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AAXA Pico Projector - Physical Tour2

Posted on September 27, 2013 by Art Feierman

Remote Control

The AAXA L1 does not have a remote control, but you won’t be using this projector in a large room so being mobile while presenting is not necessary.

AAXA Pico Lens Throw

You can achieve a pretty nice sized image with the L1. The range of image possibilities go from from projecting a 10 inch image from 12 inches away to projecting a 70 inch image from 84 inches. Keep in mind that you will want to stay with the 30 to 50 inch diagonal in order to get the most out of your projector. The AAXA L1 was just too dim when you start to go any larger.

Lens Shift & Setup

Not only is there no adjustable lens shift, but there is no lens offset either. The AAXA L1's image will begin exactly where the lens begins. So imagine that if the projector is 4 feet off the ground, then the projected image will start at 4 feet. Any tilt of the projector both downward or upward will create the keystone effect or that trapezoid look that we often see when presenters don't setup their projectors correctly. The AAXA does not have keystone correction like most LCD and DLP projectors of the non Pico class. You will need to set the projector up completely level and have the lens be exactly perpendicular to the screen to have it project a square image.

AAXA L1 Pico Projector - Picture Quality

Ultimately, what matters in a projector is image quality. The Pico type of projector, although striving for better picture quality, is not what one looks for when they want an exceptional image. The Pico projector, especially the AAXA L1 is designed to perform a function for limited situations. The L1 produces a SVGA 800x600 resolution image which is not bad. Picture quality is not as sharp as one might need for viewing spreadsheets, but images came out looking decent. Not good enough for professional use, but good enough for sharing amongst family and friends.

From my lumens test which uses a full white screen, I noticed the projector was not able to achieve a true white image. It cast a very light blue. Keep that in mind if you plan to show scenes of snow or where true whites are important.

The laser technology also produces almost a sparkle look across the whole image. You can kind of see this picture below. This is not the case with Pico projectors that use LED technology. The sparkled image I found made text more difficult to read. Overall I found the image hard to look at for any length of time.

Color Accuracy

Click to enlarge. So close.  If achieving true to life colors is important to you, then you will not find the L1 to be satisfactory or even acceptable. It should be said again that for applications where you need to accurately represent colors you will want to consider a LCD projector with high contrast and brightness or a DLP that has been reviewed by a professional to determine how accurate the colors are. Pico’s, especially the AAXA L1 just don’t have the level of control in terms of brightness and color settings to accurately represent flesh tones and other colors that the human eye and brain can easily distinguish as inaccurate.

Click Image to Enlarge

You can get a good sense of how well this projector is able to represent white. Although a photograph is not a true way to show the performance of a projector, the photo below does match quite closely to what I saw when taking the picture. As you can see the white area of the Excel spreadsheet is off quite a bit. This is true for all white colors on the AAXA L1 regardless of what you are presenting.

Video

Click to enlarge. So close. The AAXA L1 supports the playing of video files from its internal memory and also supports video from external sources. Keep in mind that when I refer to video I am not talking about VGA from your laptop, but instead from a device like a DVD player or VCR. The only video from external sources that the L1 accepts are RCA and S-video. This is important to note since most game consoles and other sources like a video camera or still camera will more than likely be a mini HDMI source. You can however play video through your laptops DVD drive if you have one.

Click Image to Enlarge

The AAXA L1 was not the best projector for watching movies. The speckle effect and lack of visible contrast really made the image difficult to watch. Laser technology compared to LED technology seems to need some work. Especially when you consider laser Picos are about 40 percent more expensive and the image has proven to be not nearly as good as DLP LED Pico projectors.

If you are like most that buy a Pico or are looking into one, you more than likely are planning to use it as a projector for video games or camera image viewing. If so keep the limitations in mind. A short little video at night might be fine, but this projector is no replacement for a true home theater projector. Also, it does accept HD signals so keep that in mind

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