Missing The Smart Element
Pico projectors have not been able to match up to
user expectations, but this does not stop brands from launching new variants.
Portronics Progenie is amongst the latest crop of pico projectors that aims to
entice home users with small size and performance.
Progenie is roughly the diameter of a standard
coaster — stack 6 coasters up and that’s about the height of this pico
projector. Weighing just 208 grams, the Progenie is compact and lightweight
enough to be carried around anywhere. Even with this size, Portronics offes a
full-size HDMI port, full size USB port and a microSD slot. If you need better
sound, you can plug in a pair of earphones or connect external speakers using
the audio out port. On the right side you’ll find a tiny focus ring and buttons
for power, volume and source. Overall when it comes to build quality, the
Portronics Progenie feels solid. What we did not like was that there is no lens
cover — this leads to dust build up and it isn’t the easiest thing to clean up.
Portronics says that the projector can create an
80-inch screen from a distance of 8-feet. While the screen size is 80-inches,
we feel that the picture quality was not up to the mark. First off, resolution
is just 854 x 480 pixels which means that the larger you go, the larger the
individual pixels become. Second, the 100 lumens brightness isn’t good enough
to use with high ambient light. This is a projector best used at night or in a
very dim room with curtains drawn and lights off. We used the projector with an
Xbox One and a laptop (via HDMI) — it handles content with good brightness
without issue. However, when viewing scenes with a lot of blacks, we had
trouble distinguishing between objects onscreen due to poor brightness levels.
If its occasional usage (movie watching or viewing photos), then Progenie can
be considered, but not for daily use.
A good thing about the projector is that it has a
built-in basic operating system. You do not always need to connect an input
source. Simply plug in a USB drive or insert a microSD slot with content — the
projector can playback basic video formats, images and even open text files
directly. We noticed that while it had no issues with USB drives, it even
managed to work with a portable hard drive smoothly. Also, to be noted is that
the projector comes with a built-in 3,400mAh battery that can be used to charge
your connected smartphone or power on a USB dongle like Amazon Fire Stick.
Amongst things we did not like, fan noise is the
biggest of the issues. From the moment you power on the projector, the built-in
fan starts spinning at full speed. The fan noise us very noticeable and
sometimes even drowns out the sound from the builtin speaker. On the plus side,
this keeps the projector from overheating and shutting down — we used the
projector constantly for 4 hours and faced no issues of random shutting down.
However, you will have to connect external speakers via aux port for audio.
At ₹29,999, the
Portronics Progenie seems too expensive for a non-smart pico projector. For a
lower price (₹26,000), you
can look at options from Acer (X1185G), ViewSonic (PJD5155) or BenQ (MS-527P)
that offer 800 x 600-pixel resolution. Or you could spend a little more and get
Optoma’s ML330 — it has resolution of 1280 x 800 pixels, a USB 3.0 port with
hard drive support and runs a custom version of Android.
Karan.Bajaj@timesgroup.com
ET9FEB18
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