Small, perfectly formed, etc...

Introduction

If you are a "road warrior" travelling salesperson type, or just someone who is always on the go and giving presentations in a variety of places, you might have to lug a projector round with you to ensure that your flashy PowerPoints can be seen as intended when you reach your destination. This isn't so much of a problem if you travel around by car, but in the current climate (both literally and metaphorically), not everyone is travelling around by car.

So if you're worried about weight and size, what you need is a dinky little projector that weighs just over half a kilo (a little over a pound in old money) and measures 127mm x 122mm (about 5 inches sqaure), standing just 52mm (2 inches) high.

Step (more like pixie step) forward the Acer K10, which just happens to fit that description exactly.

Set Up

As our friend from CompareTheMeerkat.com is so fond of saying:-

"Simples!"

Take it out of the box, plug it in, connect it to your computer and turn it on. Most computers will discover the external display, ask how you want to use it and then you're away. And that was my experience - up and running in a couple of minutes. It certainly won't slow you down if you're running late for your presentation because you were stuck on the M25 for an hour...

In Use

No complaints when in use either. As long as you remember what you're dealing with - a tiny projector with an LED light source - then the results are all as you would expect. This is never going to be of home theatre quality, nor is it going to be as good as the one that's permanently installed in your meeting room, communications suite or whatever. It's the size of a handful of CDs. Don't expect miracles.

So with all that in mind, I think it's still impressive. There's no remote control, but given this is designed to be portable and not ceiling mounted, then you don't need one. You can access all the controls on the top of the projector to set up colour, keystone etc.

There's a fan to keep things cool - this is pretty quiet and won't stop you from being heard. You can also mount it on a standard camera tripod - ideal if there's no desk around.

Its native resolution is 858x600 (what's all that about?) but most computers will pick it up and drive it at 800x600. It can also downscale larger resolutions to fit.

Because it is an LED based projector, the brightness is rated at around 100 lumens - normal projectors have a rating of 10 or more times that. It can project up to around two and a half metres, creating an image of around one and a half metres (5 feet, equivalent to a 60 inch television). It's all perfectly adequate for what it was designed for - presentations and the like. You won't be throwing out your TV to replace it with this for watching DVDs, but it's fine for projecting your presentation. It even projects fine onto home made screens such as light coloured curtains or a bed sheet.

When you're finished, switch off, wait for the fan to stop (takes a lot less time than a conventional projector), and tuck it into its neat little case.

Conclusion

You've probably worked out where this is heading. This is a great portable projector. It's small, it's light, it's easy to carry around. If you have an Acer laptop, it shares the same power supply, so you should be able to get away with just one (the PSU is in fact heavier than the projector!)

It has an LED lamp, so there's no bulb to worry about. With a quoted life of 20,000 hours, you'll probably never need to replace it, and it won't go downhill after a year or two.

You can pick it up for around £350 and I think that's pretty reasonable given that it should last all that time. A dinky little projector which is ideal for anyone on the move.