2025 Mini Smart Home 4K Projector 1080P HD – 200 ANSI, Android 11.0 with Auto Focus, Dual-Band WiFi & AirPlay/Miracast, Bluetooth 5.3, 180° Rotation for Home Cinema Bedroom Movie

Does the job nicely…however
This excellent projector arrives in a easy to recycle retail style cardboard box. Inside the box is the projector and a way to short power cable with a UK mains plug. There’s also a remote control, the remote needs 2 AAA batteries which are not included, plus a manual.The latter isn’t that great, mostly screenshots, which given this is my first android projector was a tad concerning. But I quickly found it didn’t really matter as this projector is mostly really easy to use.As for the projector, it’s well made from a hard white plastic. Not strong enough to survive being dropped, but durable enough for everyday use. Style wise, it’s worlds away from the traditional suitcase sized boxes we had at school & college, instead it’s a nice looking one piece compact unit. One that’s about the size of a small kettle.A unit that you can adjust the angle of by simply moving the larger part up and down. Though rather annoyingly the ratchet like mechanism only moves the projector in several fixed angles. Which means you can’t adjust it to the exact angle that you want.However, on the rubberised grippy base of the projector, there’s a female tripod bush. A bush that’s a standard size as found on photographic kit and works with nearly all tripods. So using a tripod can help overcome the problems with angle adjustment.On the front of the projector, there’s a small piece of film that protects the lens, which is easy to remove.Though the lens is a bit of a dust magnet, so you do need to keep cleaning it. There’s also a cover on the underside, if you open that you’ll find a small piece of foam. Not sure if that’s HEPA or not, but it appears this is how the projector cools itself. So you’ll need to clean that foam clean.On the back, along with a single on/off button and power connection, there’s two port, a single HDMI and one USB.With the former you don’t get any cables in the box, you’ll need to supply your own. Which is where another annoyance happens, the typical cable that comes with most TV’s is around 1 metre (3ft) long and that’s not long enough for this projector. Plus you can’t “daisy chain” HDMI cables either.So what you’ll need is a cable that’s between 1.8 metres (6ft) to 4.5 metres (15ft) long. A cable, that if you want to watch some streaming services, must be HDCP compliant. That’s because some streaming services use HDCP for copy protection. Thus what type of cable will depend on what you want to watch. HDCP 1.4 is for Full HD (1080p) content, HDCP 2.2 is for most 4K/Ultra HD content. Or better still HDCP 2.3, which can do all of these and is future proof.With the USB A port you can insert a drive, and using the remote control, browse and view images or watch some AVI’s and most MPG’s. Which makes this projector great for photographers and videographers. Another way to view stuff is with apps, that’s because this is an full on android 11 device. Which also means you can play games, do some work etc.What’s also cool is how these apps are loaded onto the projector. You don’t need any special skills or techie magic, you just add them through the built in interface to Googles play store, almost like you would with a mobile phone. It’s that easy. There’s even a couple of built in apps, Prime & Disney+, to get you started.Obviously you need to be online to do that, so this device needs to connects to your wifi. A process that’s a tad slow and fiddly, mainly due to the not-so-great wifi setup screen, but once done it remembers your router settings. Plus it’s multiband wifi, so it can work with either wifi5 or wifi5.Also not so good to setup is bluetooth, the connection process is slow and isn’t always reliable. For example I found this would connect and pair to it’s own remote control and a pair of headphones. But out of three mobile phones it would only connect to one of them. Though once connected it was possible to miracast from the mobile to the projector. But you might not want to because the image quality isn’t that great.Fortunately the image quality is brilliant when connected to a suitable source. For here being the TV hub supplied by our ISP, plus I tested a laptop and both times I was seriously impressed. Especially how it can project in either 4K or 1080.At night time the projected image was bright and clear, though despite trying to adjust the focus and trapezoidalsettings, there is some slight lack of focus at the top of the screen. But not enough to bother me that much. Plus it’s easy to find and change the settings to something that works for me. I especially like how increasing the sharpness settings can make films really nice to watch.Though I’m not that keen on the sound quality, which is handled by the little speaker at the rear of the projector, and is a tad tinny at times. Unfortunately there’s no 3.5 minijack port on the back, so I either need to get a portable bluetooth speaker or soundbar, which hopefully will solve that problem.Overall ? I can’t deny this projector has several annoyances. But they are not at the “I want to rearrange this into a 1000 bits of plastic” level of techno-aggravation, instead they are mostly issues that could be solved by tweaking the settings or the placement of cables.Most importantly once you get it working how you want it, the experience it provides can be very cinematic. Which is especially true if this is taken outside to a garden on a dry evening. Yes projecting this onto an old duvet attached to a fence won’t give you the IMAX experience. But when your watching that film with friends and family, even the odd barking dog, this one’s worth every penny.