With Android TV and Apple TV along with plug-in devices like the Chromecast and Amazon Fire Stick becoming mainstream, not to mention LED TVs becoming bigger, smarter, and cheaper, quality home entertainment is easily accessible. Add to that the gamut of streaming services that have hit our shores, and you find more and more people staying indoors to ‘Netflix and Chill’ or ‘Amazon Prime and whatever-you-call-it’.

Rewind to not too long ago, and quality home entertainment meant a big projector, a pull down screen, and a darkened room. But with big, shiny TVs and the content and capabilities to go with them evolving, projectors could suddenly find themselves confined to boardrooms. Some reinvention and evolution of their own is what they need, yes? And manufacturers are giving them a shot in the arm by making them portable, easy on the eye, and also improving audio.

A case in point is the Viewsonic M1, a projector that is made for carrying around. And it is clearly aimed at entertainment rather than presentations, given that it comes with Harman Kardon audio built in, but more on that later.

Sharp, attractive looks

The box is emblazoned with a sticker that says the M1 has won a design award and on unboxing it, it is easy to see why. It could well be mistaken for a neat and snazzy-looking speaker, as the audio grille with the Harman Kardon branding covers most of the top.

The front is protected by a lens cover that also doubles up as a stand and this particular bit is great because you can set it anywhere without having to worry about its perch.

The back has the power button along with the function keys and the sides are pretty much unblemished till you flip open a cover that protects a wide range of ports and docks, making the projector very functional in terms of the sheer variety of sources it supports. All of this, and it’s only as big as a medium-sized hardback novel, making it very easy to carry around.

You don’t have to have it plugged in all the time to power it up, as it has a battery that lasted at least three hours on a single charge.

The battery charge indicator is a set of tiny white lights at the back that also add to the aesthetic appeal.

Ease of use

Set up is very simple and so is firing it up. All you have to do is just flip over the lens cover to prop the projector up and the lamp bursts into life, all 250 lumens of it. It offers a screen size of upto 100 inches, depending on how far it is placed from the wall or the screen. It offers a 16:9 aspect ratio and a resolution of 845 x 480, which means that Blu Ray content will be scaled down.

In dark environs, the picture is sharp, clear, and the colours are vibrant, making a movie-watching experience very satisfactory.

The various input options the M1 supports include HDMI, USB Type A, USB Type C (useful for mobile playback). It also has a MicroSD card slot, useful to view pictures and videos shot on a DSLR, for example.

The audio out 3.1 mm jack ensures you can boost audio by connecting to more powerful speakers, which we recommend. The Harmon Kardon dual 3W audio is good, but mostly in small rooms.

If you are planning to go full tilt with the movie binging, connect to larger speakers. It’s a pity that the M1 doesn’t get Bluetooth connectivity and at this price, it could have been a valuable addition.

The M1 takes a while to get to full charge, and this is even more prolonged when it is plugged in while you’re watching something. Not to mention that for a projector this small, it has a noisy fan, especially when it is charging.

The icing on the cake is that it offers 16 GB of internal memory, so you can load up movies or a few episodes of TV shows to carry around, without having to worry about an external source. Viewsonic claims a lamp life of up to 30,000 hours, which should last regular users fairly long.

It comes with a neat and handy remote control with the usual functions like volume, play/pause, skip, etc.

It could come across as a tad pricey, but the Viewsonic M1 should cater to most needs for those looking for a portable projector.

Price: ₹49,000

Pros: Portable, good looks, variety of input options, can work without being plugged in

Cons: No Bluetooth for audio connectivity, noisy fan

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