Some toys...uh...gizmos...uh...products rate so high on the cool gadget scale that it almost doesn't matter how well they work, and the price is a decidedly secondary consideration. The Optoma Pico PK101 ($399 direct) is a case in point. What's so cool about it? Well, how many projectors have you seen that weigh four ounces and can fit in a shirt pocket? If that doesn't grab your attention, you are not now, and never have been, a gadget geek.

Pico projectors first reared their collective heads in early 2008, with pre-production versions announced at CES. I've been anticipating getting my hands on a production unit ever since, and have been promised early units from three different manufacturers. The PK101 is the first to arrive. (Another, from 3M, is already available as well, and I should have one in hand to review shortly. A third, from Microvision, is promised for the first half of 2009.)

The various pico projectors announced to date have not just been different products, but different types of projectors using an assortment of technologies—DLP, laser, and LCOS (liquid crystal on silicon). The one thing they have in common is size. The engines themselves are small enough to fit inside other devices, like cameras and cell phones. You can be sure they'll be showing up in those devices at some point, so you'll be able to project the photos you've taken on your cell phone, say, directly from your phone.

For the first generation, however, the focus is on standalone projectors like the PK101. In general, these projectors are small enough to carry with you at all times, as accessories for a cell phone or iPod. You can use them for impromptu presentations—potentially connecting them to your cell phone or camera to show pictures, for example (assuming appropriate connectors all around). In the case of the PK101, you can take advantage of the iPod cable it comes with to show movies from your iPod at large size on any handy blank wall.

Optoma's projector is built around a TI engine that marries a 480-by-320 resolution DLP chip to an LED light source that changes sequentially from red to green to blue, the three primary colors that your visual system translates into all the colors you see on screen. The LEDs are rated at 20,000 hours, which means they should last the life of the unit.

The projector is roughly the size and shape of a cell phone, at 0.6 by 2.0 by 4.0 inches (HWD), with the bottom defined by rubber feet to help keep the unit from moving, and the front defined by the lens on one of the 2-inch sides. Some real effort clearly went into making the projector look good, too. The result is an elegant mix of shiny black and silver.

One minor issue is that the black plastic does a great job of taking fingerprints. This may make a good basis for a CSI episode one day, but I found myself repeatedly wiping the case off so it wouldn't look smudged. On the other hand, Optoma supplies a small black protective case, not much larger than the projector itself, so you can carry the PK101 around without handling it or risking a scratch.

Also helping add to the sense of elegant good looks is the visual simplicity of the PK101's controls and connectors. There are only two of each: a focus wheel, a slide switch (power off, low brightness, and high brightness), a mini jack for input, and a USB connector for power.

With so few controls and connections, setup is almost trivial. In addition to the carrying case, the projector comes with two lithium ion batteries, a power block, a USB cable that can connect between the projector and either the power block or a computer's USB port (for power only), and two adaptor cables that can plug into the projector's AV port—one with an iPod connector on the other end, and one with three female RCA phono plug connectors, for composite video and stereo audio.

To set up the projector, you install one of the batteries (they come already charged), plug in the appropriate adaptor cable to connect to an iPod or a standard composite video source, point the projector at any handy open space on a wall, and focus the image. That's it.

According to Optoma, the batteries will last 2 hours on a full charge in low-brightness mode or 1 hour at high brightness. Recharging takes 2 hours if you are only charging, or up to 4 hours if you are using the projector at the same time. Unfortunately, the only way to recharge a battery is by putting it in the projector, which you plug into a power source, so you can't charge one battery while using the other. If you start with both fully charged, however, you can switch batteries when the first runs out, or you can plug into a power source if both batteries are dead. I verified in my tests that the batteries can recharge even while the projector is working.

The ultimate question, of course, is how good the projected image looks. The answer is that it looks good enough to be useful. The PK101's rated brightness is only 11 lumens, which sounds like nothing compared with, say, a home entertainment projector in the 1,000-lumen range, but 11 lumens is a lot brighter than you might expect.

Keep in mind that perception of brightness is roughly logarithmic, so you have to increase brightness by 10 times to perceive an image as being twice as bright, or by 100 times to perceive it as four times as bright. Judged by perception, then, an 11-lumen projector would be about a quarter as bright as an 1,100-lumen projector. Given that 1,100 lumens is a perfectly respectable level for watching movies at reasonably large size in a home theater, 11 lumens should be suitable for a somewhat smaller image.

Unfortunately, I can't report on the PK101's tested brightness, because our tests require connecting the projector to a computer, and the brightness may not be enough to measure reliably in any case. What I can confirm is that I was able to watch a one-hour television show in a darkened room with a 24-inch diagonal image, without eyestrain and without feeling that the image wasn't up to par.

Consider the 24-inch size a conservative minimum. I picked it because larger images seemed a bit dim, although they were still useable. Even at 24 inches, some details got lost in dark areas in scenes that weren't well lit. But the key point is that the image was bright enough to be comfortable to look at for an extended period.

The projector did well on image quality too. Colors were fully saturated, skin tones were realistic, and although I saw the DLP rainbow effect occasionally—with white areas breaking up into red-green-blue rainbows—it didn't show up often enough to be annoying. The volume on the built-in speaker was far too low for my tastes, but it's better than having no sound at all.

Arguably, Optoma's most impressive achievement with the PK101 is that it doesn't have the look and feel of being a first-generation product. There are no obvious oversights, poor design choices, or a general sense that it's not ready for prime time.

To the contrary, the PK101 is well designed from both a technological and an aesthetic perspective. It's easy—make that virtually foolproof—to set up and use; it projects a high quality image; and it delivers new flexibility to projector use that other manufacturers are still only promising. Unfortunately, as much as I like the PK101, it can't earn an Editors' Choice. It represents a brand new category, it's the only projector in that category I've yet had a chance to test, and there's at least the possibility that it will soon be surpassed by competitors. That said, it will take an impressive projector indeed to outdo the PK101. Once I've seen some others to measure it against, it will surely be a strong contender.

For more on this tiny projector, check out our hands-on video with the Optoma Pico PK101 and its main competitor, the 3M Mpro110, on Gearlog.com.

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