AAXA P400 Short Throw Mini Projector Review
It's all in the name: The AAXA P400 Short Throw Mini Projector ($269) combines small size, low weight, and a short throw distance. It's a little taller than most palmtop projectors with a similar footprint, including the Kodak Luma 350, our current palmtop pick for home entertainment, and it's a few ounces heavier. But it offers a higher native resolution, at 1080p (1,920 by 1,080 pixels), and it can sit a lot closer to whatever you're using as a screen than most of its competition. That means it can project a bigger picture in a tight space when you position it in front of you, rather than behind you, to avoid casting shadows on the image. As with most palmtops, it's usable for both business presentations and for home entertainment, but image-quality issues we saw when projecting film and video make it of most interest to road warriors.
At 1.2 pounds, the P400 is tied with the more expensive Kodak Luma 450 for the title of lightest projector we've seen with a native 1,920-by-1,080-pixel resolution. It's also easily the lightest in its price class.
The projector is built around a single 1,920-by-1,080 LCoS chip. As with single-chip DLP projectors, it uses sequential color (meaning, it rotates among each of the three primary colors, showing only one at a time), which makes it subject to the same possibility of showing rainbow artifacts (red/green/blue flashes). The maximum input resolution is also 1,920 by 1,080, at up to 60Hz, with no HDR support.
Brightness, courtesy of an RGB LED light source rated at 30,000 hours, is in the typical range for a projector of this size. However, AAXA makes it sound brighter, by rating it at 400 LED lumens. Unfortunately, there's no standard for LED lumens, which makes the number useless for comparing it to other projectors or for gauging the actual brightness. Based on my tests, the P400 at its brightest (and using AC power) is roughly as bright as I would expect from about 200 ANSI lumens. As is common for LED lumen claims, that's about half the rated brightness.
The P400 measures 2.3 by 4.5 by 4 inches (HWD), making it small enough to fit easily in a briefcase or backpack along with its AC adapter, power cord, and credit-card-size remote. It comes with a desktop tripod you might want to bring with you, as well. It doesn't come with a protective case, however, and AAXA doesn't sell one as an option. If you want to pack up everything together and protect the unit from scratches, you'll have to find one elsewhere.
Setup is not quite standard. The thumbwheel for focusing is located just below the HDMI port, and—in the review unit at least—resisted moving easily. An AAXA representative suggested I might have had a flawed unit and that the issue would be covered under the warranty. For my testing, however, I found the wheel impossible to control with an HDMI cable plugged in. I wound up positioning the projector, pointing it at the screen, and focusing it based on its own home screen before connecting the HDMI cable, while being exceedingly careful not to move the projector as I plugged it in.
The resulting focus was not as sharp as it might have been if I had been able to use my standard test screen for focusing, but it was reasonably crisp over the entire image. Note, also, that even with the review unit, focusing wouldn't be an issue when using a USB memory key or a microSD or TF card as the source, since the USB port and card slot aren't even on the same side as the focus wheel.
The audio volume was higher than expected for this size of projector and its 2-watt speaker. Most people will consider it suitable for a small room. The quality is best described as good enough, despite some distortion at high volumes. For better quality and higher peak volume levels, consider using the 3.5mm audio out port for an external sound system or headphones.
The P400 includes three predefined picture modes with no adjustable settings, plus one User mode that lets you change only sharpness, color saturation, contrast, and brightness. Factory defaults set it to match the Standard predefined mode, which is the default setting. A Tint option also appears on the menu, but it's permanently grayed out. That's unfortunate, because the projector had a minor, but noticeable, bluish-green bias for video and filmed material, and I would have tried adjusting the tint if there were any way to do that. (The bias isn't extreme enough to be an issue for business graphics or other presentation material.)
After some preliminary experimentation with the picture modes and color-temperature options, I chose the default Standard picture mode and the Warm color temperature setting as giving the best overall color accuracy. Hues were noticeably off regardless of the setting, but no one expects great color accuracy out of this class of projector. Colors for business graphics were nicely saturated and suitably eye catching. Color for photorealistic images was within a range that anyone will consider acceptable for a photo or short clip in a presentation. Most people would also consider it at least tolerable for watching a movie.
Very much on the plus side for viewing movies or video, the P400 did a better job than some entry-level home entertainment projectors at holding shadow detail in some of the darker scenes in our test suite. Unfortunately, I saw rainbow artifacts (red/green/blue flashes) more often, and more obviously, than with most DLP projectors today. If you don't see these flashes easily, that won't be an issue, but if you find them bothersome, it may be. As we always suggest for DLP projectors, if you're concerned about seeing these anomalies, make sure you buy from a dealer that allows easy, cost-free returns, so you can check out the performance for yourself.
The P400's input lag is easily short enough for casual gaming. I measured it with a Bodnar meter at 34.9ms at 1080p and 60Hz, its highest input resolution and refresh rate. (There's no support for 4K input, HDR, or 3D.)
As mentioned earlier, the P400's image using its brightest power setting and Standard picture mode was roughly as bright as I expect from about 200 ANSI lumens. In a dark room, it threw a 16:9 image a little too dim for extended viewing on my 90-inch diagonal, 1.0-gain screen, but suitably bright at 55 inches. When switching to battery power, the brightest power mode isn't available, so you'll need a smaller image to get the same image brightness. You do have the choice, though, between running off-plug in Eco mode (with its two-hour battery life rating), or the brighter Standard power mode (and its shorter, unrated battery life).
If you want the image detail and sharpness that goes with a 1080p resolution in the lightest projector you can find, AAXA's P400 is a strong candidate. The image brightness is on the low side in absolute terms, but low brightness is to be expected in this size and weight class of projector. It's easier to recommend for road warriors than for home use, both because the bluish-green bias isn't as obvious for business graphics as it is for photorealistic images, and because rainbow artifacts are much less of an issue with static images in presentations versus motion video. But if you don't have an overly critical eye for color accuracy and aren't bothered by rainbow artifacts, it's quite usable for movies and video, too.
That said, be sure to take a look at the Luma 350 and 450. And if you're interested in a projector primarily for home entertainment, add the Vankyo Leisure 470 Pro to the list. All three offer better color accuracy than the P400. The Leisure 470 Pro is the least-portable model mentioned here, but it offers 1080p resolution and by its internal makeup is guaranteed not to show rainbow artifacts. Both Kodak models add streaming. Between the two, the Luma 350 costs less, but it also has lower resolution, while the Luma 450 offers native 1080p resolution, but, at $549.99 MSRP, is the most expensive in this group.
A highly portable palmtop projector, the AAXA P400 offers 1080p native resolution, a short throw, and a built-in battery. It's solid for on-the-go presentations, and perhaps light home use.
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