LCoS

The nice folks at AAXA has sent us one of their new L1 laser pico projectors for review. Just for your information, AAXA is an advertiser here at picoprojector-info, but I'll try to be as objective as possible.

The L1 Pico-Projector is a small laser-driven LCoS pico-projector (800x600, 20 lumens). It is focus-free, which is great (more on this later). It can accept RCA/VGA/S-Video inputs, and can also read files from a USB key (which is very useful). It's got a little bit of internal memory (160Mb) - which only makes sense for documents or presentations. The L1 costs $599, it's an expensive pico!

Update: Checking at Amazon.com, they now list the MPro-150 for only $346 (that's a $40 drop from yesterday)! 

3M's new MPro-150 pico projector is now shipping for $346 (yeah, we announced this a few weeks ago, but now it seems to be really shipping from Amazon). The MPro-150 is 3M's third pico-projector. It looks pretty much like the MPro-120, but it's brighter (15 lumens), and adds built-in memory (1Gb) and removable micro SD card (it comes with a 2Gb SD card). The MPro-150 supports Office documents, PDFs and Audio/Video files.

3M Mpro-150

Here's a nice hands-on video of the new AAXA L1 laser pico projector. The L1 is a focus-free laser-driven LCoS projector (20 lumens, 800x600, up to 50" images) with a built-in media player that is now shipping for $599.

You can buy the L1 here for $599.

We just got word from Ray Displays that they lowered the price of the Ray Projector to $199 (down from $229, available in Ray Displays' web site). This makes it one of the cheapest pico-projectors you could find. The Ray is an LCoS projector with 640x480 resolution and 8-10 lumens.

We just published our review of this projector, and this new price point makes it a better purchase of course...

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).

Another cheap ($149) pico-projector hits Amazon.com. The Generic Mini-USB is an LCoS projector that has 640x480 resolution and can display images up to 50". It can only be used with a laptop, as it uses USB for power and data.

Because the Sanwa projector is now priced at $179, this is the cheapest pico-projector you can buy today at $149. 

Himax has posted their 4Q financial results. Here's the pico-projector relevant part:

"During the past year, we further strengthened our leadership in the world's emerging pico-projector industry with a solid shipment record and increasing new design-wins. Notably, our LCoS pico-projector solutions enabled the world's first projector-embedded digital camera, marking another milestone in the field of innovation. Recent customer feedback and intensive design-in activities firmly support our belief that 2010 will be a promising year for our LCOS pico-projector solutions. As both orders and design-ins are picking up strongly, we are planning to expand our in-house capacity to fulfill the increasing demand for our LCoS panels. Looking into 2010 and beyond, we expect to see increasing adoptions of our LCoS pico-projector solutions by our customers in various applications."

AAXA has announced their latest pico-projector, the L1 laser pico projector. This is a laser-driven LCoS projector (20 lumens, 800x600, up to 50" images) with a built-in media player. It's tiny: 4.2" x 2.1" x 0.8" and weighs just 170 grams (including the battery). It uses lasers, so it's focus-free and can project on curved surfaces. It has 160MB of internal memory, but can access USB disks, and a 2GB one is included. It supports movie, photo and audio files. It also supports office documents. AAXA say that the battery life is 90 minutes.

The L1 costs $599, and is ready for pre-order (should start shipping on February 12). Interestingly, AAXA admits that laser-diodes are available in very limited quantities, and supplies of the L1 are limited...

There's a new Chinese projector phone, but we do not know a lot about it, except through this funny advertisement. It's LCoS based (the projection module is made by iView), it supports audio/video/photo files, and also some documents. It's also a TV receiver. The phone is Quad-band with dual-SIM support. The phone is available now in Japan (at least according to the ad).

Oh, and it looks very similar to the Logic Wireless 150LGW... but not exactly the same.

UPDATE: It seems that I mistakenly thought this was Japanese... and it turns out to be a Chinese ad. Sorry!

Syndiant's CEO has posted an interesting blog post, in which he (obviously) claims that their pico-projector modules are the best. He posted a photo showing how their SVGA module compares against 3 others: Micron's VGA, a DLP HVGA and a Himax color-filter VGA:

The Syndiant's image looks indeed the best - although we can't really tell until we do an impartial test of course (and we'd love to see how it compares to Microvision's laser Show WX). We'll have to wait till a real pico-projector based on this module is released. But if the quality is so good, that'll be very exciting.