The Aaxa P2 Micro Projector can expand your abilities to facilitate presentations in a time when more people with ADD are getting more and more resistant to listening to your bright ideas.

Some of us today may find a genuine need for giving presentations. We need to meet with groups of people in a face to face environment and keep their attention. Printing up slicks and giant charts and graphs got really expensive and are usually only good for a single presentation, so we can use OpenOffice.org or Power Point. Both of these run on a computer, so thank goodness we now have the netbook. But you can’t really show off your wonderful presentation on that slick little Eee PC now can you?

Many classrooms and boardrooms have screens or even walls that can be used to display these presentations, but tracking down the projector is often a challenge. You’re already at a big enough disadvantage trying to educate your audience or sell your company’s mediocre product line. Do you really want to hear that dreaded, “Can’t you just do the presentation without it?” To help maintain control and save people the trouble, bring your own projector.

And this is why I set out to own the Aaxa P2 micro projector. I finally got my hands on this little number, and I thought I’d share with you some of my thoughts and discoveries.

First of all, this is what was in the box:

• The Aaxa P2 (w/ happy rubbery lens cap)
• Battery
• Charging base
• Wall wart power supply
• Tripod
• VGA cable
• RCA cable
• USB cable
• Remote Control
• User Manual
• Cardboard, various plastic bags, and twist ties (You know… trash.)

First of all, it’s not a bad product, but there are some kludges that I’d like to get out of the way.

The P2 already has a fairly limited battery life, but with what the package includes, you cannot charge the battery while the P2 is running. The P2 and charging base must share the singular power supply and solitary battery, and the P2 doesn’t seem to charge the battery when the power switch is turned on. Therefore, you turn off the P2, attach the battery, plug it in, and toss the charging base in the trash.

Next, the battery is almost as big as the projector. They don’t show you this in the pictures, but it’s really obvious when you go to use it. The jankiest part is when you remove the “battery cover” to insert the battery that only snap-slides to the bottom of the unit. Now what am I to do with the cover? Um… Clip it to the charging base in the trash I suppose.

There is nothing of import in the manual regarding the battery. So unless you read this or do some experiments on your own, you won’t really know what’s going on when you unbox this critter. My personal tests show between 45 and 50 minutes of continuous use on a full charge. Oh, and how long does it take to recharge the battery? I’m not really sure yet, but it seems like a couple of hours.

Remember that charging base I told you to toss? When the charging base is plugged in, it  shows a green light. Insert the battery, and the light will turn red. If the battery has any charge, the base light will turn green when unplugged from the power supply. When the battery is drained, the charging base will not light with the battery in place. It does not indicate how much of a charge the battery has.

For the projector itself, the sun and fluorescent lights are the enemy.  I wouldn’t take it to make a presentation in any environment where the interrogative phrase, “Could somebody please get the lights?” wouldn’t elicit a reasonably compliant result. Don’t be caught using this at a convention center or on a well lit open floor. Likewise, outside at noon is probably not going to score a lot of points with your audiences either.

The cooling fan on this little guy is a bit noisy. The built in speaker is not. If your presentation is going to require sound, adjust your plans by incorporating an external powered speaker system.

The unit includes 1 gigabyte of internal storage and a micro SD card slot. The idea is that you can use the unit as a stand alone portable media player. It’s a nice idea in theory, but the interface isn’t exactly an  iPod killer. Combine it with the 50 minute battery life, and you really aren’t going to appreciate this feature unless you just want to show off in a brief moment of “look what I can do”.

The interface controls on this device were a little tricky too. You don’t just turn it on… No, you turn it on and then press a button for a few seconds to get the lamp to come on.  If you want to use the media player option, you’ve got to hold another button for a few seconds and then wait for that interface to pop up. It’s not very intuitive, and it’s got a sluggish response.

Some of the features are only available via the remote control. These features should pretty much be left alone, but remote-only features always irk me. What happens if you lose the remote, or it gets broken, or the batteries die? Well… You’re just SOL.

Oh, and the rubbery lens cap? It’s rather small and not attached to anything, so it’s begging to be lost at some point.

So those things mentioned above were the gripes and whines. Now for the moment you’ve been waiting for: What is it good for?

• It’s a $350 highly portable projector.
• At 33 lumens, it’s the most powerful pico projector on the market at this time.
• It can project images connected via VGA, RCA, and internal memory.
• It has a battery that can provide about 50 minutes of autonomous power.
• It comes with a serviceable mini tripod for mounting and stability.
• Its native screen size is 800×600, but for VGA connections it will emulate higher resolutions albeit with increasingly fuzzy detail.
• It will support RCA jack input and headphone output.
• I suppose with the proper planning, you could export your entire Power Point to an MP4 video or JPG slide show. You wouldn’t even need a computer!

Yes, in these aspects it does work as advertised.

So the question: “Is it worth the $350 price tag?”

Only when you compare it to everything else out there do you begin to appreciate this unit.

Lower cost pico projectors frequently do not natively support connecting VGA directly or they rely on the video card to support the non-standard RCA out adapter. Good luck with that. They are only 1/3 the brightness, and have a maximum resolution of 640×480. In short, compared to the P2, you can do a lot worse.

Anything clearer and brighter is going to be much bulkier, and most likely cost at least twice as much. I’ve worked with a couple of those old clunkers and their controls are just as temperamental if not more so. Bottom line here, the P2 is easier and far more portable.

On its own, the P2 does a very fine job of showing off your traveling presentations to modest sized audiences who are interesting in what you have to say in areas where lighting can at least be turned down. It would not work well trying to contain a gross of animals on an open factory floor who want to see “Girls Gone Wild” while listening to thrashmetal. To sum it all up, your mileage may vary.

The next pico projector to top this one is going to be laser based, and I look forward to getting my hands on one. Until then, this is the best device in its class, and it’s in a class all its own.

More quick Q&A

Does it have any kind of keystone control?

No. You will have to manually adjust the position of the projector to minimize this.

What kind of throw does it have?

Well for about every two feet of distance you get about one foot screen width, and it’s got a typical 4:3 aspect ratio. In a sufficiently dark room you can get a decent image from about 10 feet away.  That’s about 75 inches measured diagonally.

How good is the built in video playback?

It kind of sucks. You will most likely have to convert your video files to the format that it likes, and even then, the sound may go out of sync. Thus far, none of the videos in my personal collection work.

Can you use this for gaming?

With a dark room and nice unobstructed blank wall, YES!

What’s the highest resolution it supports?

I’m not sure. It’s 800×600 native, but you can go much higher. Keep in mind the small text and other details will become completely illegible. 1024×768 is actually not so bad, but it definitely looks a little fuzzy. When you take it up to 1280 & higher, it’s really not worth it.

Can I hook this up to make a home theatre?

Um… Sure, but you’d be better served getting something a little more conventional.

What are some of the other uses you could do with this?

You could take it outside and shine it upside a light colored house on a pleasant summer evening for an impromptu neighborhood movie night.

Use it for special effects if you’re the DJ at a dance party.

Emergency computer monitor replacement!

Combine it with one of those Digital TV converter boxes or DVD player and a set of powered computer speakers to watch television or a movie. (Yeah, it’s a make shift home theatre, but it would be fine for a temporary set up on special occasions.)

Or try this evil practical joke… Go up to a friend’s house where their back is usually towards the window. Get a really scary looking picture or creepy video and shine it for just a moment onto the wall in the direction they are facing. If you’re not feeling so evil, just Rick Roll’em.