Philips Pocket Projector PPX4350 Wireless - Review 2022

The Philips Pocket Projector PPX4350 Wireless ($399.99) weighs just 4.2 ounces and fits in a shirt pocket, making it of obvious involvement if you need a pico projector. Its key limitation—that information technology doesn't come with an Air conditioning adapter to permit you keep using it when battery runs down—is frustrating, but fixable. While the battery keeps going, though, the PPX4350 Wireless is a highly capable projector in an impressively minor parcel. As long as y'all don't need it for, say, watching a full-length picture, that may exist enough.

At 0.7 by 2.1 past 3.8 inches (HWD), the PPX4350 Wireless is bigger than the Philips Pocket Projector PPX4010 that I recently reviewed, simply smaller than the vast majority of pico projectors—and lighter as well. At 50 lumens, information technology's rated at a higher brightness than many competing models, including the Celluon PicoPro, our Editors' Choice pico projector, which has a 32-lumen rating. The UO Smart Axle Laser Projector offers a lx-lumen rating, but its ii.2-inch cubical shape makes it difficult to fit in a pocket.

Basics and Setup

The PPX4350 Wireless is built effectually a 640-past-360-resolution DLP chip paired with an LED light source. The resolution is unusual, and it's a little low for reading text easily from a certificate or a spreadsheet. All the same, it's half of 720p'southward 1,280-by-720 resolution, with a native 16:nine attribute ratio. That makes the projector a poor choice as a companion to a laptop for data projection, but a reasonable option for watching widescreen video. The LED lite source is meant to last the life of the projector, with a thirty,000-hr rating.

For such a small model, the PPX4350 Wireless offers a surprising wealth of choices for image sources, including lots of connection options and a 4GB internal memory that it tin read files from directly. If you don't need a wireless connection, Philips says the identical projector is as well available without the Wi-Fi dongle as the Philips Pocket Projector PPX4350 ($329.99)

In add-on to a Power switch on the left side of the PPX4350 Wireless, in that location are a mini HDMI port that also supports MHL, a microSD card slot that lets the projector read files straight from SD and SDHC cards, and a mini-plug audio-out port. In improver, at that place are two captured cables located on the left rear corner of the unit, with 1 offering a so-called male person USB Blazon A connector on the complimentary finish, and the other offering a female USB Type A connector.

The male person connector lets you lot charge the battery, either past plugging it into a reckoner or a tertiary-party Ac adapter. If you connect it to a PC, it besides lets the PC see the 4GB internal memory as a USB drive, so you can copy files to it and manage them. The female connector lets you plug in a USB central to read files directly or connect the Wi-Fi dongle that comes with the projector and adds the ability to connect past Miracast and Apple Airplay. Finally, congenital-in Bluetooth lets you connect to a Bluetooth headset or speakers.

For my tests, I connected the PPX4350 Wireless to a figurer and a Blu-ray player via HDMI for our standard tests, including DisplayMate images, and besides connected using Miracast. Setup is standard for each type of connection, with a thumbwheel on the peak left of the projector, only backside the lens, for adjusting the paradigm. Focusing is a little easier than with about thumbwheel-based adjustments, with the wheel clicking through a series of distinct steps. Yet, the low resolution puts annihilation sharper than soft focus out of reach.

Bombardment

Woes

Philips rates the battery life for the PPX4350 Wireless at ninety minutes for the default Optimal (brightest) mode or two hours for Eco mode. Both are inside the typical range for a pico projector with rechargeable batteries. One time the batteries dies, however, yous're pretty much dead in the h2o until y'all recharge it. With almost pocket-sized projectors, you can plug into a power source and keep going. With the PPX4350 Wireless, you lot can't unless you accept a sufficiently loftier-power Air conditioning adapter.

The PPX4350 Wireless is actually running off the bombardment even when it'south connected to a ability source. If you let the bombardment fully run down, it takes 5 to x minutes for it to charge enough for the projector to work over again. Only even then, in my tests with the projector connected to a reckoner'due south USB port and to a 1-amp charger, the battery tuckered faster than it charged, quickly dying again. It fifty-fifty died during testing when I tried fully charging it beginning, and then connecting to a USB port for power while using it.

This could be seriously annoying if you're trying to watch something that takes longer than the battery can concluding. The just way around it is to buy a third-political party 2-ampere charger. The good news is that you may already have one. My latest phone came with a fast charger, for example, which turned out to offer 2 amps and let the projector work even afterward the bombardment died. The amperage for whatever charger y'all have should be written on the charger itself. Still, for the projectors' price, not bundling in an AC adapter is puzzling.

Brightness and Image Quality

Based on the Gild of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) recommendations, the l-lumen rating for the PPX4350 Wireless makes it bright enough for extended viewing in theater-dark lighting for a 27- to 37-inch image (measured diagonally) at the projector's native 16:nine aspect ratio and bold a i.0-proceeds screen. In moderate ambience light, the size drops to 18 to 20 inches. For short sessions, y'all can hands employ a larger prototype without tiring your optics.

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Quality for data images is severely limited by the low resolution. Information technology'southward good plenty for PowerPoint slides or the similar with just a few lines of large text, but text at typical sizes for a document or a spreadsheet was hard to read in our tests. On the plus side, colors in graphics are suitably vibrant and well saturated, and I saw rainbow artifacts rarely enough in our tests that it'southward unlikely anyone would find them bothersome.

Video quality is best described as adept enough to be watchable, but far from impressive. At 640 by 360, the PPX4350 Wireless delivers even lower native resolution than you would get from a standard-definition TV (SDTV), which leads to a soft-focus look compared with annihilation you're likely used to. However, colour is well inside the realm of reasonable.

I saw rainbow artifacts frequently enough in a black-and-white video clip in my tests that those who meet these artifacts easily and are bothered by them may find them annoying. However, with color clips in my tests, they showed infrequently plenty that information technology's unlikely anyone would consider them an issue.

Surprisingly, the 1-watt speaker puts out enough volume to be all y'all'll need if you're sitting within two or three anxiety of the projector. If you adopt, nevertheless, you tin can connect to a headset or speakers using the mini-plug sound output or Bluetooth.

Conclusion

For a laptop companion, be sure to consider the Philips PPX4010, which is the smallest projector in this group and designed specifically to work with a laptop PC. The laser-based UO Smart Beam and Editors' Choice Celluon PicoPro and the LED-based Philips Pocket projector PPX4350 Wireless are all better choices for connecting to other prototype sources more hands. Both light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation-based models accept a college resolution than the PPX4350 Wireless, and automatically focus at whatsoever distance from the screen. However, the PPX4350 Wireless is the only one that can read files directly from an SD card or its own internal retention.