Aiptek V10 PLUS Projector Brightness
With a whopping 8.3 lumens, the V10 Plus is just slightly less bright than the 3M MPro 110, and about 26% less bright than the Potoma Pico. When you consider that the next size up class of projectors (similar to the BenQ GP1 recently reviewed) are now over 100 lumens, and traditional entry level business projectors start at well over 1000 lumens, keep your brightness expectations very low.
The V10 Plus will perform best projecting very small images - say 12 to 20 inch diagonal. It can even handle a little ambient light at those sizes. In a fully darkened room, you can push the V10 Plus up higher, but even in that fully darkened room, and 50 inch diagonal image will be dim. Best to keep the image size (in a fully darkened room) 20 to 30 inches diagonal. Ultimately, you'll have to decide if there is enough brightness to go larger than that.
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Click Image to EnlargeIn the image below, you are looking at a 20 inch wide projected image (25 inches diagonal), with low lighting on, in the back of the room. (two dimmed recessed ceiling lights doing about 20 watts each), about 14 feet from the screen. You can see the ambient light around the projected image, it is just enough to start washing out this bright photo, but just slightly. On a dark scene, this amount of ambient light would take a noticeable toll on picture quality.
Sharpness
The V10 PLUS is VGA resolution, and that will be the first limitation in terms of image sharpness. Of course VGA is just fine for composite video. For those feeding it a higher resolution computer signal, the V10 PLUS will handle up to XGA (1024x768), but in the compressing of the image down to VGA you'll pick up some softness, as would be expected. From a lens oriented perspective, the V10 PLUS does rather well. The focus dial is fine enough to allow the maximum sharpness to be tuned in, but like the Optoma PK101, it is course enough to make you work a little at getting the maximum sharpness.
Overall, I'd say sharpness is good for a small VGA projector. Note, even if you are willing to go dim, to get a really large image, the 3M will only focus out to images as large as 38.4 inches wide (about 48 inches diagonal)
Light Leakage
None! Other than the image coming out of the lens, the only other light is the yellowish LED lit control panel on the top of the Aiptek V10 Plus. The amount of light the control panel throws into the room is slight enough as to not be an issue.
Audible Noise
Dead silent. No fan, no moving parts other than the focus dial.
General Screen Recommendations
This page is pretty much a cut and paste from our review of the Optoma Pico:
I suspect that people won't be buying a projector screen to use with the projector. Rather, they will project onto a white or near white wall. It's been a long time since I've seen one, but mini-screens do exist, including those that retract into a tube. I've seen such small screens in sizes from about 16" diagonal. They can be opened up, and set on a table. By the way, I recommend finding a mini-tripod for setting up the projector. Those weigh only a few ounces and are typically less than 6 inches long.
If you are going to get a screen, I'd suggest a high gain screen if possible. That will help with ambient light, and provide some extra brightness. Some mini-screens come in high gain surfaces. One example is the Da-Lite Presenter screen shown here. It is 40" diagonal, sells for around $199, and has a particularly bright surface.
If you are going to get a screen, I'd suggest a high gain screen if possible. That will help with ambient light, and provide some extra brightness. Some mini-screens come in high gain surfaces. One example is the Da-Lite Presenter screen shown here. It is 40" diagonal, sells for around $199, and has a particularly bright surface.
For a lot less money (around $50), Draper makes a 25" diagonal tabletop screen for pico projectors. I can't say that I've actually seen one, but here's an image I found.
With the advent of these pico projectors, look for a wide array of small, portable screens to be available shortly.
Also however, I suspect we will see some fancy screen technology to help out the brightness of these projectors. In the mid to late '90's when projectors were typically 300 - 700 lumens, and the LCD projectors used a different polarization scheme internally, there were some rigid flat screens with exceptional contrast, that allowed those projectors to project, say, a 60" diagonal image under full lighting and still look great. If those are compatible with the pico projector technology (so far DLP or LCoS), they might make a comeback, but in smaller sizes. I could picture a fold over consisting of four 9x12 panels, that when all opened up, would make for a bright 30 inch screen. Ya never know.
