Listener Review: Acer K11 Portable Pocket Projector

From time to time listeners like to write in and provide us their thoughts on products they own. We like to encourage this as it gives different perspectives on the tech we love so much. Neil from Ottawa wrote in to tell us about his experience with the Acer K11 Portable Pocket Projector (Street Price $360).

Features:

• Digital Connectivity-HDMI An HDMI port delivers uncompressed digital signals and multi-channel audio, providing easy connectivity to high-quality HD broadcasts or entertainment.
• Users can simply carry the Acer K11 portable projector along with the USB drive or SD card to display whatever they want to share anywhere without a lapyop PC or a video player.
• The Acer K11 portable projector enables high-quality enjoyment pf portable entertainment by projecting videos/audio and photos from an iPod/iPhone using an appropriate Apple-certified A/V adapter.
• Acer SmartFormat Technology Conveniently supports comprehensive wide-format PC signals. Users no longer need to worry about annoying "Signal not supported" issues, nor must they change the resolution of their wide-format notebook.
• Included Accessories: AC to DC power adapter VGA cable Composite video cable Carrying case User's guide (CD-ROM); Quick-Start Guide Remote Control

Neil's Review:

I just got back from a week's vacation in Cancun with my family and had to write to you about my HD (or non-HD) experiences.  We stayed at the Gran Caribe Real resort on the strip.  They bill themselves as a 5 star, but the online booking sites list them as a 4 star.

Upon arrival, the sold us an upgrade from a regular room to a one-bedroom suite. This was perfect as the kids would have a bunk bed.  The room itself was nice with a 32" LCD in each room.  This is where it goes south.  I swung the TV forward and was saddened, but not surprised, to find that there was coax going into the TV.  There was also a Sony DVD player, but they elected to use composite rather than component cables.  I can't say that I'm surprised as I don't remember ever staying in a hotel where they have a HD feed in the hotel rooms.  It would require a separate cable box in front of each TV.  Nonetheless, it would be great to see a hotel step up and fully utilize the technology.

To get us by, I had packed an Acer K11 LED mini projector and an iPhone full of content.  The projector is quite good for it's size.  I throws out 200 lumens, which is very high in the pico catergory.  This little guy packs both SD and USB slots with video processing onboard.  It will also accept a composite, VGA and HDMI inputs.  There is a mercury switch inside that will detect the inclination and automatically keystone the image if required.  However, there only seems to be one automatic stop for the keystoning.  It was not gradual, so I just turned off the feature.

There are a few of down sides to this projector:

1. The internal speaker is a sad little 1W mono speaker.  It is extremely quiet and there is no audio out port. This makes the SD and USB slots useless for anything other than reviewing pictures or watching Charlie Chaplin.
2. Related to #1, the fan is quite loud.  This really hurts the SAF (spousal acceptance factor).  We tried watching a television show projected onto the ceiling in our bedroom, but the fan noise drove her crazy.  The only option is to drive up the audio to drown out the fan noise.  There is an "eco" mode, which I have yet to try, that supposedly will lower the fan noise.  But the only way that I can see that they can maintain a safe operating temperature is to lower the lumens accordingly.  Not a good compromise.
3. There is no internal battery, which means having to carry around the power brick and having to be near a power source.

Back to our vacation, I ended up hooking the projector to my iPhone via VGA cable (jailbroken, using "Display Out") and streaming the audio out to external Creative portable speakers.  The girls loved it!

I did have the Optima Pico PK101 projector for a couple of weeks last year, but ended up returning it as the image was too weak.  That one had only 30 lumens. This Acer blows it away.

Finally, with our vacation over, we dragged ourselves to the Cancun airport this past Sunday morning.  I sat in the departure lounge between gates B14 and B15 while the wife and kids checked out the duty free store. As I sat there, something caught my eye out of the peripheral.  I turned my head to see what looked like an old rear projection TV with the convergence out of whack.  It took me a second to realize that it was in fact a glasses-fee 3D TV.  After a few seconds, I was able to find the sweet spot.  If you're not in it, the image looks terrible.

Unfortunately, they only had about 3 minutes of content on a continuous loop.  It would have been great if they were playing a good 3D movie to show off the abilities of the TV.  Since the loop was so small, you could see "burn in" on the tv.  I'm not sure if this glass-less 3D technology is more susceptible to this condition or if cycling the TV would have cleaned things up.  Still, it was nice to see the technology in action.

I'm not sure if you have already had a chance to see these types of TVs, but it would be a great opportunity for you guys to pitch a vacation down to Cancun as a "HDTV Research Project".

Love the show and keep up the great work!

Neil
Ottawa