How to Choose a Portable Projector
Whether you’re giving a presentation to colleagues in a hotel room or tucking one into your bag for a movie night at home, a portable projector lets you cut cords with TVs and monitors. They offer more brightness than pocket models and are easy to carry in a briefcase or backpack.
Brightness
A portable projector must illuminate its own screen, unlike a TV with internal lighting, so performance can vary significantly depending on environmental parameters. Fortunately, the right projection internals and illumination power ensure that a quality portable projector can deliver bright, clear, vibrant images in most conditions, day or night.
The brightness of a projector is measured in lumens (ANSI lumens are more common). The higher the lumens rating, the brighter the picture. The contrast ratio is also important. The higher the ratio, the better, as it eliminates washout and enhances image clarity.
Lumens are important because different media types – movies, presentations, and gaming – have varying inherent brightness and contrast requirements. A good portable projector should have a lumens output that aligns with the needs of most content types.
Another factor that influences the luminosity required is the size of the screen or wall. Larger surfaces require higher lumens to achieve a crisp and vibrant image. Ambient light level is another consideration; it’s best to choose a model with high luminosity for outdoor use, since ambient sunlight can drown out the projection in certain environments.
Most portable projectors use LED technology, which consumes less power than the larger halogen lamps used in many full-size models. This helps extend battery life, which is essential for portable devices that are meant to operate unplugged and away from an outlet.
Contrast Ratio
Contrast ratio is one of the most important aspects of projector image quality. It refers to the ratio of luminance between the brightest white and the darkest black Portable Projector that a projector can produce. A higher contrast ratio will allow for more gradations from black to white, which can make images appear more vivid and lifelike.
There are a few different ways to measure contrast ratio. One popular method is to use Full On/Off contrast, which measures the brightness of a projector when it’s displaying a completely white screen and then comparing it to the brightness of a completely black screen. This can yield very high contrast ratios, such as thousands:1 or millions:1, which are often used by manufacturers to advertise their products. However, Full On/Off contrast doesn’t accurately reflect real-world viewing conditions.
Another way to measure contrast is to use Dynamic Contrast, which measures the brightness of a projector’s output when it’s displaying a completely black screen and then compares it to the brightness of a completely white screen. This can provide more accurate results than Full On/Off contrast, but it’s still not an ideal measurement for projector contrast.
A high contrast ratio is important for projectors because it allows them to display more vibrant and detailed images. It’s also necessary for projectsors that are used lcd projector company in light-controlled environments, such as home theater rooms or conference rooms.
Picture Quality
The picture quality of a portable projector depends heavily on how it’s used. Whether you’re a business traveler who needs to present at various venues, or simply someone who wants a device that can cut the cord and watch movies in your bedroom or backyard, there’s a battery-powered projector for you. These tiny devices aren’t as bright as TVs, but they can create a bigger image than the screen of most cell phones and tablets. Some have built-in streaming features, too.
To ensure that a battery-powered projector can produce a clear image in all environments, it should have at least an HD native resolution of 1,280 by 720 pixels or higher and a minimum rated brightness of 200 ANSI lumens. It’s also helpful to look for models with a shorter throw lens, which allows you to place the projector closer to the screen and increases its brightness.
Many portable projectors use a proprietary smart-TV system or Android TV for their software, but we’ve seen several that run Google’s superior search and content recommendations, including the LG CineBeam PF510Q, which is one of our favorite projectors. It runs the Google Assistant, too, and can connect to a speaker for better audio performance. The Samsung Mars 3 Air is another great choice, as it has excellent contrast ratio, allowing you to watch sports and movies in well-lit rooms while preserving the details of dark movie scenes.
Sound
When shopping for a portable projector, size, weight, and brightness are the key factors to consider. But you’ll also want to know the resolutions and other capabilities of the devices you’re considering to ensure they fit the applications you’re hoping for. For example, a higher resolution means sharper, more detailed images. If you plan to use your portable projector for presentations, look for a device that offers a high resolution of 1920 x 1080 or more for HD displays and 3840 x 2160 for 4K resolution.
The compact GS50 from BenQ is a top pick among budget-friendly projectors. It’s small and light enough to take anywhere, and it can display a 100-inch image. It’s also a good choice for outdoor movie nights because it is splash-proof and drop-resistant. It also features Android TV and fairly robust speakers, so you don’t need to pair it with a sound bar for a full cinema experience.
The Xgimi MoGo 2 is another good budget-friendly option. It’s smaller than many competing models and runs very quietly. Unlike some portable projectors, which can make loud noises that drown out ambient background sounds or compete with the noise of their fans, the MoGo 2 is a near-silent device at all times. It’s also very bright and offers an impressive list of features for its price.