The obvious way to think of the LG Compact Pebble Design Smart Minibeam Projector PW800 ($599.99) is as a projector with a built-in TV tuner. But that would be missing the point. Think of it instead as a big-screen 720p HDTV that uses a projector as its display and is small and light enough to carry around. If you like that idea—having a big-screen HDTV you can set up at a moment's notice anywhere you can get a signal—you'll love the PW800.

Compared with the LG LED Smart Projector PF85U that I reviewed last year, the PW800 is a lesser, but arguably more interesting, model. The LG PF85U offers 1080p resolution rather than 720p, it's brighter than the PW800, and it adds built-in smart TV functions. On the other hand, it's bigger and heavier than the PW800, making it far less portable. This is, in short, a case where less is more—at least if you want an HDTV you can bring along whenever and to wherever you like.

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Basics and Brightness
The PW800 is built around a WXGA (1,280-by-800) DLP chip paired with red, green, and blue LEDs as a light source. For video input, it uses only a 1,280-by-720 array of pixels on the chip, giving it an effective 720p native resolution for video and 1,280-by-800 native resolution for computer input. Unlike most DLP projectors meant for home entertainment use, it doesn't support 3D with a video source. However, it offers limited 3D support with computers.

LG claims an 800-lumen rating for the PW800, but with a critically important asterisk added. The website says the rating is based on "perceived brightness equivalent to brightness of...[a]...lamp projector," which is another way of saying that it's not really 800 lumens. I asked LG what its 800-lumen equivalent claim is based on, but have not received an answer as of this writing.

In any case, my subjective sense of the brightness level is close to what I would expect with a little less than 300 lumens—which is what I got with a quick and dirty reality-check measurement. According to the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) recommendations, 800 lumens should be bright enough in theater-dark lighting for a 110- to 149-inch image (measured diagonally), with a 1.0-gain screen. With 300 lumens, the size drops to 67 to 91 inches.

For my tests, using the projector's brightest settings for the light source and predefined modes, I started with a 90-inch image at a 16:9 aspect ratio and found it just a touch too dim for comfortable viewing for an extended session. I finally settled on a roughly 85-inch image. That said, you can easily use larger images for shorter sessions without tiring your eyes.

Setup
The PW800 weighs 1 pound 5 ounces and measures just 2 by 5.5 by 5.5 inches (HWD). Like most small projectors, it lacks a zoom lens, which means you have to move the projector to adjust the image size. Setup basically consists of plugging in the power cord, turning the projector on, pointing it at a screen, and adjusting the manual focus.

Connectors on the back panel include a VGA port, an HDMI port, and a USB Type A port for reading files from a USB memory key. The HDMI port also supports Mobile High-Definition Link (MHL) for compatible phones and tablets. In addition, there's an AV port for a supplied adapter cable with three female RCA phono plugs to provide composite video and stereo audio input. Rounding out the list are a mini-plug stereo audio output and a coax connector for an antenna or RF video source so you can surf TV channels.

You can set the input to Screen Share, which supports Miracast and Intel Wireless Display (WiDi). To use it, you simply leave the projector set to Screen Share and then set the other device to connect. With my Samsung Galaxy S5, for example, I simply made sure the phone's Wi-Fi was on, turned on Screen Mirroring, and waited a moment for the projector and phone to negotiate the connection and mirror the phone's screen on the projector.

Image Quality and audio
The PW800's image quality is on the cusp between near-excellent and excellent for both data images and video. The projector did swimmingly on almost all of our standard suite of DisplayMate screens. Color balance was excellent in all predefined test modes, with suitably neutral grays at all levels from black to white. Color quality was also excellent, with vibrant, nicely saturated color in all modes. Yellow, in particular, is notable for its bright, definitively yellow hue, instead of the dark yellow that's common with DLP projectors.

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The PW800 does a good job with detail. White text on black, for example, is crisp and readable at sizes as small as 9 points, and black text on white is highly readable at 7.5 points.

The only issue worth mention is apparent scaling artifacts in images with closely spaced lines or dots. This is standard for mobile projectors that use TI's chip with diamond pixels, however, and fully predictable. I also saw rainbow artifacts (red-green-blue flashes), but only with one image that's designed to bring them out.

The projector also does a good job of avoiding these artifacts with full-motion video. I saw only hints of them in most of our test clips, and they went by so quickly that you'd have to be far more sensitive to them than I am to consider them bothersome. The one possible exception was with a black-and-white test clip, but as someone who sees these artifacts easily, I consider them tolerable even with black-and-white material.

In most other ways, the video quality is impressive. The projector did a good job with shadow detail (details based on shading in dark areas) in my tests, and it resisted showing posterization (shading changing suddenly where it should change gradually) even in test clips that tend to cause that problem. Color quality is also excellent.

Along with the high-quality image, the PW800 offers surprisingly good sound quality for its pair of 1-watt speakers. Don't expect a noticeable stereo effect from two speakers so close together, but the sound quality is possibly the best I've heard from such a small projector, and the volume is suitable for a small family room. For still better quality and higher volume, you can plug a headset or external sound system into the stereo audio output.

One final plus is that the LED light source helps keep the cost of ownership down. Not only does it use less electricity than traditional lamps, but it's designed to last the life of the projector, with a 30,000-hour rated lifetime.

Conclusion
If you need a portable projector, but don't need one with a built-in TV tuner, consider the InFocus LightPro IN1146, which is brighter than the LG PW800, and our Editors' Choice for a palmtop portable projector. If the built-in TV tuner is a must-have, but you also want 1080p resolution, take a look at the LG PF85U. Pick the PW800 if its 720p resolution is high enough for your tastes or if portability is more important than a higher resolution.