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Designed primarily as an accessory to a phone or tablet, the Celluon PicoAir ($349.99) is one of the smallest, lightest projectors available. It fits in a shirt pocket, and it weighs just 7 ounces, complete with its permanently installed rechargeable battery. Its only connection choices are Miracast and DLNA, which aren’t available on all phones or tablets. For those that fully support either standard, however, it can be an excellent traveling companion.
The PicoAir ( at Amazon)(Opens in a new window) is a slightly less-expensive, and slightly less-versatile, variation on the Celluon PicoPro , which is our Editors’ Choice pico projector. The key difference is that the PicoAir leaves out the Celluon PicoPro’s MHL-enabled HDMI port, which means it can’t connect to as many image sources.
In particular, the PicoAir is a poor choice for using with an Apple phone or tablet. Even though there are third-party apps that will let you use DLNA with Apple devices, Celluon says the apps are limited in ways that make a wired connection a better experience. That said, if you’re absolutely sure that you’ll never need to connect to anything but, say, your Android phone with Miracast, getting the PicoAir can save you some money and give you all the connection choices you need.
The Basics
Most pico projectors, including the AAXA P4-X Pico Projector ( at Amazon)(Opens in a new window) , another top pick, use an LED light source. The PicoAir uses MicroVision’s PicoP laser technology instead. One advantage of the laser is that it eliminates the need to focus. Just point the projector at whatever you’re using for a screen at any distance. You also get notably uniform brightness from edge to edge across the screen, which is not typically the case with pico projectors that use an LED light source.
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One other plus is that the projector doesn’t generate enough heat to need a fan. That not only makes the PicoAir noise free, but helps with battery life by lowering power use. Celluon rates the battery at 2.5 hours with a 4.5-hour recharge time.
The PicoAir doesn’t have a native resolution, because instead of having a chip with a fixed grid, like DLP, LCD, or LCoS models, it draws the image with lasers that scan across the screen. Even so, it has the equivalent of a native resolution, scaling all images to 1,920 by 720, according to Celluon. If the pixels were the same width and height, that would work out to a 16:6 aspect ratio. However, Celluon says the pixels are taller than they are wide, giving it an aspect ratio of 16:9, which matches my measurement.
The PicoAir is physically is all but identical to the Celluon PicoPro, using the same sleek design with rounded corners and flat surfaces all around. At 0.5 by 2.9 by 5.9 inches (HWD), it’s about the same width as a Samsung Galaxy S5 ($62.99 at Amazon)(Opens in a new window) , a touch longer, and about twice as thick. The model I tested is a shiny black, but it also comes in white, gold, and two-tone (white and gray).
The front is defined by a window on one of the longer thin sides where the image emerges. The only two connectors are on the back, and are limited to an audio-out port and a micro USB port for powering the projector or charging the battery. The PicoAir comes with a Power block, but you can use a cable connected to a computer USB port as well. Also on the back are the Power button and a switch for choosing between Miracast and DLNA. The volume controls are on the top of the case.
Initial setup consists of charging the battery. To actually use the projector you first make sure the switch on the back is set to Miracast or DLNA, as appropriate, then turn it on, and wait about 30 seconds for the screen to say Ready To Connect. With the Samsung Galaxy S5 that I used for my tests, the only other step is to turn on Miracast and wait for the phone to find the projector and negotiate a connection.
One minor issue is that if you simply place it on a desktop or other surface, and it’s not right at the edge, the bottom part of the image will hit the supporting surface instead of whatever you’re using for a screen. The fix is to move the projector closer to the edge or use the supplied stand, which also lets you tilt the PicoAir up and down.
Brightness and Image Quality
Celluon rates the PicoAir at 32 lumens. However, the company points to research indicating that reflected laser light looks brighter than light from other kinds of sources, and says that it’s actually equivalent to a 50- to 60-lumen brightness for a standard projector. Using the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) recommendations, that would make it bright enough for extended viewing in theater-dark lighting for a 27- to 41-inch image (measured diagonally) at its native 16:9 aspect ratio.
See How We Test Projectors
Because of the limited connection options, I wasn’t able to run the PicoAir through our standard test suite. However, I was able to transfer a selection of the DisplayMate(Opens in a new window) images we use to the Galaxy S5, so I could view them, as well as view photos and video I’d taken with the phone.
Image quality is comparable to what I saw with the Celluon PicoPro. That translates to being a mixed bag, but at least a match for other pico projectors in most ways and better in some. The projector doesn’t have an obvious speckle effect, which is inherent in laser light. However, there’s a slightly soft focus. That isn’t a problem for photos or video, but makes some smaller text, like the body of an email message, hard to read. Colors in data images were also a little off in my tests—with a candy-apple red and Kelly green, for example—but they were suitably vibrant and eye catching. Color quality in photos and video is more than acceptable.
If you need a brighter projector, be sure to take a look at the AAXA P4-X Pico Projector, which also has the advantage of being able to read memory cards and USB memory keys. If you like the Celluon PicoAir’s greater portability, but want to use it with an Apple device or other source that needs an HDMI port to connect, the obvious alternative is the Celluon PicoPro, for its MHL-enabled HDMI port. If your mobile device isn’t an iThing, however, and you don’t need to connect to anything that doesn’t support Miracast or DLNA, the PicoAir can match its near-twin in every feature you need, and it costs less, too.
3.5
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The Celluon PicoAir projector connects only with devices that support Miracast or DLNA, but for those phones and tablets with which it works, it offers an easy way to project a large image.
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Source link : https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/celluon-picoair
