Hasta La Gadget!

Stepping across the not-so-fine line between regular projectors that you’d bring home to your parents and those rebellious pico affairs, HP’s Notebook Projection Companion offers up to 60-inches of LED-based projection at a range of up to 8.5 feet. It pumps light at 100 lumens and an 800:1 contrast ratio to put an SVGA 858 x 600 image up against the wall. The projector works with a standard VGA plug, and cuts a rather striking figure in its brushed aluminum shell.

We spotted the “Companion” doing its thing in a relatively dimly lit room, and it certainly is a jump beyond a pico projector — it’s almost completely usable, in fact. We’d still probably prefer a large laptop screen for watching a movie, but if you’ve got to share a presentation or an experience, you could probably do worse than this $499 unit. It ships on January 15th.

HP Notebook Projection Companion stuffs a little bit of projection into a little bit of a projector originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 06 Jan 2010 00:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The HypnosEye cellphone projector is the lowest tech solution you’ll find to the problem of throwing your cellphone’s video onto a nearby wall. It is also the only gadget in history that sports an “adjustment cushion”.

First, here’s what the HypnosEye doesn’t do. It doesn’t hook up to your iPhone’s dock, or your portable media player’s video-out. It doesn’t use lasers or LEDs or spinning mirrors to cast project the image. And most of all, it will never, ever fit in your pocket. What it does do is cast a rather dim image onto a very nearby wall, without batteries or lights of any kind. Here it is in action:

The magic lantern is a polycarbonate and ABS box which has a slot in the base for an iPhone, or anything else that will fit in there. Mirrors inside bend the light from the screen and beam it out through a lens on the front, and focus is achieved by sliding the front section of the unit back and forth. The kit even comes with a tiny 14-inch-wide screen and stand.

It’s a fun gimmick, marred by its relatively high price of $117. For less than double that, you can pick up a real pico projector, and project a proper, bright image of, say, the Death Star onto your bedroom ceiling as you fall sound asleep in your Tauntaun sleeping bag.

And that adjustment cushion? It just tilts the front of the projector up at an angle. That is all.

HypnosEye Projector and Screen Set [Japan Trend Shop via Oh Gizmo!]

The LG Expo isn’t the only projector phone in the US any more. Tiny manufacturer Logic Wireless has a new version 1.5 of their Bolt projector phone – and they’re selling it through Skymall, of all places.

The Logic Bolt 1.5 (called merely “Projector Phone” on the Skymall Web page) is a Symbian-powered smartphone with two SIM card slots, a feature that is common in some foreign countries but very rare in the US.

According to a spec sheet sent to us by Logic Wireless, the phone has a 2.6-inch, 240×400 TFT LCD resistive touch screen; dual cameras (three megapixel on the back and one on the front), “Live TV & FM Radio,” and a built-in LCOS projector that can project images 64″ wide. The phone is supposedly only .66 inches thick.

So what’s the catch? No 3G. That may be one reason Logic’s COO Miran Maric told us they’re focusing on overseas sales right now, targeting carriers in countries where 3G isn’t a big deal yet.

Anyone looking for the highest-end Windows Mobile experience you can buy on AT&T, go ahead and form a line to the left, please, because your knight in shining armor has arrived. The LG eXpo — complete with a Snapdragon core, 5 megapixel camera, 3.2-inch WVGA display, fingerprint scanner, QWERTY slide, and optional microprojector — is now available, albeit at a $199.99 after-rebate, on-contract price that puts it pretty far into the realm of the high-power smartphone elite. The downside is that the aforementioned projector isn’t yet available for purchase, which makes the whole package a little less compelling — then again, that means you’re walking out of the store with $179 that you wouldn’t have otherwise had, so just look at your eXpo purchase as a fantastic money-making opportunity.

LG eXpo goes on sale at AT&T, sans projector originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 16 Dec 2009 19:47:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We can’t say with any degree of certainty that AAXA‘s recently announced M1 “micro projector” truly is the brightness of the miniaturized bunch, but it’s certainly brighter than the vast majority we’ve had the displeasure of seeing ourselves. Most pico projectors pack between 8 and 12 lumens, and up until now, AAXA’s own P2 was widely consider the best for using in partially lit rooms due to its 33 lumen rating. The M1 doubles up on that figure, bringing 66 lumens to the table along with a native SVGA (800 x 600) resolution, 1GB of onboard memory, an SD card reader and optional iPod, PSP and DVD cables. Said display is up for pre-order as we speak for $299, while the M1 Plus — which supports VGA and composite AV inputs — will set you back $359.

AAXA cranks up the brightness on M1 micro projector originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 16 Dec 2009 09:37:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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