to be $637
Bug Labs BUGprojector
From the home of the open-source hardware guys, comes the Bug labs BUGProjector. The company believes ih pen source hardware philosophy, do not bother with secrecy or patenring. The BUGprojector is a pico projector from the company that will throw 9 lumen of light and can throw an image from just eight inches away.
You get 4:3 aspect ratio, 480 x 320 resolution, DLP.. and that’s about it. We know it can connect via Wi-Fi, or maybe even Bluetooth, to other devices.
We can find some articles on the Net about the BUGprojector, but nothing more.
Price of BUGprojector: Not available
Brando Pico Projectors
Hong Kong-based gadget shop Brando offers two new Pico Projectors. The Retro Cuboid Tiny will feature LED projectors with VGA resolution, 200:1 contrast ratio, 15-48 inch screen size and AV In. The price tag for the Retro Cuboid projector is $219.
The second one from Brando is the so called Ultra Bright Tiny Hand-Held LED Projector features a built-in media player like the BeamBox Evolution R-1 aka Epoq HH07.
The 105×58x15mm LED projector will have a 1 GB card VGA resolution, 15-50 inch screen size, SD card slot and built-in battery with 50-90min. display time.
Price of Cuboid Tony - $219; Ultra Bright Tiny – $469.
Beambox Evolution R-1 pico projector
The new Pico Projector BeamBox Evolution R-1 features a pretty OK-for-a-pico-projector brightness level of 30 lumens, and has a builtin MP4 player.
According to beambox, the image is good enough up to 40 inches at 1 meter distance. You get 640×480px resolution, 100:1 contrast ratio, 30 – 50 inch display size, and SD Card slot to an expansion up to 4 GB – pretty much great bunch of features for a fun ico projector. The measurements of this rather stylish Pico projector are 108 x 59 x 28mm and the weight is 175g. This little projector will cost you £260 from the site. You get a bit more than an hour, okay, maybe an hour and a half playback time mx out of this.
Price of Beambox Evolution R-1 (Epoch HH07 in US) : $ 340