Microvision Laser Projector

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Well it isn't a DIY thread but I figured I would come back to my roots and post here. I also figured it would be beneficial to see the look of laser technology. About 4 years ago I wanted to build a pico projector since there was not one available on the market and I even did some posting here about it. I ended up with a LCD viewfinder that I tried to light with a 3 watt led which failed terribly. The colors were awful, the collimation of light didn't work at all, and the overall image sucked! So those parts got sold off and waited a couple years.

Still having the pico projector bug I purchased an AAXA P2 Pico Projector which was ok at best. Its color never seemed quite right, for the worlds brightest it didn't seem all that bright, very noisy fan, and it seemed like you need to constantly focus especially if you were holding hand held. I used this off an on for business and occasionally for a quick theater experience someplace remote but it never held up to my expectations.

Now fast forward again. Finally a company I had been watching for years came out with their premiere product: a laser based pico projector. The problem was they price was so high ($650) I couldn't justify its cost in contrast to a decent 1024x768 2500 lumen 3lbs projector for the same cost. It wasn't until they dropped the price to about $550 and threw in the VGA dock free that I felt I would make the plunge and sell my AAXA to help fund it.


Here is a size comparison of the two units equally equipped with VGA

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Here they are with just batteries connected:

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For a couple days I had both projectors to play with and wanted to show the results of both here. Almost all of these image were taken in manual mode with both projectors being run from a VGA from the laptop. The only exception was the lit room photo where the laser was being run from my component cable from my iphone and the AAXA was from VGA.

Here are the images AAXA on the left and the ShowWX on the right:

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An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.


An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.


An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.


Just a note the AAXA is rated at 33 lumens while the laser is rated at 10 lumens.

If you can't see it for yourself, I found myself very impressed with the laser projector's quality and color reproduction. It also doesn't have the annoying fan running and is focus free. Once of the down sides is really the resolution. It runs at 848x480. This is great for video and photo sharing but when connected to a PC for desktop sharing it is just too low and the wide isn't beneficial. One last downside on the laser is a calibration line that shows itself in low light environments. This is a grey line at the very bottom of the laser's projected image that scans at say 30hz. In very dark scenes or sections of black this line clearly is flickering, I find it rather annoying. Otherwise quite impressed. I hope Microvision refines this technology get the brightness up and the resolution up but maintains the same form factor.
 
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