The Vivitek Qumi Q5 ($599.99) is a stylish and highly portable LED-based projector. It has a good set of connection choices, and includes 4GB of internal memory. In testing, video was subpar—dimmer than expected for its rated brightness and with more than its share of rainbow artifacts. It does well at projecting text, however, making the Qumi Q5 ($649.00 at Office Depot® & OfficeMax®)(Opens in a new window) suitable for data presentations to small audiences.

Design
The Q5 is a DLP-based model with an LED light source rated for 30,000 hours, so it should last the lifetime of the projector. It provides WXGA (1,280-by-800) native resolution, at a 16:10 aspect ratio, and has a rated brightness of 500 lumens. The Q5 measures 1.3 by 6.3 by 4 inches (HWD), which is a little larger than can comfortably sit in my palm, and it is a featherweight at 1.1 pounds. Vivitek calls it a pocket projector, but it’s doubtful it would fit in any pockets smaller than those on a winter coat. Still, it’s a handsome device; our test unit was red, with silver trim and rounded corners. (It also comes in black, blue, white, or yellow).

Around back is a useful selection of ports. The single HDMI port also supports MHL for streaming video from an MHL-enabled smart phone and tablet, and an HDMI-to-mini-HDMI cable for connecting to a mobile device is included. The one universal I/O port fits an included cable for connecting to a computer’s VGA port for data or component video. There’s also an AV-in port, which includes a cable ending in three RCA plugs for connecting to a video source, such as a DVD player, for composite audio/video. An audio-out jack fits a plug for headphones or powered external speakers. It also has one USB Type A port, which fits a USB thumb drive or an optional Wi-Fi dongle. You can store media files in the projector’s 4GB of internal memory.

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The aforementioned optional Wi-Fi adapter (model QW-WiFi2.0) is compatible with the Qumi Q5, Q7, and several other Vivitek projectors. It is not widely available; a British site, Personal Projector(Opens in a new window), is the only online retailer I could find that carries it. Although Vivitek mentions the dongle in the Q5’s documentation as an optional accessory, the company does not promote it, noting to us that the Qumi’s on-screen keyboard is slow to react when surfing the Web. As an alternative means of Web browsing with the Q5, you could connect an MHL-enabled mobile device or a computer to the Qumi Q5 via the HDMI port and fire up the phone, tablet, or computer’s browser, and the projector would then emulate the device’s desktop.

The Q5 comes with a tiny, credit-card-size remote control for navigating the projector’s menus. From labeled icons on the home screen, you can access Settings, Photos, Office Viewer, Movie, Music, Wi-Fi and Web Browser (if you get the wireless dongle), using four directional arrows and an Enter button. The directional arrows, Menu, and Enter buttons, are duplicated on the projector’s top, and backlit for easy viewing.

Brightness
Based on SMPTE (Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers) recommendations, and assuming a 1.0-gain screen, 500 lumens is suitable for an 85- to 115-inch (diagonal) image in theater-dark lighting at the Q5’s native 16:10 aspect ratio. I ran our data-image testing in a dark room with the projector placed about 6 feet away from our test screen, where it filled the screen with an image about 60 inches (diagonal). That’s a comfortable size for viewing. When I switched to video testing, again in theater-dark conditions, I found the image to be too dim, so I moved the projector closer to the screen, until I reached a comfortable viewing size with a 40-inch (diagonal) image. Based on this, I conclude that the projector is dim for its rated brightness.

Data Testing
In data testing using the DisplayMate(Opens in a new window) suite under theater-dark conditions, the Q5’s image quality proved suitable for typical business or classroom presentations. Colors were well saturated, although color balance was slightly off, with some gray backgrounds appearing a bit greenish, and white backgrounds showed a touch of yellow and, in some cases, red.

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As with every projector we’ve seen in the LED WXGA category, the Q5 shows apparent scaling artifacts at its claimed native resolution. This issue is most obvious as unwanted added patterns in areas with closely spaced lines or dots and is related to the DLP chip these projectors are built around. Unless you use patterned fills in your graphics instead of solid blocks of color, however, you may never see these patterns. It can also show as a soft focus, but the Q5’s focus seemed reasonably sharp, with both black text on white and white text on black easily readable at sizes as small as 9 points.

I did notice rainbow artifacts—little red-green-blue flashes, particularly in bright areas against a dark background—in several images. This rainbow effect is frequently seen with DLP projectors, but with data images it seldom is a significant issue, and it shouldn’t be with the Q5.

Video and Audio
In our tests, rainbow artifacts were more apparent in the Q5’s video than in a typical LED-based DLP projector, to the point where people even mildly sensitive to the effect could well be distracted by it. I also noticed an excess of red in some test scenes, especially in skin tones. As noted above, the projector’s video seemed dim for its rated brightness, and even when I reduced the image size, the video showed relatively poor dynamic range, with some loss of detail in both bright and dark areas. Because of these issues, video is best limited to very short clips.

Audio from the Q5 ‘s single 2-watt speaker is soft, and to hear it you’d best sit close to the projector. Should you want louder audio, you could always connect a set of powered external speakers to the audio-out jack.

As a DLP projector, this model can project 3D content that’s compatible with the DLP-Link system, although you need to get your own active-shutter DLP-Link glasses. These are available from various etailers for $50 or less, but the cost can quickly add up up if you plan to show 3D content to a group of people. The Q5 isn’t ideal for projecting in 3D, as its video quality isn’t great to begin with, and 3D content also shows rainbow artifacts and is also dim.

Conclusion
The Q5 is a bit smaller and lighter than the InFocus LightPro IN1146 ($875.00 at Amazon)(Opens in a new window) , our Editors’ Choice LED-based WXGA projector. Both projectors have a similar set of connection choices, except that the InFocus IN1146 adds an SD card slot. The IN1146, rated at 1,000 lumens, is brighter and offers much better video quality than the Q5.

As a compact LED-based WXGA projector, the Vivitek Qumi Q5 is a handsome model with reasonably sharp text and a good set of connection choices. It’s well out of the top tier in brightness, however, and seems dimmer when projecting video than its rated brightness would indicate. Still, the Q5 should be fine for data presentations, provided that the audience is close to the screen, and there’s a minimum of ambient light.