If you are in sales and marketing or customer/ client relations, there must have been occasions when you missed having the ability to ‘project' that important presentation. Making your audience huddle uncomfortably around your laptop is not the most ideal way to make a good impression. There is a solution at hand – pico projectors and 3M's latest joins the handy bunch in the market.

First impressions

Compared to the MP160 and MPro150, the MP180 is 3M's more feature-rich newbie that is designed to still be a light-weight, super portable projector. By size it is comparable to a ‘universal remote controller' and it weighs about as much too, a little less than 340 grams. I barely felt its presence in my handbag. There's also a tiny 6-inch tripod that 3M packs in the box, which was quite useful, especially with its super-flexible GorillaPod-like legs.

The design of the MP180 is a little '90s – it has the typical boxy, bulky look of the earliest mainstream consumer gadgets. The small touchscreen interface on the device is a big boon. It especially makes things simpler for those who aren't used to working with a projector. Instead of fumbling around with physical buttons (although you do fumble a bit on this resistive touchscreen), there's a compact menu laid out on the homescreen. I was always one touch away from playing a video, audio file or projecting a document through the MP180. The settings to be tweaked – such as Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, password, upgrades etc., are also laid out very simply. The projector's processing power wasn't the greatest, causing short delays when loading larger files like videos.

Connectivity

The unit has a 3.5 mm jack which means you can plug in your headphones and watch a video or even hook up external speakers. The MP180 is equipped with stereo speakers which supply an output of 0.75 watts each. The volume levels at the max were just about loud enough for me to enjoy a movie in a small, very quiet room. The projector has an LED lamp with a brightness of 32 lumens and lamplife estimated at 20,000 hours. Screen size ranges from 10-inches to a maximum of 80-inches, with a resolution of 800x600. Although images displayed were not the most detailed, we must keep in mind that this isn't mean to primarily be an entertainment device. I found that I got the best results when the screen was in the 30-40-inch size. I used the projector with the brightness pumped up to the max and was able to watch a 90 minute video and a 20-minute picture slideshow before it was fully discharged. This was in accordance with the company's claim of a two-hour battery life when the battery is brand new and fully charged.

One downside to the MP180 is that while the device lets you plug in the power adapter and continue using the projector, if the battery is drained out, it does not charge the unit simultaneously. It's only when you stop your presentation or your image slideshow and switch it off that it starts charging the unit.

The base of the MP180 has a small pull-out prop to position the projector at an angle when you are not using the tripod. However if you don't position it correctly it leads to keystone error (when one end of the projected image appears shorter than the other).

The 3M MP180 can also connect to a Wi-Fi network and I hooked it up to the one at work to test its browsing capabilities. Although connecting to the web was easy, the inbuilt browser doesn't exactly offer the most user-friendly interface. All navigation on the web page is meant to be done through the touchscreen, which is never easy on a resistive screen.

One big advantage with the 3M MP180 is the connectivity ports it offers. You can plug in a smartphone or a media storage device to its microUSB slot and view media through the projector. It also ships with a VGA and a composite video cable, which means you can quickly connect the projector to a PC or a laptop to view your content. Keeping in mind a big gripe for jetsetters, 3M has thrown in four separate international standard plugs for its power adapter. The MP180 has 4GB of memory space on board. This way I could store my most commonly used files and a good movie to watch on the device itself. This again is a big plus because it does away with the necessity to always have an external storage with you from which to source content. I also had the option to tag my most commonly used files as favourites. It offers a microSD card slot, which you can load up with a memory card of up to 32GB.

We say

The MP180 is designed primarily to serve as an ultra-portable projector. You might not want to replace your primary conference room projector with this but it's definitely a good fit for those whose work involves a lot of travel and hence the need for a handy, pocket projector.

Love: Ultraportable, connectivity options

Hate: Tacky touchscreen, average brightness

Rs 29,900

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