Aiptek Pocket Cinema V50 pico projector

Aiptek's Pocket Cinema line is a collection of small projectors sometimes known as ‘pico' projectors by other manufacturers.

The newest model in the range, the V50, has a resolution of 848x480 pixels, which means it's not high definition, but in our tests the picture quality was nevertheless impressive.

The marketing materials make much of the projector's touch-sensitive controls, which form a pad on top of the device, saying ‘free your fingers from annoying buttons', but in truth we found the touch-controls more annoying. They worked reasonably well, but we found ourselves having to press some controls twice to register our selection, where a physical button would have been more responsive.

It really is pocket-sized, though – about the same size and shape as a 1980s TV remote control – with the projector lens and a focus wheel at one end, and the inputs at the other. There is also a slot for a memory card along one side.

The internal battery took about three hours to charge from the supplied mains adapter (it can also charge from a PC if you plug in the supplied USB cable), which lasted about an hour. It can play directly off the mains but the battery doesn't charge if the projector's switched on.

The controls were easy to follow, and the menus looked good, but we had to dig around a bit to play files from the various devices we plugged in. It will display video and picture files from an SD or SDHC memory card or USB memory key (plugged in using the supplied adapter cable), and you can plug in any standard composite video source, again using the supplied cable.

An adapter is also available (at an extra cost) to connect an iPhone or iPod for video playback. Annoyingly, though, when an external device is attached the projector's controls cannot be used.

Also, not all video files are supported by the device: it's supposed to play H.264 files but didn't work with some of the files we tried. JPEG photos worked perfectly, though, and it can also display Microsoft Powerpoint files, and even play music through its single built-in speaker.

Brightness was a little unimpressive: the projection was reasonably bright in a darkened room but with the lights on or the curtains open it was much harder to see. The projector includes a small remote control, a fabric bag and the cables for hooking it up to USB memory keys and standard video inputs.

The V50 is good for those who need to take presentations with them to meetings, especially since it can be used to display slides and pictures without a PC, but unless you specifically need to travel and project, a standard projector (see sidebar) will be better value.