Like most things that come in small sizes, pico projectors have always been a big disappointment.
Called “pico” because of their portability and battery power, the diminutive projectors in this class have typically been underpowered and underwhelming. Almost by definition, projectors need to be big and bright enough to throw a lot of light at the screen.
So it’s a big surprise that Celluon’s new featherweight pocket-size PicoPro is a heavyweight champ. I was prepared for it to suck — but was surprised and delighted when it turned my living room wall into a 150-inch cinema screen.
Connected to my iPhone 6 Plus (it’s about the same size, though twice as thick), the laser-driven PicoPro is capable of throwing a big, bright, razor-sharp picture on the wall in full 720p HD glory.
It’s battery-powered and silent, dead-simple to use, and can be slipped into a jacket pocket. It’s a great little portable projector that goes way beyond my expectations.
Built by Celluon, a Korean company best known for laser keyboards (like this R2-D2 model), the PicoPro was announced at CES 2015 last month and is just starting to hit store shelves.
Like most pico projectors, it’s designed for on-the-road presentations rather than home entertainment. Here at the Cult of Mac offices, which are bright and sunny, the projector threw a perfectly clear and readable image up onto the bright white walls. We’d have little trouble giving Keynote or PowerPoint presentations in full daylight. Dimming the lights would obviously help, but in a lot of situations it wouldn’t be necessary.
At home, in the Kahney family’s darkened living room, it served as a great little home entertainment projector, throwing up a perfectly bright and watchable image that measured at least 100 inches.
The PicoPro’s secret is that it’s powered by three lasers — red, green and blue. Most other pico projectors are LED-based, and are noticeably dimmer, fuzzier and lower contrast. Celluon claims the PicoPro has an incredible 80,000-to-1 contrast ratio. Rival LED projectors are closer to 2,000 to 1.
The resolution is 1920 x 720p (16:9 aspect ratio) — yeah, we know this is weird. Celluon says images are upscaled. The company says projected images are watchable up to 250 inches, or five times the size of our living room flatscreen TV. Unfortunately, our house isn’t big enough to get an image that size. We’d have to back out onto the patio to get enough distance to project anything that big.
The PicoPro measures just 6 inches by 3 inches by 0.5 inches, and weighs just 6.7 ounces (189.9 grams). We got about three hours out of the battery; Celluon claims battery life is between 2.5-hours (Wi-Fi) and 3.5 hours (HDMI).
It comes with an HDMI-to-MHL (Mobile High-definition Link) cable. For use with an iOS device, this cable must be plugged into Apple’s Lightning Digital AV Adapter, which is sold separately for $44. (Celluon included one with our review unit.) For Android and Windows Phone users, the PicoPro offers a wireless connection via Miracast and DLNA, a pair of streaming technologies that mimic Apple’s AirPlay. Celluon also offers the PicoAir, a wireless-only model (Miracast/DLNA), which is available for $299.
The absence of AirPlay is a pity. The PicoPro would be kickass with Apple’s streaming technology. As it is, the daisy chain of cables going from Lightning to MHL is a bit kludgy, but perfectly workable. The PicoPro can be hooked up to almost any AV device: Macs, an Apple TV, game consoles and portable DVD players.
The PicoPro plays great with iOS devices, projecting video from a range of apps as well as video from iTunes and YouTube.
The video is detailed and sharp, with great contrast. It’s not as bright as the TV, but the blacks are very black.
It’s also super-easy to use. There are only five buttons: power, battery indictor, volume up and down, and input selection (wireless or HDMI). There’s no configuration and no lenses to fiddle with the focus. Just plug in the cable and it’s set to go. iOS devices detect the connection automatically.
It has a built-in speaker, which isn’t very loud. It’s fine in a pinch, but it’s better to use the projector’s headphone jack to attach bigger speakers or headphones. When watching movies, we strung a long headphone cable across the room and plugged it into the TV’s soundbar.
In the box, there’s a wall charger that can run the projector from the mains, a USB cable and a carrying bag.
On the downside, there are no controls for tweaking the color, contrast and other picture details. The speaker’s on the quiet side, and AirPlay support would be awesome.
But there’s a lot to like about the PicoPro, which costs $350 to $399 depending on options. That’s a fraction of the price of a jumbo TV — and the PicoPro is a lot more portable. I’m looking forward to taking it camping; it looks perfect for movies on the side of a tent or RV.
Leander Kahney is the editor and publisher of Cult of Mac.
Leander is a longtime technology reporter and the author of six acclaimed books about Apple, including two New York Times bestsellers: Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple’s Greatest Products and Inside Steve’s Brain, a biography of Steve Jobs.
He’s also written a top-selling biography of Apple CEO Tim Cook and authored Cult of Mac and Cult of iPod, which both won prestigious design awards. Most recently, he was co-author of Cult of Mac, 2nd Edition.
Leander has been reporting about Apple and technology for nearly 30 years.
Before founding Cult of Mac as an independent publication, Leander was news editor at Wired.com, where he was responsible for the day-to-day running of the Wired.com website. He headed up a team of six section editors, a dozen reporters and a large pool of freelancers. Together the team produced a daily digest of stories about the impact of science and technology, and won several awards, including several Webby Awards, 2X Knight-Batten Awards for Innovation in Journalism and the 2010 MIN (Magazine Industry Newsletter) award for best blog, among others.
Before being promoted to news editor, Leander was Wired.com’s senior reporter, primarily covering Apple. During that time, Leander published a ton of scoops, including the first in-depth report about the development of the iPod. Leander attended almost every keynote speech and special product launch presented by Steve Jobs, including the historic launches of the iPhone and iPad. He also reported from almost every Macworld Expo in the late ’90s and early ‘2000s, including, sadly, the last shows in Boston, San Francisco and Tokyo. His reporting for Wired.com formed the basis of the first Cult of Mac book, and subsequently this website.
Before joining Wired, Leander was a senior reporter at the legendary MacWeek, the storied and long-running weekly that documented Apple and its community in the 1980s and ’90s.
Leander has written for Wired magazine (including the Issue 16.04 cover story about Steve Jobs’ leadership at Apple, entitled Evil/Genius), Scientific American, The Guardian, The Observer, The San Francisco Chronicle and many other publications.
Leander is an expert on:
Apple and Apple history
Steve Jobs, Jony Ive, Tim Cook and Apple leadership
Apple community
iPhone and iOS
iPad and iPadOS
Mac and macOS
Apple Watch and watchOS
Apple TV and tvOS
AirPods
Leander has a postgrad diploma in artificial intelligence from the University of Aberdeen, and a BSc (Hons) in experimental psychology from the University of Sussex.
He has a diploma in journalism from the UK’s National Council for the Training of Journalists.
Leander lives in San Francisco, California, and is married with four children. He’s an avid biker and has ridden in many long-distance bike events, including California’s legendary Death Ride.
You can find out more about Leander on LinkedIn and Facebook. You can follow him on X at @lkahney or Instagram.
30 responses to “Petite and powerful: PicoPro projector puts a movie theater in your pocket”
I’d have liked to see at least one picture of it working in context. Hard to imagine the picture quality from descriptions and product shots, I’m afraid. It’s not easy to fathom something so small projecting a crisp, bright 720p image at 100″ diagonal!
Unfortunately, it’s impossible to photograph the projector working. Like you say, all the pictures on the web make it look terrible. If we were to take a picture here in the office — in daylight — you’d think it was worthless. Likewise, if we took a picture in a totally darkened room, it might look pretty good — especially if it was long exposure.
You just have to take my word: it looks much better than you;’d expect. And it’s passable for watching movies in a dark room.
I see your point, but it’s too bad. I guess the best option is to try to find one to see for oneself. No offense, but at that price point, I don’t think ANY review would be enough tot make me want one enough to simply order.
1920 x 720 is NOT 16:9 ratio is it? More like 24×9
Yeah Rick, the resolution/aspect ratio is weird. The data sheet said there’s some upscaling, which may explain the odd specs.
That is wrong. It has a native resolution of 1920 * 720 Pixels, not of sub-pixels.
Why can none of these reviewers be bothered to create a test image – e.g. a 1920*720 1px checkerboard – and find out if there is upscaling/subpixels/weirdness going on by, y’know, *looking*?
No word on lumens here or on the official website. That’s not too promising…
Bill, the data sheet says 30 lumens, but “with a perceived brightness that is noticeably brighter than that of LED based projectors of similar lumens.”
What does that mean? No idea… but it sounds right.
That’s pathetic. My Incredisonic pico projector is 500 lumens. It does a decent job in rooms that are semi-bright, and does great in darkness. My home theater projector (an 8 year old Panasonic) has 2200 lumens. a 30 lumen projector is crap.
They have different use cases. This one is for the use on the road, not for home cinema.
Agreed, but the pico projector (by definition, pico projectors are small and meant for portability) I currently use is 500 lumens. There’s no way a 30 lumen projector can produce a quality picture in a conference room unless all of the lights are off. I’ve been through 80 lumen, 200 lumen, and 300 lumen picos, and the 500 lumen one is the first I’ve found to give a truly adequate picture regardless of the setting (lit board room, classroom, etc.)
If you don’t mind me asking, what pico projector do you currently use? I’m interested in the 500 lumen one :)
I use the Incredisoninc pmj-500. It has all of the major inputs (HDMI, RGB, USB, microSD) as well as audio output, so I can easily use an external speaker instead of the built-in one. Hell, the thing even has a 3d mode, but I don’t use that.
You really need to see this projector to believe it! The 32 Lumen rating is a misnomer because the PicoAir and PicoPro use a coherent Red/Green/Blue laser light source. The eyes sensitivity to laser light is much greater, resulting in a much brighter perceived image.
There isn’t a Pico projector on the market that can touch this.
I’d love to “see it”, but for some odd reason nobody seems to be able to show any “real use” photos… So you’re right – it is awfully hard to believe the claims.
In terms of the technology behind your home projector, your comparison is akin to CRT vs LED. In two years your pmj-500 will be in the backyard recycling bin. LBS is the future. Why do you think Google dumped TI, today?
That could well be, and as someone who is on the road frequently, I’d welcome a smaller setup. I’m also a geek, so the notion of technology changing is a welcome one. I just have a hard time believing these claims when, for no apparent reason, nobody is able to present an actual picture of the device being used in a real life setting. It’s a visual device – don’t tell me how good the picture looks, SHOW ME how good the picture looks.
From the company website, the product will be in a “major retailer” shortly. Then everyone will be able to judge for themselves. From what I’ve seen this product will provide a solution for my family(read college kids) to be able to take a display anywhere, without the need for me to trouble shoot the hookup;<)
Obviously the company’s website is not to be believed. They have one purpose – to sell the product. I want to see objective reviews and pictures that show the results of real-life use situations, not a super-controlled environment designed to show the absolute best picture the projector is theoretically able to produce.
This is Sony tech and Sony specs mfgd by Sony and licensed to Celluon to design the projector. You believe Sony would lie?
I don’t care who made it. The idea that ANY company WOULDN’T lie is absurd. They have one objective – to sell products.
Add this to my previous. Linking here is a bit odd.
/blog/2015/02/08/picopro-pocket-laser-projector-review/
Any way to post a pic of the projector showing a movie at 100″ or larger ( I have a 15′ wide room so 180″)? All the YouTube videos and reviews are lacking pictures using this as an inexpensive home theater projector. I think that is what most people would like to use this when not in a business application. Thanks!
Like I said above, pictures/video aren’t going to do it justice.
The strong lack of willingness by the company to reveal pictures is a big red flag. They want you to take their word for it. Sorry, but that’s just not going to happen. Put up or shut up is my view.
Actually, it is impossible to believe that with all the gear you guys allegedly have there, no one could get a decent photo in a reduced light room situation, to give some idea of the image situation…unless all you all know how to do is turn things on and off. It is not a hard thing to do. Something not right here…..
Saw at CES and can say the picture is great. Couldn’t believe the quality. This is laser with higher resolution which might explain the perceived brightness. I’m not a tech. Regardless you have to realize the lumens comparison to LED is apples to oranges. Also its a 1st gen product, I’m sure the future will see better specs. What is astounding is the auto focus. My college students will get one for the holidays!
Thank you! It’s about time someone put a real demo up. It’s an average small Pico projector – not bad, not great. I’m sure it will suit some people’s needs perfectly (ok picture in a tiny package.) As my needs are more robust, I’ll stick with a slightly larger Pico projector. Thanks again for the pics!
Thanks! This review was very useful. It points out the positives (small size, good picture in dark rooms) while also noting the limitations (dim picture in lit rooms, difficulty with placing the projector due to lack of a tripod mounting screw.)