Pros & Cons
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- Highly portable.
- Good image quality.
- WXGA (1,280-by-800) resolution.
- Comes with HDMI cable.
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- HDMI is the only connection choice.
Elmo BOXi T-200 Specs
| Engine Type | DLP |
| Inputs and Interfaces | HDMI |
| Native Resolution | 1280 x 800 |
| Rated Brightness | 150 |
| Warranty | 12 |
| Weight | 0.7 |
The Elmo BOXi T-200 ($429) is unusual in that its only connection is an HDMI port, a trait it shares with only a few other portable projectors, including the 3M Mobile Projector MP300($189.99 at Amazon). With good image quality, WXGA (1,280-by-800) resolution, and a 150-lumen brightness rating, it's a potentially good choice if you can connect to it. Otherwise, it's useless.
With HDMI as the only port on the T-200( at Amazon), you may not be able to use it with every image source, particularly if one of those sources is an older computer. The newer your system, the more likely it is to include an HDMI port. You can also get adapters that will let you connect to sources with a DisplayPort, an Apple Lightning port, or a DVI-I or DVI-D port. In addition, you can connect to a Mobile High-Definition Link (MHL)-capable smartphone or tablet, but because the T-200's HDMI port does not support MHL, you'll need an adapter that can plug into the device, the projector, and a power source.
Basics and Setup
Portability is one of the stronger arguments for the T-200. It measures just 1.4 by 3.7 by 6.0 inches (HWD), and seems a bit smaller, thanks to the slimming effects of a black chassis and rounded edges in front and back. It weighs just 11 ounces by itself or 1 pound, 7 ounces if you include the power block and cord. There is no battery.Like most projectors in this weight class, the T-200 is built around a DLP chip paired with an LED light source meant to last the life of the unit. Elmo rates the light source at 20,000 hours.
Setup is simple. Plug in a cable, point the projector at whatever you're using for a screen, and focus the image. As with most models this size, there's no zoom, so the only way to adjust image size is to move the projector closer or further from the screen. One noteworthy touch is the shorter-than-typical throw—although it's still in the range of a standard-throw lens. I measured the image at 41 inches wide (49 inches, diagonally), with the projector just 41 inches from the screen. The side panel includes a USB Type A port, but its only function is to let you supply power to a USB device.
Brightness
Elmo rates the T-200 at 150 lumens. That's half the 300-lumen rating of the Editors' Choice 3M Mobile Projector MP410, but the perception of brightness is logarithmic, which means that a 300-lumen image at any given size will be a lot less than twice as bright as a 150-lumen image.Based on the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) recommendations, a 150-lumen image with a 1.0-gain screen is suitable for roughly a 45- to 60-inch (diagonal) image at a 16:10 aspect ratio in theater dark lighting. With moderate ambient light it's suitable for roughly a 30- to 35-inch image. For my tests, I settled on a 50-inch (diagonal) image for comfortable viewing with the lights out, as well as for shorter sessions with the lights on.
Image Quality
On our standard suite of DisplayMate tests, the T-200 handed in good, but not excellent, scores for image quality, which is about the best you can expect for projectors in this category. Color quality is a bit of problem, with colors varying significantly from one preset mode to the next. Blue and red, for example, were well-saturated in some modes in my tests, but edging toward pastel in others.More important for most data images is that the projector does an acceptable job with detail. Like all of its close competition, the T-200 uses a DLP chip that's designed to increase brightness, but also introduces apparent scaling artifacts. These show most clearly as unwanted extra patterns in areas of closely spaced lines or dots. They also tend to give images a soft-focus effect. The T-200 holds detail reasonably well in spite of this issue. In my tests, black text on white was crisp and readable at sizes as small as 6.8 points. White text on black was readable at sizes as small as 9.0 points.
Video quality also counts as a plus. I saw a hint of posterization (shading changing suddenly where it should change gradually) and a slight loss of shadow detail (details based in shading in dark areas), but only in clips that tend to cause those problems. Beyond that, the T-200 handled skin tones well and also did well with color quality in general.
It also helps that the projector does a better job of avoiding rainbow artifacts (red-green-blue flashes) than many DLP projectors. With data images, I saw very few rainbow effects. With video, I saw them more often, but still infrequently enough that even if you see them easily, you might not find them annoying.
One pleasant surprise, finally, is that the one-watt speaker is unusually capable, despite a tendency to over-modulate if you crank up the volume all the way. When I backed off just a little from the top setting, the quality was good enough so I could make out some softly spoken dialogue that gets garbled with many projectors, and the volume was still high enough for a small room. There's also an audio output on the side panel if you want to use headphones or an external sound system.
If you need a brighter image, need to connect to a VGA port, or want to show images from a USB memory key or microSD card, you'll be better off with the Editors' Choice 3M MP410 or another projector that offers those features. However, if an HDMI connection is all you need for the image sources you want to use, the Elmo BOXi T-200 offers a usefully bright image, good image quality, and even a decent sound system in a highly portable package that's both light and easy to set up. The combination makes it worth considering.
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