A recent comment by a reader on a recent post on the Optoma PK301 at CES10 pointed out the image looked to show a HDMI slot on the side of the new pico projector, and after reading a few reviews online this morning it seems that Morphemass was 100% right! The new Optoma PK301 does indeed have a hdmi slot, its the first pico projector to our knowledge that allows you to put hdmi strait into it. Perhaps this development became worthwhile once they upped the resolution a bit (the pk301 has a nice 854 x 4780 res) – or perhaps Optoma realised the possibilities of the use of HDMI in their latest picoProjector.

Either way its a positive development and makes a lot of sense from our point of view, see this as the development of the pico projector from a multimedia tool (outputting from laptops/pc’s with VGA/DVI) for doing presentations on the go (business use essentially) to projecting strait out of Hi-Definition video sources like the PS3, Blu ray players and more (HDMI.) Is this the switch we predicted? is the dawn of the modern high resolution HDMI powered gaming pico projector here? Without a doubt there is as much money if not more in gaming for the pico-projector producers as there is in business gadgetry.

Some of the other great features of the Optoma PK301 such as a brightness of 50 lumens, 120 diagonal inch projection and being “ultra lightweight” might make this the projector of the quarter…although this isn’t confirmed and as per our aforementioned comments the 50 lumens, 120 inch projection might not be all that feasible on battery alone, but its still a remarkable improvement on the previous pico projector’s from optoma.

So this then is potentially the first acrobatic pico projector, “ultra lightweight” and capable of working on both VGA and HDMI inputs, meaning it can be switched between business/pc teathered use and games console gaming HDMI input use. Supposed to reach the uk soon, we shall see how this pico does here, I would expect a £300 max price and to see it within a few months.