Roughly the width and depth of a deck of cards, the AAXA LED Pico+ is a strong candidate for anyone who needs a pocket projector that can actually fit comfortably in a pocket. At $149, it’s a close competitor to, but less expensive than, the Kodak Luma 75 that’s our current Editors’ Choice pick for the category. Advantages over the Kodak model include a higher 720p native resolution, longer rated battery life, and support for mirroring iOS and Android devices via Wi-Fi. However it was much harder in our tests to adjust the lens for a sharp focus, an important enough issue to leave the Luma 75 firmly in place as our top pick.Design: A Projector That Fits in Your Pocket The LED Pico+ is thicker than most phones, but smaller otherwise, at 0.8 by 2.8 by 5.3 inches (HWD). It’s also lighter, at half a pound according to the specs, and 2 ounces less than that according to my postage meter. That makes it a smidge larger than and an ounce or so heavier than the Luma 75, but still small enough to be just as easy to carry in a backpack, briefcase, handbag, or pocket. Rubber feet on the bottom help keep it from sliding on a desk or tabletop when a cable pulls on it. Even better, the cables it comes with are light and flexible enough that it’s easy to position them so they don’t tug at the projector.
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The design features rounded corners, both for a more attractive look and to keep the projector from snagging on anything in a pocket. There’s no remote, but the control panel and focus thumb wheel are on the top, where both are easy to reach. They’re best used with the projector supported on a sturdy surface, however. When it’s in your hand or on the included desktop tripod using the screw mount on the bottom side, making adjustments tends to wobble the projector and picture.
(Credit: AAXA Technologies)
The lens defines the front of the projector, with various ports on the other three sides. You’ll find a mini HDMI port, a USB Type-C port for power only, a USB Type-A port, and a slot for TF and microSD cards. The projector also has an AV port that works with a supplied RCA phono plug adapter for composite video and left and right audio channels.
The menu commands include options for choosing among the potential sources, including one for mirroring an iOS or Android device via Wi-Fi, which worked as promised to mirror my Android phone using Miracast. There’s also a Settings option that offers some minor control over the image and audio, including a set of predefined image modes. (More on these later.)Note that in addition to the AV adapter cable, AAXA includes an HDMI-to-mini-HDMI cable plus a USB-A-to-USB-C cable both for charging the battery and for powering the projector should you need a longer session than the battery can handle. AAXA rates battery life at 2 hours in Eco mode.
(Credit: AAXA Technologies)
Unlike most small projectors, the LED Pico+ is built around an LCoS chip paired with an RGB LED light source. By default it negotiates a 1080p (1,920-by-1,080-pixel) connection, so behaves like a 1080p model with soft focus. Unfortunately, the focus thumb wheel is hard to control precisely, so adjusting it for the sharpest image is a hit-or-miss proposition. I wound up fine tuning the sharpness by moving the projector closer to and farther from the screen, which may mean having to deal with an image that’s too big for whatever you’re using as a screen, or smaller than it can handle.As expected for such a small projector, audio is not a strong point. The onboard 1-watt speaker barely put out enough decibels to be useful in a quiet room. If you need sound, plan to connect a headset (or powered sound system) to the 3.5mm audio-out port.Testing the AAXA LED Pico+: Solid Image Quality and Brightness for Its SizeAside from the difficulty focusing that makes it hard to get as much detail as you would expect from the 720p resolution, image quality for the LED Pico+ is impressive for this class of projector. The menus offer three color modes that you can’t adjust, plus one adjustable User mode that’s set to match the Standard mode by default. After some preliminary tests, I quickly zeroed in on the Standard preset as my preferred choice for both presentations and photo-realistic images.For business presentations, the soft focus makes the LED Pico+ a poor choice for showing spreadsheets or PDF documents with lots of text, and even makes it hard to read program menus, but it was easily sharp enough to read the larger fonts in typical PowerPoint slides in my tests. For graphics, it also delivered suitably vibrant color. For photo-realistic images, some colors were a little off, with some showing an obvious yellow bias, but color accuracy overall was within the range of tolerable to acceptable, depending on how critical an eye you have.
(Credit: AAXA Technologies)
The color bias also showed in movies I streamed to my Android phone from Netflix and Max to mirror over a Wi-Fi connection. But very much on the plus side, shadow detail held well enough that I could make out was happening even in dark scenes, streaming the same scenes from the same movies we normally play from Blu-ray discs for our testing, among others.The brightness with my preferred settings was close to what I expect from 15 ANSI lumens. That’s about half the LED lumen rating, which is a typical ratio between the two methods for measuring brightness. Based on the Society for Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) standards, 30 lumens would be suitable for a 21-to-29-inch 16:9 image in a dark room, using a 1.0-gain screen. I found it watchable at that size for short sessions, but a little tiring on my eyes. I kept moving it closer to the screen, winding up with a 15-inch diagonal for extended comfortable viewing in the dark. In an office or room with similar ambient light levels you’ll need to drop down to an even smaller size, but it will still be bigger than a phone or tablet screen.
(Credit: AAXA Technologies)
For those who are concerned about rainbow artifacts—red/green/blue flashes—the good news for the LED Pico+ is that they probably won’t be an issue. Although any projector that shows its primary colors one at a time rather than all at once can produce them, I see these artifacts easily, and saw just a few in my tests. That said, you could be more sensitive to them than I am. It’s always best to buy from a dealer who allows easy returns so you can test the projector for yourself.Verdict: Consider Me for Maximum Portability The AAXA LED Pico+’s key strength is its ability to mirror your phone or tablet wirelessly. If you don’t need that feature, the Kodak Luma 75 is smaller and it was both brighter and much easier to focus in our tests, which is why it remains our top pick for its category. If you want still higher brightness combined with only a modest boost in size and weight, consider the AAXA P400 and Kodak Luma 450. Both offer 1080p native resolution and weigh 1.2 pounds, and both delivered roughly the same brightness in our tests. Between them, the Luma 450 offered better color accuracy, while the P400 costs less and is the only projector mentioned here with a short throw lens.That said, if you need the smallest projector you can find for business presentations, showing photos, or watching movies, and also insist on the convenience of a Wi-Fi connection for mirroring your phone or tablet, the AAXA LED Pico+ is the obvious choice.
Pros
Only slightly bigger than a deck of cards
Built-in rechargeable battery
Native 720p resolution, supports up to 1080p input
Wireless mirroring for iOS and Android devices
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Cons
Hard to adjust for best focus
Rated at only 30 LED lumens
Nearly useless speaker volume
The Bottom Line
The AAXA LED Pico+ isn’t overly bright, but this battery-powered projector weighs just half a pound, making it a good phone or tablet companion.
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