Does anyone have one of those cheap VGA projectors and have any comments?

[Rob_B]

You know the ones, they're about £30 on ebay and often include HD/1080p in the titles but are really just VGA or lower!

I'm thinking of getting one for my sons room, it'll only be used for movies etc in a reasonably dark room.

My expectations are low ready but I wondered if anyone had tried one before? I'm not looking to spend much more than say £50 so I'm well aware of the quality I'll probably get for that!

Cheers,

Rob

[Jace007]

i got one from Amazon £35 and it was a total waste of money, too pixelated for watching anything on. It said 1080 on the box but it only did 720p. I ended opening it up just to show 'How it works' kinda thing. Maybe others can tell of a decent one.

[jimbouk]

I invested in the second tier of 'uber budget' projectors. The cheapest ones are 480*320, so I went for this one with 800*480 native so it wasn't quite as bad (plenty of other re-brands of the UNIC UC40 available).

To be honest it's poor as far as projectors go. Pointing pretty much dead straight at the wall we can't get it in focus at the top, middle and bottom of the image. It's also really loud. There are other minor annoyances such as a little logo that is permanently in the top corner, mute shows a mute icon permanently (just turn the volume down to 0) and a poor quality speaker.

However, with a floating shelf above the bed and a Chromecast we can happily watch things on a hug screen in the bedroom. We've attached a set of old computer speakers and you soon forget about the fan noise and slightly out of focus image when things are zooming around a ginormous screen in-front of you.

So long as your expectations are appropriate, then it's a great buy!

[DDY]

For £50 you can bag a decent ex-corporate XGA projector off ebay. Up your budget closer to £100 and you'll find refurbished projectors with new lamps.

[Rob_B]

£50 is the max id be willing to spend for this I think, preferably even less!

There are some xga projectors on ebay for about £40 with 1>2k hours on the lamp, I wonder if a dying one of these would be better than an el cheapo? I must admit the USB functionality of the cheaper units would be useful.

[mikerr]

Had a 640x480 projector for a few years - Infocus IN1 - it was fine for films but wouldn't want to go any lower resolution than that.

[Rob_B]

Well I went for one of these (not from this etailer though)

hhttp://m.banggood.com/GM60-Portable-Mini-Home-Theater-800x480-LED-LCD-Projector-1080P-HD-p-986102.html

800x480 for £27 delivered. I'm expecting nothing less than perfect 4k images for that price

Seen a few reviews and think I know what to expect, the various inputs make it a winner for me though, USB,SD, HDMI and can run my firestick on its 5v port so it's pretty convenient.

Will update if anyone is interested

[DanceswithUnix]

Will update if anyone is interested

Yeah, I'm interested.

I don't have a handy wall in the bedroom for a TV, was considering shining one of these at the ceiling. I'm wondering if the artex lumps might be smaller than the pixels so don't detract from the awful image too much, but better than nothing?

Seems a big leap in price from the cheapies to something good.

[Rob_B]

So I got the projector late on Friday, I've not had much chance to play with it but first impressions are good, I got it to play and with and use on Halloween mainly. Tonight I played 30 mins of Fallout 4 on the Ps4 on it.

Resolution, it's 800x480 so make of that what you will, I'm happy with how it looks for the price.

Speakers are a bit weak, you wouldn't want anything too loud coming out of them but for general close viewing it's fine.

Fan is loud, speakers do drown it out but imagine having a GPU fan out in the open, it's not jet engine loud (like my ps4 sometimes gets) but it's always there. I bet it could be modded ... Hmmm

Brightness is 'ok' there are settings to change it but the brighter you go the more washed out it gets. Quality is generally good and admittedly I was lying on my back with it projecting onto a textured ceiling so it wasn't the perfect screen, I can see with a better surface it'd look better.
It copes OK with a lamp on in a dark room but turning the lamp off did make a difference so I'd suggest getting the room as dark as possible.

My fire stick runs perfectly from the 5v USB and the lower resolution suits it better.

Overall for £27 I think it's a bargain, a decent dark room and a flat white surface and reasonable expectations and youre sorted! I've got some pics that I'll try to get round to posting.

Rob

[Unique]

i've got one the 800x480 projectors like in the bangood link but i got it from ebay or amazon from a uk seller for about £40 delivered. it had HMDI, VGA and composite inputs, plus plays various files via USB, and has a second USB slot that gives "power" so you could connect a portable 2.5" HDD and play files from it, powered from the projector. i got mine mainly for parties to project a large image on the wall or shower curtain from poundland, just as a backdrop, not using the sound from the video. the built in speaker is functional rather than of much use. you don't want a large picture and tiny sound. i wouldn't use it as a main setup but for playing around for £40 it was a bargain. i either connect from my laptop to play stuff or use a £20 android box with kodi as i can make a playlist of variouis file types and kodi will play it and it's easy to control, whilst the in built player isn't guaranteed to play every file format. it looks like about £110/120 was the lowest price from ebay for a 720p projector, so more than twice the price of a 480p one. i was mainly throwing out DVD formatted images so 480p and blown up huge on the wall you could see the pixels but it wasn't really intended to being that size. i used it in a pitch dark room or in a nightclub. i previously had a small nano projector with something like 240p resolution, it was hand held running from a batter (or power cable) and was more of a toy or presentation device than useful for watching anything so i'd avoid the 240p models

[jimbouk]

Overall for £27 I think it's a bargain, a decent dark room and a flat white surface and reasonable expectations and youre sorted! I've got some pics that I'll try to get round to posting.

Sounds about right Gald you're enjoying it.

Re modding, I guess a better fan could be added so long as it has the same air flow but I'd be worried about the thing cooking itself with any less.

[Rob_B]

These images are taken on my phone ~3m away from the image and projected onto textured ceiling, image would be ~ 70" I'd estimate, images are obviously difficult to show but this gives a rough idea, and yes, I do have quite a few sets of Power Armour