Intro and Unboxing:

Review after the break.

Update on 2012-11-06 06:51 by Mike Mu

Final Score:

Overall score is 6.5 / 10 for use as a portable business projector.
Overall score for home use as a home theatre projector 7/10.

The LG PA70G is the brightest portable LED projector available on the market. It rates itself at 700 lumens, and I don't have a device to test if this is true nor do I know how they measure it. What I do know, is that for business projector use, (where you have office level lighting) it is practically useless.

What's it like to travel with?

Its small, as you can see in the pictures. However, the power brick is quite large and that itself weighs about 24 ounces with the power cable attached. Even with the extra size of the power brick, it is still the most portable projector I've ever used in its class of brightness.

Carrying just the included case and bag is not sufficient protection from a accidental small drop. However, the case and the bag are sufficient for use in another bag. I use a roller to keep the projector, cables, and presentation materials.

Business Presentation Features:

One nice surprise is that it has built-in rudimentary support for PDFs and Microsoft Office Documents. In a pinch if my laptop were malfunctioning, simply plugging in a USB stick with the documents could get me by. The remote control could be used for flipping slides as well.

The automatic search for the inputs is kludgy and I often find that it has trouble switching from HDMI to VGA from my iPad. Manually selecting the input works though but its an extra step that requires pressing a few buttons to accomplish.

Remote control is a nice addition and it has a lot of buttons. The problem with it is that the clicking is relatively loud (small gripe), but the infrared needs to be pointed directly at the unit's receiver. I like to walk around the room during a presentation, so that pretty much means I need to time my walk to be within receiving range of the receiver should I need to change up ports or adjust settings in the midst of presenting.

Text sharpness is weak. This is because instead of using standard square pixels, it uses diamond shaped pixels, small text looks grainy and 'pixelated' making it difficult to read. Diamond shaped pixels are perfectly fine for movies, videos, etc but for small text at native resolution - its simply not good. I'm sure it would be fine for 1080P projectors, but this only supports 720P.

The main redeeming quality of this projector is the fact that the LED will easily outlast any regular projector so as a backup projector, and hopefully one I can depend on, it serves its purpose. Plus the maintenance and consumables are essentially nill.

Limited projection size. There is no zooming with the built in lens. If you want to project a bigger screen, you have to move the projector back further from the screen etc. This presents a challenge for me given the wide variety of places where I'm giving business presentations.

More updates later...