Tag Archives: micro projector

Mini Projectors Enhancing Teaching Around The World

Cardiac Teaching in Haiti Hospital

The micro and pico projector market is revolutionizing the way the students are being taught in 3rd world countries. With pico projectors becoming more portable and some projectors like AAXA’s P7 having enough battery power for 90 minutes, these tools have become pivotal in areas without the resources to support a full-fledged classroom.

One issue teaching in a 3rd world country like Kenya is the lack of internet access. Physicists Undergraduate Artur Donaldson had this to say about teaching Kenya ” The peak of the hill was one of the few places I encountered during my time in Kenya where there is no mobile phone reception. This means that the school and its suite of computers are isolated from the Internet — because, like most of Kenya, there is no wired broadband service in the area. “

Luckily for those teaching in these areas, the pico projectors on the market currently have USB and SD ports . This gives teachers the ability to preload their content for teaching and negates any worry about potential issues with WIFI or Cellular reception.

Wearable Micro Projector Confuses AI Facial Recognition

© Photo by Jing-cai Lu

Our parents always told us not to stick our face to close to the screen. Well, this new wearable technology makes it so the screen gets stuck to your face. Designed by product designer Jing-cai Lu, this wearable micro projector shines a variety of faces on top of yours in order to confuse even the top AI facial recognition systems. With how common the use of facial recognition is becoming in various countries, and soon the United States, the daily privacy of the individual has become a hot topic.

This wearable pico projector gives rise to a new form of anonymity and is currently in limited productions. This level of privacy makes you ask the question, is this necessary? According to Lu, it is. Lu is quoted as saying, “In the future, the advertisement could call your name when you walk along the streets. The companies would know your personal interests and may set different retail strategies for you. It could be convenient for customers, but personal thoughts and opinions should be kept private. This product protects you from this privacy violation”. As horrifying as this may look to certain people, I must admit this is one cool use of projection technology! Talk about a portable projector!

New iMac Comes With Built-In Micro Projector

© Photo by Apple

Harping off the momentum of Apple’s iPhone 12 with a built-in mini projector, Apple has released a patent showing an iMac projecting its screen onto the back wall. The tech company based out of Silicon Valley is exploring new ways to improve the iMac’s display. This trend towards using more pico projectors is exciting for the industry!

Paul X. Wang and Joshua P. Song were the engineers that came up with the idea to have the iMac use projection technology to display all sides of the screen directly onto the wall. The new iMac is said to come with two mini projectors, one on each side, and utilizes various unnamed sensors to create a desktop extension without buying any other equipment.

Even though there is a large possibility that this may never come into fruition as Apple is simply exploring the idea, this is great news for the pico projector market. The large commercial use of pico projectors and research into projection technology will hopefully lead to some cool advances for the pico projector consumer market.

Pico Projectors Are A Photographer’s Secret Weapon!

Photo By Jake Hicks

A trend that has been seen frequently on the TikTok ForYou Page is the use of projectors to enhance and stylize creative portraits. Using a standard and a pico projector in the photography studio. This creates an awesome background effect that gives looks more realistic when compared to using effects in post-production. The amount of mobility you have when using a pico projector makes taking these photos a breeze. 

Photo by DIY Photography

Playing around with the different backdrops, adjusting the brightness, and messing with the focus of the projector can completely enhance the mood of each portrait. A cool hack that has been highly discussed is having projectors with a high lumen output for great background photography. Thankfully there are tons to choose from right now, the mini projector market has projects with a really high Lumen output. Using a high lumen projector brings the model into focus while naturally blurring the background.

To avoid the mobility and weight issues with the standard projectors, look at the market of micro and pico projectors for a compact product that packs a mean punch! Not only are pico projectors more affordable but they also give you more bang for your buck. Projectors like AAXA’s P300 Neo and the Cinemood Portable Theatre let the photographer try different angles because of their compact size. In terms of brightness, these pico projectors shine bright on effects on your subjects as the Anker boasts a solid 200 lumens and the P7 has a whopping 600 lumens.

Try this little hack out on your next photoshoot and comment below how it worked for you. If you need more inspiration for types of shoots you can do while using a micro projector click on this link!

Does Apple’s New iPhone 12 Come With Its Own Mini Projector?!

© Photo by Forbes

Even though the iPhone 11 just became the go-to phone, Apple is making huge moves towards the next generation in their phone line up. Leaks of Apple‘s ideas for the 12 have begun to emerge that is getting the pico and micro projector market buzzing. Yes, the iPhone 12 being the first 5G phone is exciting, but the news that is getting all of us exciting is the fact that the iPhone 12 is suppose to have a built-in mini projector.

Now, this projector isn’t going to be set up the same way we are used to setting our LED micro projectors up at home. To enable this projector instead of pressing a button the user pulls two inserts from either end of the phone and projects in both directions. This allows you to display onto the nearest flat surface to watch movies, games, or watch your Vlogging videos on YouTube. This is an extremely interesting concept that will hopefully open up more doors for the pico projector market. Our biggest concern for this is really the brightness and picture quality. Hopefully, Apple is able to bring their concept to life with enough brightness and picture quality to give pocket projectors that represent the LED Pico Projector community like AAXA’s M6, Vamvo’s Mini, AAXA’s P7, and Sony’s MP-CD1 a good name. Check out the Apple iPhone 12 trailer to see it in action for yourself.

30,000 Lumen Projector at ISE 2020

© Photo by Epson

Get your sunglasses on and don’t stare directly at the lens. Last month at Integrated System Europe Expo Epson unveiled a projector with a blistering 30,000-lumen output. For a frame of reference, AAXA’s 4k1 mini projector which can comfortably cover a 200″ surface has 1,500 lumens. Epson refers to this projector as the EB-L30000U. By double stacking this projector, users can achieve a high-quality, cost-effective 60,000 4k lumens solution. This bright large venue projector is going to have some great uses for the professional audiovisual company but may be overkill for the standard home theatre. For reference, this video below is what 30,000 Lumens look like.

If you want a projector that is bright but will also not destroy your eyesight and wake the neighbors whenever you watch a movie, I highly recommend you look at the pico projector market. The current pico projector market has produced high-quality projects that shine brighter and have great picture quality. Companies like Optoma, Kodak, AAXA, Epson and others are the front runners of a market that produces projectors that produce a high lumen output, support a great picture quality, and are compact enough to fit in your hand. For example, AAXA Technologies’ P7 boasts a 600 LED Lumen output and supports up to 1080p, and Kodak’s Ultra Mini Pico Projector supports 1080p with 50-100 lumens.

However, if you are an AV professional or you want to have a movie night on the side of your barn then this projector is perfect for you. In all seriousness the advancements with LED technology and picture quality in projectors are exciting, and we can wait to see this trickle down to the pico projector market.

Compact Projector Astonishes Australian Art Festival Goers

© Photo by Brad’sBlog

The Adelaide Fringe Festival known for being the world’s second-biggest art festival introduced an awe-inspiring interactive art installation with the help of FujiFilm’s FP-Z500 Ultra Short Throw Project. This projector is equipped with the world’s first folded two- axial rotatable lens that allows for omnidirectional image projection without moving the unit. In layman’s terms, this projector has the ability to direct its lens up, down, front, rear, left and right to project images without having to be physically moved. Another awesome bit of news for us micro projector fans is that Fujifilm was able to fit all of this technology in a fairly compact body measuring only 108 mm thick. Hopefully, technology like this will trickle down to the pico projector market!

© Photo by Brad’sBlog

The versatility of this projector allowed Karl ‘ Winda’ Telfer’s Yabarra – Dreaming in Light to come to life as the festival’s main attraction. Some highlights of this projector’s work are its ability to project simultaneously on the walls, floor, and ceiling without any seams in the image. Fujifilm’s FP-Z5000 has not only been able to project these images but has retained the images picture quality, maintaining the rich and vibrant colors that the artist envisioned.

The two men responsible for coming up with the idea of using the FP-Z5000 are Milenko Novakovic and Leko Novakovic, the co-owners of Novatech Creative Event Technology, the audiovisual company in charge of providing and installing the equipment on Yabarra – Dreaming in Light. Leko is quoted as saying “The FP-Z5000 is such a unique product and Milenko had some great ideas of how we could use these projectors in new and innovative ways, one of which was for the Yabarra – Dreaming installation, so we decided on an initial purchase of four units.”

The dreaming light installation is available at the Adelaide Fringe Festival until March 15th. If you are in the area check out the installation and comment on what you think of the projector. For the rest of us we can learn more about the compact projector here:

New Projector Tablet – Lenovo Yoga Pro 2 Review

Recently, Lenovo released the newest member of the Yoga Tablet line, the Yoga Tablet 2 Pro.  A new type of tablet targeted at professionals on the move that need to be able to set up and give a presentation quickly and effectively.  There are a few major differences with this tablet that make it stand out from the other ones on the market currently.  The first, and one of the main marketing points on the tablet for Lenovo is the integrated Pico Projector, the tablet has a round base where the battery, projector, and power button are located, and this round part also has additional functionality as the stand for the projector when it is in stand up mode.  The tablet also sports a HUGE 13” screen at an awesome resolution for HD viewing, this screen is so big that it almost feels like you’re using a touch screen desktop.  The aluminum body of the tablet only helps to make the product feel solid and well made, however with this comes a lot of additional weight.  All of these features add up to make a solid product that could help most professionals (or even those who just want a sweet tablet) get things done faster and more effectively, so without further ado let’s get onto the review of this unusual tablet.
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Size and Usability:

With a screen clocking in at 13.3” no one can call this tablet small, in fact as far as tablets go this thing is a behemoth clad in an aluminum body that brings the weight of the device to a whopping 2 pounds which for a handheld device can start to get heavy after a while.  The huge screen allows for a huge keyboard, which really helps when using the tablet, it’s so big that it almost feels like using a normal keyboard on a desktop or laptop and it’s crisp resolution of 2560 x 1440 allows for a clear image no matter what size image you are viewing.  It’s an IPS display to boot which means it’s got a good response time and good color temperatures, the touch sensing technology is capacitive which means you get a nice smooth glass feel to the screen and that there is a much lower chance of scratching the screen.

The body of the tablet is designed very well, the cylindrical hinge at the bottom of the unit is the heaviest part of the unit and is generally the surface that the tablet will sit on while in use.  The hinge used is made of aluminum and is very rigid to the body of the tablet, this makes it very hard to move but is also a good thing because when the tablet is sitting up straight it allows for easy typing and no movement of the tablet when the screen is touched (a common issue with stand cases for tablets).

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One thing we’d like to point out is that this is no Nexus 7, you aren’t going to be using this with one hand, in fact you’ll probably be cradling it in one arm while using it due to its large size and weight, we found it very uncomfortable to hold in a standing position for more than 5 minutes at a time, at that point we found ourselves opening up the stand and setting this beast down.

The sound is an 8w UBL speaker located on the back of the projector which produces great sound, actually the best we’ve ever heard out of a tablet, for the first time ever bass tones are audible and the treble is clear and crisp.  This may be due to the massive amount of space that Lenovo was allotted to fit a speaker however we were impressed by its quality and volume, it’s definitely something that could produce enough sound for several people to hear while watching a video on the built in projector.  As for the projector, we’re going to be talking about that later in the review for several reasons, mainly though we felt that it just deserved its own section for good and bad reasons.

Projector

Now for the most juicy part of the review, the part that most people interested in the Yoga Tablet 2 Pro came here to read about, and the part that Lenovo probably doesn’t want the most true coverage on; The projector.

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It is one of the first mobile products we’ve seen that has a usable built in projector.  With all of the older mobile products with projection there was always the issue of positioning.  How do you use the phone to present and also have the projector in the right position and in focus?  This was especially true because there was just no way that you were fitting a tripod mount on a phone or a tablet.  This is where that sturdy stand on the bottom of the Lenovo tablet comes in.  By using the tablet in stand mode you are able to adjust the horizontal keystone of the projection by adjusting the stand, given that you are using a flat surface to project from this should allow you to get a good usable image out of the tablet, it is also very easy to use while it is in this position as it allows the user to sit and basically use the tablet normally without sacrificing the image quality.

Now for the bad parts, first let’s talk about the brightness.  The projector is dim to say the least, at 50 lumens it creates a dim image even in completely dark conditions, although it does beat the Lumi-tab’s 35 lumen projector, a 50 lumen projector would be barely visible in a lit room.  The focus mechanism on the projector is a small slider on the back of the unit near the lens of the projector, the slider is semi-stiff and hard to do small movements with and thus is hard to get the perfect focus, and we found it easier to physically move the whole tablet back and forth to get the correct focus.

Even when fully focused the projector doesn’t produce the clearest of images which could be due to the fact that when you hold the tablet the lens naturally touches your skin and gets smudges on it, but even when clean viewing text and web pages seemed to have a slight pixilation to the image which made text somewhat hard to read.  When viewing a movie the projector looked just fine, except on dark scenes where the brightness of the projector came into play and it became hard to differentiate objects in the shadows.  Lastly, the projector can only be used while the tablet is in a horizontal position, which means you aren’t going to be holding it while projecting like they showed in the promotional videos for the tablet.  Although we’re sure that most users are going to be using it on a table anyways it should be that big of a deal, but we did feel a bit cheated when we held it up to project onto a wall and the projection was completely sideways.

Projection Comparison

For a comparison, we set the Lenovo Yoga 2 Pro up against an AAXA Technologies P3-X Pico Projector to test the brightness, sharpness and ease of use. In this demonstration, we have hooked up the AAXA P3-X to an iPhone 6 using an Apple digital AV adapter and an HDMI to mini HDMI cable. We will post a video later demonstrating the difference between the two, but we did take a couple of images which show a pretty stark difference.

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Lenovo (3) Lenovo (4)

 

As you can see, the 70 lumen AAXA Technologies P3-X (left side) outshined the tablet pretty convincingly. Additionally,  the difficulty in focusing the tablet makes a dedicated micro-projector a much better option for  projection needs.

That’s about all we have to say bad about the projector in the in Yoga Tablet Pro 2,  it’s definitely a product that you could use for personal viewing and for a quick set-up for a business presentation, but we wouldn’t recommend it for much else. 

Specs

In this section we’ll go over the direct specs of the projector just so that you have a reference when you’re looking at this tablet vs others.

Processor: Intel® Atom™ Z3745 Processor

RAM: 2GB LPDDR3

Storage: 32GB internal, up to 64GB SD card for additional storage.

Sensors: G-Sensor, e-Compass, Ambient Light, Hall, and Vibration.

Cameras: Rear 8MP F2.2 with Auto focus, Front 1.6 MP HD

Wireless: Wifi 802.11 a/b/g/n MiMo 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz Dual Band, Bluetooth 4.0

Ports: Micro USB, 3.5 Audio Jack, Micro SD Card

Battery: 9600 mAh (up to 15 hours use time)

Screen: 13.3” 2560×1440 IPS display, Capacitive Touch, 10-point multi-touch

Sound: 2x Front Chamber speakers, 1x JBL subwoofer with Dolby audio, Wolfson Master Hi-Fi Codec

OS: Android 4.4 KitKat

Weight: 2.09 lbs

As you can see it’s got pretty average specs as far as high end tablets go, but it’s definitely a lot more powerful than your average sub $200 tablet.

 

Results

In conclusion, the Yoga Tablet Pro 2 is definitely a cool product that deserves its place in Lenovo’s line-up as one of their main tablets, although unique with its projector we honestly just found it to be such a low quality projector that it wasn’t really usable in a professional situation, we’d still recommend that you go the route of just getting a Pico Projector and hooking it up to a cheap tablet or laptop if you’re looking for a portable projection solution. The results will be a lot better and it will still most likely be cheaper than this tablet/projector combo.  But if you’re just looking for a big tablet to maybe replace a laptop or just something to easily set up and project movies for a couple of friends or yourself then this tablet will fit the mold, it’s definitely not something to immediately pass up as a multimedia tablet but may be something to overlook if you’re looking for a projector.

M1+ Micro Projector Connects Directly to Your Computer

Web Browsing on an M1+ Micro Projector
Web Browsing on an M1+ Micro Projector

We recently found that a few models of micro projector have began including direct VGA inputs for use with computers. The M1+ from Aaxa Technologies is one of the most powerful micro projectors on the market and has this VGA input. We call it a "micro" projector because it isn't quite a "pico." It's not small enough to fit in your pocket but is still very small and portable. It fits easily in a briefcase or small bag and weighs about as much as a can of soda.

For a full list of features check out the M1+ Micro Projector