AAXA L1 review page 2

Image quality

The L1 provides a sharp image at 800x600, and very bright colors. But like all laser projectors, it also suffers from Speckle. Speckle is a random intensity pattern produced by the mutual interference of a set of wavefronts. It basically means that there are shiny dots visible all over the image, which makes the image looks a bit metallic, and can be quite annoying. Some people see it more than others, and it's less visible in videos than in static images. I think you also get used, at least it was less noticeable after a while. The following images were taken from around 1.5m, and they are about 45" in size:

The L1 also tends to makes everything look greener than it should. I noticed this especially when compared to another projector (there are images below). Sometimes I noticed a certain "flicker" in the images, but that was rather rare, it only happened to me once or twice, so I'm not sure what to make of that.

The L1 vs the 3M Mpro-120

I tested the L1 against the 3M Mpro-120. The Mpro-120 is less bright (12 lumens vs the 20 of the L1) and has only 640x480 resolution. The difference in brightness is not very visible in a dark room. The L1 is more 'sharp', and has brighter colors, although it seems that the MPro-120's colors are more correct. It does tend to make everything green in color, although in real life the difference is not as strong as in the photos below. The Mpro-120's image is more 'smooth' as it doesn't suffer from Speckle. In the following photos, the L1 is the top projector.

Those images came from the RCA input of both the L1 and the 3M If you compare these images to the ones above, you can see that if I use the internal memory or USB key the colors are better. Maybe also my camera (Nikon D90) someone gets 'confused' with the two projections and changes the color balance. Here's a short video, in which the L1 is on the top again :

Conclusions

To summarize this review:

The L1 is a bright (20 lumens) pico-projector, producing sharp images at 800x600 with bright colors, that for some reason tend to make everything green. The images suffer from the Speckle effect which can be annoying, although you seem to get used to it rather quickly
It is very small and light and looks good
Great features: 3 inputs (RCA/S-Video/VGA) and USB (and a wee-bit of internal memory). It can show video, photos and office documents which is great
It gets very hot, very quickly

The L1 is very expensive (costs $599) considering that for $346 you can now get 3M's Mpro-150 (read our MPro-150 review to see how it compares to the L1). You'll pay almost double for the L1, but you'll get laser, free-focus, smaller size, better resolution and a brighter image.

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Mar 05, 2010

Keystone/Size adjustment

Submitted by Anonymous on Mon, 03/08/2010 - 10:02.

Good review so far. I have a couple of questions though - first, is it possible to adjust the keystone, or is it automatically adjusted somehow? Second, is it possible to adjust the size of the image without changing the distance from the screen?

I have a Dell M109s right now that I'm pretty happy with except for a few minor quibbles, one of which is that the size is set by adjusting the distance from the screen. I'd like to be able to focus an image to 45" regardless if I'm 2 feet from the screen or 6. Also the keystone adjustment is somewhat limited on the M190s, though I guess it's better than other small projectors that don't have any adjustment whatsoever. Of course, the fact that it doesn't have a battery, onboard/USB storage, or media playback make upgrading to the Aaxa appealing even if it's a dimmer. I probably won't upgrade just yet - I'll wait for the lasers to get brighter and the cost to go down, but any more details you can provide would help.