Top positive review
5.0 out of 5 starsPractical, versatile, solidly constructed and well thought out
Reviewed in the United States on September 16, 2015
I have never bothered to take the time to hack out an Amazon review but I was relatively impressed with this device so I am making the effort. The following should clarify a few outstanding questions:
Firstly, I think it’s really neat that the designers even bothered to include an on-board speaker, battery and SD card reader for pure native playback. Due to obvious technical limitations these functions are always going to be less than ideal but it’s very cool that they are there at all. Want to watch the latest Game of Thrones episode with a bunch of friends in the woods with nothing but what’s in the box, an SD card, a stick, a sheet and some string? Can do! It won’t be the most stellar or immersive experience (built in speaker is tiny, soft and very shallow) but it CAN DO. That in itself is amazing.
Most of us will be displaying things a different way, via a tablet/phone/laptop, which I’ll discuss later in the review, but let’s first talk about what it’s able to do natively:
It seems to be pretty much impossible to find information on what formats this device will play back natively using the SD card so I have done the work for you. I tested the device using a reasonably comprehensive video format testing suite selection of files as well as a number of real world examples from my media collection, read from an SD card:
MKV or MP4 container using H264 codec – Yes
Audio for both above:
AAC - Yes
AC3 – No
DTS – Yes
FLAC – No
MP2 – Yes
MP3 – Yes
Opus – No
Vorbis – No
WMA2 – Assume Yes (below)
WMV container using WVC1 – Yes
Audio: Assume all of the above AND:
WMA2 – Yes
AVI container using DivX – Yes
AVI container using Xvid – Yes
MKV or MP4 container using Xvid – No (may work in some cases? Didn’t for me)
(Real world xvids in .avi worked fine, the same examples from video test suite did not)
H265 – No
Sorenson (old) – No
Cinepak (old) – No
FLV – Yes
MPEGV – Yes
For reference sake, most high res movie files you will encounter on the web are MKV containers using H264 with DTS/AAC – There is still some popularity with AC3 so this is the only real potential spanner in the works. Performance wise; the device smoothly played back 1080p in the most commonly found listed formats, which was quite surprising.
It should be noted that when testing out some of the more unusual audio formats I managed to ‘crash’ the audio decoder and though I could still play the videos, no audio track played again until I restarted the device. It’s only a minor issue.
The specs read “1.99:1 Dist/Width” which implies that 2X distance provides X display width. I guess they must be literally referring to narrow width rather than the full length of the (typically 16:9 if watching movies) picture because in my live measuring tests with pure 16:9 video a 146cm distance yielded a 122cm ‘long’ picture. To put this into more practical terms (and translated for you American readers) if you want a ’55.5” screen’ (diagonal measure, as with TV’s), the device needs to be 57” away.
For those contemplating using this for watching media on the ceiling while in bed; Do it! Putting this thing on the floor in a room with standard height ceilings (92” here in Australia) yields an equivalent screen of 87” or so. Wrapping it to your bed posts will be a less impressive but probably more practical.
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For general use though, the native playback ability is of little use to most of us. Most will be hooking this up to a laptop or tablet/phone. In this regard things get even simpler and better.
I personally hook it up to a Sony Xperia Z3 tablet Compact, though any MHL Android device will do. Using a suitable video player I can play back almost any video file I like from the ample 128GB SD card tied into the device loaded with a variety TV shows and movies. Of course there is the added advantage of being able to stream anything you like straight off the net or off your local network.
The best part about doing things this way is you do not need to bother with the remote. The remote works, but is not ideal, and is quite fussy as to angle/distance of use and becomes frustrating quickly. Using a device, the projector defaults to the live MHL feed from a tablet from the moment you power on. From there it simply mirrors everything on screen. VLC is smart enough to recognise the MHL output and blacken the tablets screen when playing media to save battery but still maintain the playback controls. I haven’t tested this with MX Player yet.
The next advantage of playing from a device is being able to hook in a portable Bluetooth speaker when using outdoors. After some research I settled on the Logitech/UE Boom. It’s a great little speaker with tons of punch and 15 hours of playback. The projector does have a 3.5mm port though so it shouldn’t be a problem to feed the audio into a full scale sound system with a male to male cable if you’re playing indoors.
Whether indoors or out, external power is a necessity. The built in battery is good for short displays and that’s nice to have but for sustained use a two port AC mains USB charger or two port power bank is best. Anyone who travels or camps will likely have these items. I recommend two ports specifically because when using MHL (tablet/phone), the host cable itself needs USB power in addition the projector. Larger power banks generally have two charging ports.
I really appreciate that it came with an attachable tripod mount. It’ll happily sit on the included “wrap-able” mini tripod or my full size DSLR tripod to get it into just the right position.
Build quality is excellent and well covered in previous reviews.
It is useful in low light (after sunset) to dark. Don’t bother in day/bright light.
If I had just one feature I would like to see added, it would be keystone correction. I’m fairly sure the folks who designed this probably considered and rejected this already due to some size/design/functionality penalty I don’t fully appreciate but it sure would make this thing perfect!
Overall, a nice little product!
