Products in this test

Movie experiences are often synonymous with sitting on the bench in front of the TV screen in the living room. Or you go to the cinema, or even have a dedicated home theater room with a projector at home. None of the parts are very tempting in the summer heat, then you would rather pull outdoors.

Normally, it means taking the movie experience out, staring at your mobile or tablet. And as an “ego solution” it works fine. But what if there are several who want to take part in the experience? Or that you simply think the mobile screen is getting too cluttered? The solution is a portable projector. Imagine watching the football match outdoors in the summer evening, on the “big screen”! The possibilities are many.

A portable projector can project a much larger image than you get from a tablet or laptop, something even people on the go should appreciate. It is handy during the flight or train ride, where you can watch movies directly on the back of the chair in front of you. And when you get to the hotel room, you can enjoy a 100-inch picture directly on the wall. The small hotel TV is fading in comparison! Just be aware that the image is slightly more coarse-grained than you are used to from the PC screen and tablet, as the pixel resolution is lower than HD.

Better sound?

If you want better sound than the rickety built-in speaker, you can use the audio output and connect a portable speaker. Just make sure the speaker has such a 3.5mm analog audio input, or if the projector has a Bluetooth connection, it can be connected wirelessly to a Bluetooth speaker. As always, the larger the speakers, the larger the sound, so you get to consider between portability and sound pressure.

Pocket Projector: Different functions

Portable projectors come in different sizes and shapes, and then it is often the case that smaller can be more practical, while the slightly larger ones have better brightness and are thus more useful in more situations. Some have a built-in player that can be fed with movies stored on memory cards, others have wireless playback from a smartphone. Some have Bluetooth connectivity to wireless headphones.

The requirement we have set in this test is that the projectors must have an HDMI input that works with both media players and smartphones. They must have a built-in battery or the possibility of this, otherwise they can not be called portable. Everyone in this test has a built-in speaker, and most have headphone output.

The pocket projector candidates

We have tried to get as many projectors as possible. It turned out not to be very easy. Many manufacturers have cut out such, others are in the middle of replacing models. For example, we expect to get the Sony MP-CD1, but it did not arrive in time for this test.

Then we ended up getting a whole bunch of Philips projectors. They may have the largest width of such among some others, so if you think this looks skewed, know that the number we got was even larger, whereupon we selected the ones we considered most relevant.

We already know the Asus ZenBeam E1, and we do the same with the BenQ GS1, which has better brightness and resolution than most. And also with an extremely short throw distance, for the largest possible images from the shortest possible distance.

This is how we tested

We have tested all the projectors with movies from Netflix via Apple TV. An HDMI splitter is used so that several projectors can display the same image at the same time. Projectors that have other functions such as wireless mirroring from mobile, video files on memory chip, etc., we have not tested this time.