By Andrew Liszewski
Were we in the market for a pocket-sized projector we’d probably be eyeing the AAXA L1 Laser Pico Projector we reviewed back in the Summer. But admittedly it’s lacking a couple of cool features that this LED-based compact projector has. Like Wifi and that snazzy little wireless keyboard. Powered by a Linux-based custom OS the projector doesn’t really have a full-fledged desktop UI, but it does allow you to access online photo galleries and videos from sources like YouTube, in addition to offline content from an SD card or a USB flash drive.
Chinavasion is currently selling it for just north of $200, which isn’t that expensive. Just keep in mind you’ll have to settle for 640×480 VGA resolution, a limited 10 lumens of brightness and a maximum of 2 hours of battery life, presumably when using it as sparingly as possible. In terms of file format support it’s pretty robust, happily playing MPEG1, 2 & 4 files, VOBs and DIVX/XVID clips, and the included remote makes entering a wifi password far easier than with with the projector’s limited buttons. Oh and that fancy mini tripod is included too, which from my experience will come in really handy.
[ Mini Projector with Wifi + Wireless Remote ] VIA [ 7Gadgets ]
Always makes me wonder if Chinavision have some sort of problem obtaining the newer lighting engines from Texas Instruments because their ANSI lumen rating sucks across the board.
They always come up with cool non-standard features like wifi and on-board OS though that puts them ahead of a few of their competitors. Just a shame about the bad brightness rating!