AAXA P700 Pocket LED Projector – Hardware Tour

P700 Hardware Overview

The P700 is a pocket projector, but you’ll be hard pressed to find a “pocket” it will fit in (maybe a pocket book).  It measures almost 7 inches wide, over four inches front to back and almost two inches tall.  The lens is recessed and mounted off center on the front.  It is the only thing you’ll find on the front besides the exhaust vent.

Inputs and connectors are on the right side (if you are facing the projector), and on the back.  The left side has only the focus ring for the lens. The rather complete control panel is located on the top and nicely lit with some pretty bright blue LED lights.

There are no adjustable feet (unfortunately), so the only things you’ll find on the bottom are the tripod screw threading, and the battery compartment.

P700 Inputs

On the side of the P700 in the photo above, from front to back are the connector for the power supply, then just above and slightly further back is a hard power switch.  That’s followed by the headphone jack which could alternately be used to feed external powered speakers or a bigger sound system.

The next input over is the small slot for the TF micro-SD card slot.  Lastly is a standard HDMI connector.

The rest are on the back.  In the photo below you can see, from left to right:

That small input is the VGA input.  The P700 comes with the appropriate adapter to connect to a standard VGA cable, so you can input from traditional computers.

Next over is a small mini-jack labeled AV.  That works in conjunction with another provided cable, which has the mini-jack on one end, and a yellow composite video RCA jack, and left (white) and right (red) stereo audio RCA jacks, for hooking up to traditional lower resolution video.  Then on the right side of the back is a standard USB input.  That folks is it, but all considered that’s an impressive collection of interfacing options:  cards, USB, HDMI, VGA and composite video/stereo.  MHL on HDMI seems to be lacking, although AAXA sells an HDMI MHL adapter specifically for a number of Samsung Galaxy portable devices.  That would tend to indicate that the HDMI port is not providing the needed power to support streaming sticks like Roku, or Amazon’s Fire, Googles Chrome…

P700 Control Panel

Pretty standard stuff on the control panel, but consider that it is a more fully featured control panel than found on a lot of pico and pocket LED projectors.

The arrow keys for menu navigation are laid out in a round configuration with the Enter button in the middle.

That’s complemented by three additional buttons curved around the bottom of the navigation.  The left button is the Menu button.  The one of the right is a back button which moves you back up a level in the menus.

Between the two of them is the power button.  Press once for on, and twice for off.

Speaking of powering on and off, the P700 powers up very quickly.  It takes about 10 seconds or less from power up to having the main menu up on the screen.  Power down is accomplished by pressing twice on the power button, at which point the projector shuts off immediately.

Unlike lamp based projectors, by the time the main menu appears, colors are stable, and you are ready to start using the projector.  With lamp based projectors it typically takes about a minute before color is pretty good, and a few more minutes before color is very stable.  Count the fast on and off as a nice plus, but probably not a key reason for buying one of these P700s.

P700 Remote Control

It’s a small remote, a bit narrower than a credit card, but thicker.  Buttons work very well despite being the “bubble” type.  Range is good for a remote of this size, which is a good thing, because the P700 only has an IR sensor in the rear, not the front.  I’m able to get a decent bounce off the back wall of my theater when sitting in front of the projector.

From the top.  Power on the left, Inputs on the right.

Then comes navigation with Menu on the left, up arrow, and mute.  The next row is left arrow. OK (Enter) and right arrow.

Then comes volume down, down arrow and volume up.

Third row from the bottom has keystone adjustment on the left and right, while the middle button and the six below are typical buttons for controlling a media player, DVD player etc. with left chapter, play/pause, right a chapter, stop, and “back” a level.

Bottom line on the remote:  Pretty standard, works well, good size to accompany the projector, good range.  Just wish they would have included a front IR sensor on the projector.

Lens Throw distances

P700 Menus

This player has most of the P700’s menus, except those showing the Media Player menus, which are in the section talking about that player.  Captions should explain most of what you would want to know (and then some).