Optoma Pico – Overall Color & Picture Quality

The Optoma Pico leaves much to be desired overall, if you are comparing it to larger projectors, especially home theater models, but even compared to basic, entry level 3LCD business projectors. The primary weakness is that the image is overly saturated. Colors are ok, but hardly great. Everything for the most part appears a bit over the top.

On the other hand, it’s ability to produce bright reds and yellows – normally a weakness of DLP business projectors, isn’t bad for this tiny DLP projector. You won’t be buying the Pico for its image quality, but, rather for it’s size and portability. Don’t set your expectations too high, but sure, you may well enjoy watching a movie on it, if you keep the screen size small (typically 20 to 50 inches diagonal, in a darkened room. As you can see in the image above, the blue of the Thunderbird, is nice and rich, but you can also see the oversaturated, contrasty, and too dark, skin tones when you look at Kelsey Grammer’s face. As I have said, watchable, but not home theater quality.

Optoma claims a massive 11 lumen output for the Pico. Eight to twelve lumens is about what most of the manufacturers are claiming. We measured the Pico and it hit its claim.

The Optoma Pico actually measured 11.1 lumens set for full brightness, and dropped to 7.3 lumens in the standard brightness setting. Unless battery life is an issue, I can’t imagine anyone using the low brightness setting.

This photo (right) shows an image projected from the Optoma Pico, approximately 30 inches diagonal. The image is from the movie Down Periscope – standard DVD) with the room darkened. This shot gives you a pretty good idea of how little ambient light is present in the room, mostly light leaking in from the closed blinds below the screen and reflecting off of the walls.