Gear review: three pocket-sized projectors for travel

Sony’s first effort at a pocket product (HK$2,699, sony.com.hk) complete with laser LED projection resembles the smartphones it’s designed to project the display of. At 77mm x 149.5mm x 13mm and weighing in at 210g, it’s highly portable. Autofocus helps get a lot of detail from its 1920 x 720 resolution images, though maximum brightness is just 37 Lumens. It also has miniHDMI, microUSB, a tiny 1W speaker and a two-hour battery life. Usefully for travellers, it also works as an emergency charger for any phone. Projected images reach 120 inches in size, but it’s best to stay at about 40 inches.

This handheld LED projector is about as small as they get, measuring just 97mm x 54mm x 17mm and weighing 129g. It has 4GB of built-in storage to project files as big as 60 inches across without the need for a computer, as well as a microSD slot and miniHDMI. However, its small size comes with a few problems. The brightness of the PPX 4350 (HK$2,590, fortress.com.hk) is just 50 lumens, so a darkened room is essential, while the resolution of 640 x 360 pixels is far less detailed than HD and the battery lasts just 90 minutes. However, the chance to stream audio to a Bluetooth speaker is helpful.