Aiptek V10 PLUS - Image Quality

Posted on September 28, 2013 by Art Feierman

Aiptek V10 PLUS Projector - Picture Quality

So far, I've yet to be overly impressed with the image quality of these pico LED projectors. The V10 Plus, is no exception, in fact behaves very similarly to the other two we've reviewed - the Optoma and 3M.

Images tend to be heavy on the blue, with the skin tones shifting a bit to a purplish red. Like the other small pico projectors, it won't stand up to critical viewing. Professional photographers - don't even think about showing anyone your photos on one of these projectors.

If, however, you just want to view, with an uncritical eye, some photos you shot with your point and shoot camera, where the "who and what" in the picture are far more important that how good the color is, then the V10 Plus should work for you.

One nice touch is that unlike the other pico projectors, the V10 Plus has some image controls, including brightness, contrast and color saturation. In experimenting with the controls, I discovered that those controls affect videos and images on the SD card slot, or in the internal memory and media player, but do not affect composite video inputted material. In other words, if you want to adjust things like brightness and saturation, coming from a composite video source, all you need to do is save the file (pictures, video) into the internal memory (4 gigabytes), and then the settings changes you make will affect those files.

Presentations?

Unlike the 3M MPro110, the V10 Plus lacks an analog VGA input. That means you can't just plug your laptop into it and feed it a presentation.

That said, Aiptek provides software from ArcSoft on the included disc. Using the software you can output powerpoint presentations and pdfs as JPEG files (.jpg), and run them off of the SD card slot, or load them into the V10 Plus'es internal memory.

The end result works, and results are pretty comparable to the 3M projector with it's VGA port, however, the 3M does a little better, due to directly inputing the VGA signal. At least with the V10 Plus, you can leave your computer behind!

As with other pico projectors overall picture quality does suffer from inaccurate colors and lack of brightness, but like the others it can do a presentation, in a pinch.

Aiptek V10 PLUS Black Levels & Shadow Detail

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The 1000:1 contrast ratio would indicate black level performance roughly comparable to business class LCD projectors, but definitely shy of even the most entry level home theater projectors. Still, performance is more than adequate for watching movies, YouTube videos, and viewing photos. Once again, don't expect big projector performance. Shadow detail is a weakness. Unadjusted it's definitely a bit worse than the 3M or Optoma pico projectors. That said, if you download a movie, or photos to memory card, or internal memory, you can then go to the settings menu and adjust contrast (as well as saturation, and brightness). Decreasing the contrast setting definitely helps in terms of revealing more shadow details, and improving the overall picture.

Aiptek V10 PLUS - Overall Color & Picture Quality

The Aiptek V10 Plus behaves like the other two pico projectors I've reviewed. If you plan to be critical of image quality, then like the other pico projectors, the V10 Plus is not for you. For casual viewing, (fun stuff), however, the V10 Plus projector should probably be described as having decent picture quality. Just don't set your sights too high!

Aiptek V10 PLUS Projector: Performance, HDTV, TV and Sports

As with the 3M projector, I didn't view the V10 PLUS with any TV content. Expect however the results to be very similar to the the image quality discussed above, coming in through the composite video port. I should note that since the V10 Plus has stereo speakers, it has a distinct advantage over the speakerless 3M.