If you like the portability that you get with a palmtop projector (and why wouldn't you?), but want a brighter image than most palmtops offer, the Dell M110 ($499 direct), should grab your attention. At every size and weight level, from pico size on up, new projectors over the last year or so have been brighter than the equivalent models from the last generation. The M110 carries that to the extreme, offing a 300-lumen rating in a palmtop projector that weighs 0.8 pounds by itself or 1.3 pounds with its external power block. And it doesn't hurt at all that it offers reasonably good image quality as well.

To put the M110's brightness into perspective, consider that the current Editors' Choice in this category, the BenQ Joybee GP1 ($500 street, 4.5 stars), is rated at only 100 lumens, and the newly announced BenQ GP2 (which we should be reviewing shortly) is only 200 lumens. As another point of reference, the Optoma ML500 ($650 street, 3.5 stars) is brighter, with a 500 lumen rating, but it's bigger and heavier than the M110, as well as more expensive. For the moment at least, the M110 may well deliver the most lumens per ounce in its size class.

Basics

The M110, which is built around a DLP engine, offers a claimed WXGA (1,280 by 800) resolution and a light source that consists of red, green, and blue LEDs with a 20,000 hour rated lifetime. The LEDs are meant to last the life of the unit, a welcome touch that cuts down on the total cost of ownership. The standard lamps in most projectors are rated at as little as 2,000 hours and can cost hundreds of dollars to replace.

By definition, palmtop projectors are small enough to sit on a palm. For the M110, that translates to 1.4 by 4.1 by 4.1 inches (HWD). To carry it around or store it conveniently, Dell provides a small soft case, about the size of a hefty novel, which makes it large enough to hold the projector, power block, and all the cables you need.

To enhance portability even further, it can read image (JPG and BMP), video (MOV, MP4, AVI, MKV, DIVX, and WMV) and audio (MPEG1, MPEG2, MPEG3, and WMA) files as well as PTG2 files directly from its 1GB internal memory, from USB memory keys, or from microSD cards, so you can leave your computer or other image source at home.

Setup is standard, with the projector offering an HDMI port on the back as well as a microSD card slot, a connector for the supplied VGA adapter, and a USB A port for a USB memory key. Also on the back is a Kensington Lock slot, so you can tie the projector down and leave it sitting on a table in a conference room without worrying about someone walking away with it.

In addition, there's a miniplug jack that can serve either for audio input or audio and composite video. Finally, you can use the USB port to connect to a computer, both for sending data images to the projector and for copying files to the internal memory as well as managing those files.

Although Dell doesn't supply either a composite video adaptor or an appropriate USB cable for connecting to a computer, you can get both as part of a cable kit ($79.99 direct) which also includes an HDMI cable and a VGA cable that adds an audio output. One other option worth mention is a dongle that plugs into the USB port and adds WiFi as a connection choice ($69.99 direct).

Brightness and Data Image Quality
The M110's 300-lumen rating may not sound like a lot compared with typical portable business projectors with 2,500 or 3,000 lumens. However, perception of brightness is logarithmic, which means you'll see 300 lumens as being far more than one tenth as bright as 3,000. For my tests, I found it easily bright enough for a 53-inch wide image (63 inches diagonally at 1,280 by 800's 16:10 aspect ratio) in a darkened room, and even usable at that size with moderate ambient light.

Data image quality is best described as usable but not impressive. On our standard suite of DisplayMate tests, colors were vibrant and well saturated, and various levels of gray were suitably neutral. However, I also saw scaling artifacts (extra patterns added to repeated pattern fills, like an area filled with dots or lines) at the claimed native resolution, something that simply shouldn't happen.

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For DLP projectors, scaling artifacts crop up when the there's a mismatch between the image resolution and the number of pixels that the DLP chip can show—which is normally the same as the number of mirrors on the chip. The projector then has to add or drop pixels in the image to wind up with a one to one match. By definition, the native resolution is supposed to tell you how many mirrors, or pixels, the chip has, which means a projector shouldn't have to scale an image that's already in its native resolution. In short, the scaling artifacts mean that the M110's true native resolution isn't 1,280 by 800.

Fortunately, the artifacts don't show up on most images, because most don't include repeating patterns of dots or lines over a large area. However, the scaling also affects text readability. For black on white text, anything smaller than about 9 points is fuzzy and hard to read from any distance.

Video and Other Issues

Video images were slightly better quality overall than data images. The M110 did a reasonably good job maintaining shadow detail (details in dark areas) and generally did a good job with skin tones, although I saw a touch of posterization (shading changing suddenly where it should change gradually) in scenes that tend to cause the problem.

As with almost any single-chip DLP projector, the M110 can show rainbow artifacts, with bright areas breaking up into red-green-blue rainbows. If you're sensitive to the effect, as I am, you'll definitely see it with the M110. Interestingly, I saw it more often in data images than in video, which is the reverse of what most DLP projectors do. Unfortunately, the rainbows show often enough with data images that people who are highly sensitive to the effect may find it annoying.

As is the case with most small projectors, the audio is hardly worth having. The 1-watt speaker simply can't put out enough volume to hear from very far away. Also, there's no output jack (unless you get the optional cable kit), so you'll not only need an external sound system if you want reasonable volume, you'll have to bypass the projector to connect the sound system to the source.

I'd like the Dell M110 a lot better if it didn't show rainbows quite so much, and even more if its claimed native resolution were really its native resolution. But neither of these issues is serious enough to rule it out. On the other hand, the projector offers an impressive balance of brightness and small size, plus the ability to read files from internal memory, USB keys, and microSD cards, so you don't have to carry anything else with you. That's enough to make it a reasonable choice. If you need maximum portability with as bright an image as possible, it can even be enough to make it a compelling choice.

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