CES over the other side of the pond featured more than a few new pico projectors. The market is growing you could say. But here in little old Britain we are often a few weeks/months behind the gadget trends, well some of them! Heres a quick roundup of the latest pico projector’s we have seen in the wild in the uk, available in shops or online (mostly online) – new pico projector’s you could actually buy now. CES showed us theres going to be a steady stream of new pico-projectors released this year and next – but which boat’s of gadgets has made it to the uk?

After the question from a reader last week and in time for our roundup of the new pico’s available in the uk we thought we would take a look at a not so pico, microprojector. The samsung SPP 400B LED Projector is a 14.5 x 14.7 x 6.4 cm beast compared to most of the pico projector’s youll see on microProjector5, weighing in at 4 times what most of the mini-projectors do.

We have looked at heavier pocket projecters before but you probably wouldnt fit this one in your pocket – although you might want to try as it has some nice specifications around it:

• The Samsung SP-P400B is a DLP Projector and uses LED’s as a lightsource.
• Dimensions (WxDxH): 14.8 cm x 14.6 cm x 6.5 cm
• Weight: 899grams
• Image Brightness: 150 ANSI lumens
• Image Contrast Ratio: 1000:1
• Resolution: SVGA (800 x 600)

We recieved a message from a micro projector 5 reader, Philip Prendeville who is looking for a top of the range pico projector:

I’m looking at getting a top of the range micro projector that will fit in my pocket (or at least be small enough to fit in my hand). So far I’ve seen that the Samsung P410M seems to be one of the best for its size on the market (from my limited knowledge and research of micro projectors). Can you recommend anything else? Got about 500-600 euro to spend.

Regards,

Philip Prendeville

Its an good question from Philip. What top of the range pico projector’s are there out now in the 500-600 euro or pound area? there are a few out there but none that shout pure professional intention. A £300-400 level pico projector will probably satisfy Philip in reality but it would be interesting to see what our readers have to say – who knows the best most professional pico projector currently available?

Yesterday Asia Optical’s chairman reported they are expecting to up their shipments of pico projectors from 250,000 upwards inline with a global 8 million pico-projectors in 2010 and 20 million in 2011 – thats a 250% increase on 2010! Robert Lai, the chairman of Asia Optical told digiTimes about this expected huge surge in shipments of pico projectors yesterday, citing data saying that the built in pico (embedded pico projector) market global shipments are expected to reach eight million pico projector units in 2010, 20 million in 2011 and 34 million units in 2012. It didnt stop there though – 54 million units in 2013, 77 million pico projectors in 2014 and a huge 116,000,000 pico projectors to ship in 2015.

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.

We missed this one – but on the 25th of January Mitsubishi Electric (TYO:6503) announced their launch of their new red laser diode (ML520G72) – the worlds highest output ability red laser diode. With a 638 nanometer wavelength this new laser diode is extremely efficient and is ideal for use in pico projector’s and other laser based small display technologies. Effectively offering a red light source with extremely high brightness this red laser from Mitsubishi could bring a whole new level to pico projector’s running on lasers.

Rumbles last week from DigiTimes and then the associated gadget media suggested that Sony want to match the other digital camera manufacturers (nikon S1000Pj pico camera) and produce digital compact camera’s with pico projector built into them, allowing for a bigger GUI and more sharing capacity to each digital camera. Sony has done a deal with Opus Microsystems, licensing their laser based scanning mirror chips. It’s nice to see another big name joining the party, even more so with laser based pico projector technology.