3M MP180 pocket projector

The 3M MP180 is a ‘pocket' or ‘pico' projector, designed to be carried around for projecting work or entertainment anywhere.

They can be less bright than full-size projectors but this one uses an LED lamp that's twice as bright as those in previous 3M models.

It also has a colour touch-screen control panel, wireless internet access and a Bluetooth connection for transferring files to and from mobile phones or laptops.

It's quite chunky with a large rechargeable battery (giving about two hours' use at most) clipping underneath. At the rear are the power socket, mini-USB port for connecting to a PC and a video-in socket. It also has a standard headphone-style socket for audio output – the built-in stereo speakers were not very loud.

It comes with a carrying pouch, miniature tripod and cables for connecting the latter to a computer's VGA socket or the composite video commonly used by all sorts of devices. It can be used without an external video source thanks to the 4GB of built-in storage. Files can also be played using a memory card in the micro-SD card expansion slot.

The touch-screen has icons to open lists of stored video, audio, photo and office files – it can display Microsoft Office documents and PDFs. The menu system was clear but some buttons too small for large fingers. The on-screen keyboard, used for web browsing and entering wireless details, was particularly poor. We found it much easier to use a plastic stylus (not supplied).

There's no manual picture adjustment except focusing using a small wheel at the front. A small but noisy fan kicks in when it gets too warm. For close-up work (projecting from around 1m away gave a screen size of around 32in), it was fine for text and PDFs in a lit-up room, but movies and photos didn't look so good. In a darkened room, picture quality was surprisingly good, although colours were washed out at sizes near the 80in maximum.

Using the internet browser was unpleasant because of the tiny keyboard and having to use the touch-screen as a mouse pad. Many websites didn't work properly and the wireless connection can't be used for playing files from a home network.

With these annoyances and the high price, the 3M MP180 is rather a disappointing product.