Ray Projector review

The nice guys over at Ray Displays have sent us a Ray Projector for a review. The Ray is an LCoS projector with 640x480 resolution and 8-10 lumens. The Ray costs $199 (available in Ray Displays' web site).

What's in the box

Apart from the projector, you also get an operation manual, a small tripod, a charger and a host of cables and connectors: RCA cable and coupler, and 3 A/V cables - 2.5mm, 3.5mm and another 'white' 3.5mm (compatible with Apple iPod and iPhone video output).

Meet the Ray

The projector itself is very simple. You have an on/off switch, a focus wheel and power and TV inputs. You also have a mono speaker and a heat sink (and this thing can get a bit hot, more on this later).

The Ray only has a TV (or A/V) input. There's no internal memory, and no VGA input. This means that it's not really useful for presentations (although you can buy a VGA to RCA adapter for about $1.5). Having no internal memory means that you'll always have to carry cables, which makes everything very cumbersome as in all such projectors. Sadly it does not connect to an iPhone out of the box- you have to buy a special iPhone TV-Out cable.

The Ray is rather small, and it looks good. It's dead easy to operate, and the focus-wheel is good in my opinion. When compared to 3M's Mpro-120 projector, it is much smaller, and some say (my wife did so, anyway) that it looks better. You can see though the the 3M has better build quality (it's more expensive of course at $300).

In use

The Ray is not a very bright pico-projector at 8-10 lumens. But in a dark rook, movie quality was good, text was surprisingly sharp. The colors were rather pale (or dull). All in all, I was happy with the quality. If you add just a little light to the room, low brightness quickly becomes a problem. Image size from about 1.8m (6 feet) was around 46".

One issue I noticed with the Ray is that it gets quite hot and quickly - only after a couple minutes of use. The speaker isn't so hot - it's mono, and a bit too loud for me (there's no volume adjustment). Finally, I tested the Ray in a 1.5m fall (without meaning to) - and it survived it without a scratch...

Compared to a 3M Mpro-120

I did a comparison between the Ray Projector and 3M's Mpro-120 projector (which is also an LCoS based projector with 640x480 resolution). As I said before, the Ray is much smaller and cheaper ($199 vs the MPro-120's $300). The MPro-120 has better build quality. I placed both projector one near to the other, from the same distance (6 feet, or 1.8m). The 3M is brighter (12 lumens vs the Ray 8-10), and has much more vivid colors (sometimes it seems that the 3M's colors are too bright, and the Ray images are easier on the eye). The 3M produces a much larger picture: 60" vs 46" from the same distance. And it's still a bit brighter. Check out this photo, the Ray is on top:

Text quality was actually better on the Ray. I tested on a large font. I guess the Ray is simply sharper than the MPro. Here are two closeups of a large text, the Ray is on the left:

Conclusion

The Ray is a small projector that produces good and sharp images (at 640x480). It's not very bright, though - you'll need a dark room to view a large image. My main complain is the lack of VGA input and internal memory. Luckily a VGA to RCA costs about $1.5, so the VGA input isn't a major problem. The Ray is rather cheap, so if you want a stand-alone pico projector on a budget the Ray might be a good choice.

The Ray costs $199 (available in Ray Displays' web site).