This is a great device and lives up to the great reviews. I spent a bunch of time looking for a low-cost, reasonable-quality digital projector to use outdoors for our teens to have movie night, projecting against the side of the garage. Everything under $200, my first price point, looked questionable (descriptions poorly translated from Chinese, low lumen output, must use SD cards or VGA for input, etc). Projectors in the $200-350 range use filament lamps which are expensive to replace. This looked like the best bet for an LED driver, HDMI input, and good lumens. It's not full 1080p (or 3D) but that will send you into the $600+ price bracket so if that's where you're heading go for it.
This thing truly fits in your palm, which makes it easy to set up for temporary outdoor use. There is a tripod-style female threaded socket that accepts 1/4" machine bolts, so I plan to mount it upside down under a wood shelf where it will be protected from getting knocked over or having a drink spilled on it. The menu system is reasonably easy to navigate and you can flip or mirror the image. Keystone correction works perfectly so you can dial in the aspect and make a nice square picture. Image is sharp and bright. Colors look true. The box feels solid and well-built. The focus lever is old-school (manual) but works fine.
I got the projector wired up in the middle of the day and tried it outdoors. Couldn't see anything, but it was broad daylight. If you need to do outdoor projection in the daytime, this won't handle it. However, as night fell we tried again and the image got progressively stronger. Well before full dark the picture looked great, and in full dark it was pretty awesome. And this is projecting against tan-colored stucco, no screen at all. Our setup puts the projector lens 12'-3" from the center of the "screen" and the overall image is 96" across. With a proper screen it would be top-notch, although tonight we decided that we probably don't even need to get a screen, or do much of anything. My wife read in Houzz about a paint that you can use for this purpose, and you can paint a border or even red velvet curtains along the sides, so we might go for that. But really, it's ready for a teen movie night right now!
The only negatives: can't zoom the image (have to move the projector), limited up-down adjustment (there is a tiny little foot screw adjustment, but you may end up propping something under the front or back of the box to get it pointed correctly), sound is not great (but there are many cures for that, with audio from your media source to speakers, etc). It would be cool if this thing was wireless streaming (and in a year they'll probably have that). The fan makes a little noise but not bad, and I was OK sitting with my ears only a foot or so away from the projector. The box does get a bit warm; I was hoping it would run cool with the LED source but not quite. The carry case is nice. This would also make a nice business-style presentation machine. For our home purposes, I'm planning to use a Toshiba wireless compact Blu-Ray player that can play DVDs or BDs from our collection, or stream from Netflix, etc.
We've only run this for one night but I'm impressed so wanted to get this review out. If anything changes I'll come back to amend.
Thumbs up, enjoy!
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This Item  Optoma ML550 WXGA 500 Lumen 3D Ready Portable DLP LED Projector with MHL Enabled HDMI Port |  |  |  |  | |
| Price | — | -14% $369.99 List: $429.99 | $599.99 | -25% $599.00 List: $799.00 | $592.00 |
| Delivery | — | Get it as soon as Tuesday, May 7 | Get it as soon as Tuesday, May 7 | Get it as soon as Tuesday, May 7 | Get it May 9 - 17 |
| Customer Ratings | |||||
| Brightness | |||||
| Picture quality | |||||
| Value for money | |||||
| Sold By | — | Amazon.com | Amazon.com | BenQ INFTY Lab | Grenade Audio |
| hardware interface | hdmi | hdmi, usb | usb, hdmi | hdmi | usb |
| display resolution | — | 1280 x 800 | 1080 | 1920 x 1080 | 1920 x 1080p |
| brightness | 500 | — | 3500 | 3800 | 700 |
| native resolution | 1280 x 800 | 1280 x 800 | 1920 x 1080 | 1920 x 1080 | 1280 x 800 |
| image contrast ratio | 10000:1 | — | 12000:1 | 15000:1 | 10000:1 |
| max throw distance | 1.5 meters | 34.1 feet | 10.96 meters | 5 feet | 10.6 feet |
| min throw distance | 1 meters | 2.11 feet | 1 meters | 8 feet | 1.8 feet |
| controller type | Button Control | Button Control | Remote Control | Button Control, Remote Control | Remote Control |
Top reviews from other countries
Jeff C
It has a speaker which was a nice surprise.
Reviewed in Canada on May 2, 2016Hudson Foley
Brightness could be better and there's no adjustable footage
Reviewed in Canada on April 25, 2015Billyblastoff
No way to adjust color settings
Reviewed in Canada on December 12, 2013