Technical Reviews and Geek Toys

I have been wanting to get a projector for some time now and when my wife asked me what I wanted for Christmas I did a little research.  I came accross the 3M MPro Pocket Projector and thought it looked like it might work pretty well for what I need.  (Wouldn't you know it.... they now have a MPro 150.)

Well, I have had my MPro120 for a month or so now and the only thing that would be better is if it was a little brighter.  The MPro 120 puts out 12 lumens in high brightness mode and really requires dim lighting in order to be visible.  I immediately purchased a small (41") projection screen to try to make use of every bit of light it projected.  It projects an image from 8" to 50" and obviously, the larger the projected image, the less light is available.  I have used it in a small room to give a presentation to a small audience and I have used it in my office as a second monitor when setting up a dual monitor PC.  It worked very well for both.  The projector has two 1/2 watt speakers built in which came in handy as the PC I was setting up didn't have a built in speaker.

The projector has a built in lithium polymer battery that is suppose to offer 240 + minutes of use in normal mode and 120 + minutes in high brightness mode.  The projector is able to be used when on the charger which seems like a given to me but that must not be the case.

The projector supports VGA, SVGA, XVGA, and WXGA and comes with two cables, an AV cable to input video from camcorders, digital cameras, DBD players and digital media players, and a VGA cable.  It also comes with this really cute little tripod that is perfect for setting the projector up on a desktop.  It also fits on a standard camera tripod which I found works very well when using the projector with the screen.  The projector needs to be at most 4' from the screen that I purchased which produces an image of readable brightness in a semi-darkened room.

The projector is a very convient 2.4" X 4.7" X .9" and weighs 5.4 ozs.  It will truly fit in one's pocket, or better yet in the small bag that comes with it.

So how does the MPro 150 compare to the MPro 120?  Well,  the 150 seems to be almost identical to the 120 except that it puts out 15 lumens which should help.  The increase in brightness decreases the usability to 120+ minutes in normal mode and 90+ minutes in high brightness mode.  But the biggest improvement found in the 150 is the inclusion of a Internal 1GB micro SD card as well as a MicroSD card slot and a USB Mini 2.0 port for transfering files into the projector.  See, the MPro 150 is able to open and project Microsoft Word, Powerpoint, Excel as well as TXT and Adobe PDF files.  Just load them up and go.  There is no need to haul along a PC to give a presentation.  Pretty cool.

The 3M MPro 150 lists for $435 but is available on Amazon for $385 at the present time.  The MPro 120 on the other hand lists for $385 and is available on Amazon for $296 at the present time.  Even with the improvements offered in the 150 I probably would have still purchased the 120 due to the cost difference.  I'm not sure how much of an improvement 3 lumens would give and at this time I need to use the projector with my laptop.