And you control it by using one remote for both the Roku and the projector. The Roku Stick fits right into the back of the projector, under a little cover–very neat. This way turns out to be great: You get an included Roku Stick, which can be removed and used on any MHL-capable TV (admittedly there are about nine of those total at the moment, but they’ll be more popular soon), and removing it reveals an HDMI port that can be used with any HDMI gadget (Blu-ray player, computer, game console, another media streamer, whatever) without using any extra room. Not that Roku is bad–it’s a capable, if not particularly exciting, way to get Netflix, Hulu Plus, Amazon Video, and more–but I first wondered why they didn’t just build Roku software into the projector itself. The Roku Stick is a surprisingly excellent idea. And a bigger picture than my TV! Out of this tiny little thing! I wouldn’t want to watch The Tree of Life or anything amazingly visual with it, but I watched about four hours of The West Wing with it last night (cool guy over here) and it was totally serviceable. It has two flat sides so you can point it horizontally (at a wall) or vertically (at your ceiling), which is awesome. Yes, I wish it was better, but in a dark bedroom, it looks really pretty good. There are minimal picture controls, too–just one little wheel for focusing.īut, I found the picture absolutely good enough for most uses. It’s perfectly usable in dusk, low-light rather than pitch-blackness, but the bulb just isn’t powerful enough to blast through daylight. It’s only a 60-lumen bulb (though it’s an LED bulb, so it shouldn’t need replacing), which is fine for a pico projector but means you really do need darkness. The picture can expand to 120 inches–huge!–but I wouldn’t recommend it the lacking resolution gets very noticeable above maybe 50 or 55 inches. That’s noticeable when you’re used to an HDTV. It’s WVGA quality, which means, roughly, 480p. So, its major weakness (and it has several weaknesses) is resolution. That stuff costs extra, but combined with the projector, you can make a pretty legit full-featured portable theater. I’ve used it with a mobile hotspot created by a 4G LTE smartphone (speeds are faster than my home internet anyway) and with a Jawbone Jambox, which sounds great and gets loud. The Roku does need Wi-Fi, the battery life is about an hour and a half at most, and the speakers are pretty tinny and unimpressive. In the real world that’s tempered a little bit. So the projector can, theoretically, provide a home theater experience anywhere. And it’s meant to be portable it has content built in, sort of, in the form of a Roku Stick (a tiny but full-featured Roku that needs no extra power) it has a rechargeable battery and it has speakers. It’s just about the size and shape of my palm, and only two inches tall at its tallest. Like, it won’t fit in a pocket, but it will fit in a cargo pocket, or a jacket pocket. It’s not essential–it’s still basically a toy–but it is a really fun and surprisingly useful toy that you might actually use.įirst thing to know about the projector is that it’s way, way smaller than you think it is. The tech still isn’t quite there, but the 3M Streaming Projector Powered By Roku (cool name guys) is by far the closest–it’s portable, self-contained, is the first to have a built-in Roku, and the price is just right. They seem so cool–a 120-inch picture in your pocket!–but nobody’s managed to really knock it out of the park yet. Pico projectors have been chugging along for awhile, getting better but never quite breaking that wall to become something we should all have. We may earn revenue from the products available on this page and participate in affiliate programs.
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