Now this blog has already been following the fairly rapid advance of micro-projectors and their ilk – and the news has been pretty good with prices falling below $500 and the projection capabilities reaching HD quality. But there are distinct size, lighting conditions, lamp-life and cost trade-offs – just check the two projectors linked to above.
Well there is a new set of pico projectors [see screenshot at left] that will appear on the electronics marketplace at the beginning of September and they will will be small and targeted for smartphones, video + digital cameras, and video players primarily and will only link to desktops and notebooks if they have the right connectors. Talk about a shift in direction – the smartphone is fast becoming the portable computing device of choice. Even the New Scientist in its stodgy way is recognizing this in spectacle … spectacular fashion for a respectable science rag.
The 3M’s MPro120 pico-projector [$350US]is tabbed to supply users with a robust battery life of two to four hours (depending on brightness setting) – enough to watch a full-length film – and, in full brightness mode, achieves a brightness of 12 lumens. Practical image sizes in a semi-drakened room are 50inch diagonal. The projector has an integrated flip stand, tripod, stereo speakers [tiny] and a variety of input cables including VGA connector for laptops and cable links to iPod, smartphones and digital cameras. It improves over the MPro110 with double the battery life and 20,000 hours of LED lamp life. However, I could not find the cost of a replacement lamp but did find cable, battery, and charger cost [all around $30US]. the word on the Web is that the color and image quality is an improvement over the preceeding MPro110; but the jury is still out on reliability of the device over its maligned predecessor.
The ability to swivel the device means its images can be played on ceilings, walls, even tent “roofs”. There are mixed readings from the Web on the quality of the images – but around 50″ diagonal with good color quality.
One of the big perks with the Cinemin Swivel is it ability to allow users to plug into full speakers for full range sound. But the Swivel is a bit short in brightness at 10 lumens versus 12 for the 3M PicoProjector and its battery life of 2 hours was about half that as well. But the 3M projector saw its battery life fall to just over 2 hours when used at full 12 Lumens brightness. Clearly for long shows power may be an issue.
Finally, the NYTimes reports that Samsung has a smartphone available in Asia-only that packs a DLP-based pico -projector built right in. It has output quality roughly equivalent to the Swivel. But one can see the writing on the wall – smartphones and [possibly Netbooks] are becoming compact computing devices that can power [or directly contain] GPS, image and video cameras, disk-capacity digital storage [32GB++], and even multitaking operating systems [see palm Pre’s webOS and Google’s Android]. Clearly users are rapidly leaving the Kansas of desktop and even laptop PCs and over to the hip, fast up and usable, connected, long batttery life, light enough to be highly mobile yet connectible SmartBookPhoneGPSTapeRecorderImageTakerProjector – you customize it – of the next decade and a half.