Optoma PK-320 LED Pico Projector (WVGA)

I bought this to take on holiday for a bit of entertainment in the hotel room. I hooked it up to my macbook using a mini-displayport to hdmi adapter, and an hdmi to mini hdmi cable. For audio I used a minirig connected directly to the macbook (although I have no reason to be believe it wouldn't work fine if I connected the Optoma to the minirig directly, providing that the HDMI connection used supports audio. I don't think mine does, but I didn't try it). For watching DVDs in a darkened room, this thing is spectacular, and you can get a real cinematic experience. We projected the DVD onto the wall, and managed to a get a very bright, clear image that was a good 8 feet diagonally. It's really quite incredible for such a tiny device. There is some motion fringing from the DLP, and you can just about make out a cheesecloth effect, but I'm hyper-sensitive to both of these, and neither caused an issue for me. The room doesn't have to be pitch black, but anything brighter than the sort of minimum light levels you need to prevent you from bumping into things when you walk around, and you lose a lot of the benefit, certainly with an image of that size. It feels well made, and is actually somewhat smaller than it appears in the pictures (since it looks like a normal office-size projector, you tend to imagine it must be of a similar size). It's somewhere between a pack of cards and a paperback book in size. I didn't try anythink other than the HDMI input, so I can't comment on how well it displays video from an SD card, for example, or how good the speaker is. I also didn't try any of the trick Excel or Word compatibilty functions. I've marked it down slightly for two reasons. First, it's annoying that it uses a mini-HDMI socket. Full size HDMI is not much bigger, and they probably could have made it fit. If you use a mini-HDMI to HDMI adapter (as opposed to a cable with mini-HDMI on one end and HDMI on the other), it snags the power plug (you can probably get both in together at the same time wiht a bit of force, but I didn't want to risk it), so I had to go and get an HDMI to mini-HDMI cable instead. Not a major problem, but something which could have been avoided, if only by retaining the mini-HDMI socket and moving the power socket a couple of mm away (although I would not bo 100% happy with the mini HDMI socket bearing the weight of the adapter plus the plug). The other reason is that it's £100 more expensive than the 301+, which looks identical, save that it lacks the trick Excel and Word functions and some onboard memory. It's not clear whether this is really brighter that the 301+. Some websites claim they are both rated at 100 lumens, some say the 301+ is only rated at 75. If the 301+ really is rated at 100 lumens, then I can't really see the benefit of spending another £100 just to get the additional excel and word features, unless you really need them. At some point, I'll try putting some video on a mini-SD card and then using this to display it, with the minirig as the speaker. If that works, it'll be a pretty amazing combination.

Great For Vewing Video or Games; Not Really For Business I have a branding and promotion company which specialises in video production. When I first started my business I had an Account Manager who told me he absolutely needed a pico projector for presenting and showing work in progress work to clients. That was a couple years ago, the account manager moved on a few months after the pico purchase & the pocket sized projector sat on the shelf for something like 18 months. Just by chance, we decided to test out the PK-320 connected to hdmi computer output playing videos from hard drive or dvd and streaming nfl gamepass and nba league pass. So, we essentially use it as a tv monitor. Nevermind using this PK-320 for presentations or showing work in progress to clients, a retina display ipad mini or suitable laptop is waaaaay better for that sort of thing. The resolution is never going to be high enough for that as it essentially plays back 480p. Reading text can be very difficult, so I wouldn't suggest the PK-320 for keynote or power point presentations; nor would one want to use it as a spare computer monitor, the resolution is just not high enough for reading a software UI, IMO. Playing video games with this on the other hand is a lot of fun. I am talking about fun and not highest resolution:-) Using the PK-320 with battery is pretty much pointless unless you are in pitch black and even then, it is pretty weak. Plugged into mains, though, this little pico is awesome. We are forward projecting a massive 110inch/2.8 meter image on the wall! It is a long way from perfect, but it is better than a 24 inch monitor if you have a big room. We do not use the internal speaker, send audio out to sound re-enforcement. Ambient noise is acceptable (and I am very sensative). We have it mounted on a proper tripod (Velbon CX 660). The only problem has been the large button (there are seven buttons on the top of the unit) on the top of the unti has begun to delaminate. I think this is because of the normal operating heat generated by the unit. We have started using the included remote to avoid further stressing the delaminated button...It could just be the paint flaking off, I am not messing with it because we use it so much. The PK-320 does not suffer from the RGB glare to peripheral vision that many other projectors have, it is surprisingly not overly blinding when one passes in front of it. Optoma claim 100 Lumens when powered via mains, I don't know about that...we've never tested it. I would guess reality is much less, but I do not know for sure. The PK-320 does not have keystone & the focus is just a crude plastic ring, so those are limitations worth noting. Regardless of the foibles, the PK-320 is a well made & reliable device. If you want a sharper picture, you'll have to spend much more. For daily TV watching and gaming, the Optoma PK-320 is pretty cool. (And we watch a lot of TV) The included adaptors for VGA and composite video and a carrying case have all worked just fine for us as well.

It is a fantastic little project; however, there are two annoying features relating to the HDMI input. The HDMI input is for "mini" HDMI, so you will need to buy a special cable to connect this to 95% of the HDMI equipment you're likely to have. When you consider that the £22 Raspberry Pi (which is the same size) has a normal Type A HDMI socket, I don't think there's much excuse here. The second problem is the proximity of the HRMI input to the power input. All of the HDMI Type C-> Type A leads and convertors I have tried do not plug in while the power is plugged in. I've also had problems with a mini HDMI lead (with a Type C->A convertor on the end), where even the mini plug interfered with the power jack. This means the only way I can use the device is on battery power, which is unacceptable.

I'm not keen on this projector for three reasons. 1. brightness - the room needs to be absolutely dark to get a good enough picture 2. sharpness - is not that great. 1+2 gives movies a washed out quality. difficult to focus because sharpness is not that great to begin with. And finally, 3. to put movies on this thing - you have to go through a laborious process of converting them to the right height and width for this thing and even then you'll sometimes get it wrong.

This product has never worked for me; it does not appear to read the files of movies that have been edited on an Apple with Final Cut Pro. I have had two independent professional technical teams spending over two weeks trying to find a way to make this projector work with my movie files and none of them have been able to do so. The provider has not been at all helpful, continually repeating the same information as in the manual , all of which the technical teams have tried, repeatedly, to no avail. None of the advertising or product specs suggest that the projector is not compatible with Mac and yet since buying this product other owners have also said they could not use it to project movies edited on a Mac. The company has not been at all helpful when I tried to return the product either. So I am now the irritated and frustrated owner of an expensive bit of kit, which I can not use. I have since bought another make of mini projector, which works perfectly,

Great piece of kit - purchased on the fact that it could run on batteries for a decent period of time. It is an amazingly small peice of kit, but there are a couple of points which let it down - it requires a large bag to carry all the paraphaneilia e.g power cable, adaptor, USB cables etc so it's not quite portable as you might hope for,The other part that I would change is that is does not have keystone correction. To have any large size screen will require something like a camera stand to support the unit, as the unit has to be dead level to project a perfect rectangular picture - without keystone correction a large picture might require the unit to be supported at say 4' high (usually want the bottom of the picture starting say a couple of feet above ground level so that everyone can see it). Again, pulling a camera tripod around definitely restricts on how portable the unit is. A gorilla tripod might work in some cases, but e.g a standard side table from your living room will be unlikely to provide a large screen size for you.

For such a small device this gives great projection quality. It comes with good quality 'pouch' to carry it in - won't get all the cables in your pocket but great product.

Hi The projector is really as small as expected. The remote is not very good as you need to have a very good alignment with the sensor to work. Screen quality is very good ( I didn't had any other projector before) and I'm very happy on playing HD (not full HD) content. I did use it with some lights on in the apartment and I could see perfectly when in full light mode (connected to power). The focus wheel is a little bit annoying as it is very sensitive. I have not tested the speakers. To summarize, I'll recommend for everybody that travels a lot/lives in hotels and think their tv is too small. Regards, Marcelo_br

Recientemente había adquirido un mini proyector de ACER y no era compatible con mi ordenador Mac. Me informé un poco más y Optoma es de los pocos fabricantes cuyos proyectores de tamaño reducido son compatibles con Mac (al menos esto es lo que me han dicho técnicos especialistas de distintos comercios y e-comercios). Me lo compré y estoy encantada con los resultados. Es muy cómodo y funciona con bastante buena resolución y no es necesario estar totalmente a oscuras.

spielt alles was es soll (kein HD) leider nicht sehr lichtstark, aber das wusste man ja zuvor. klein, leicht und super mobil. ich bereue den kauf nicht

A vedere la scatola, il proiettore sembra molto piccolo. Quando apri, scopri che la pochette in cui è inserito è circa un quarto della scatola! Strumento molto intuitivo nei comandi, con batteria autonoma e molte connessioni (ma non abbastanza cavi: occorre acquistarli a parte). Luminoso a sufficienza per presentazioni in aula scolastica o sala riunioni grande. Grazie alle porte supplementari e allo slot SD potenzialmente si può girare con solo il proiettore in tasca, per fare presentazioni o per film/video brevi.

J'avais pris l'optoma pk102 dans les premieres generations et j'attendais vraiment cette version avec une luminosite et un contraste comme le pk320 qui permette vraiment de profiter des films meme sombres. Les connectiques ameliores et la resolution plus grande sont des vrais plus. J'aurais mis 4 si la batterie etait plus impressionnante qu'elle ne l'est en realite, en gros il vaut mieux le laisser branche.

kompakt und einfach. Bedienung ist gut. Lichtstärke für eine Präsentation im kleinen Kreis 5 Personen, mit normalen Licht, ausreichend stark, passt perfekt. Ohne Kunstlicht-Licht im Raum, ist das Gerät absolut ok. Mini-Kino. Die Farbqualität und lichtstärke im Netzwerk modus finde ich Spitze für solch ein kompaktes Gerät.