Pros & Cons
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- Roughly the size of a stack of Post-it Notes (and not much heavier)
- Built-in battery, rated at 90 minutes of use
- Autofocus and auto vertical keystone correction
- Wireless connections to video sources
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- No settings to adjust image quality
- Pricey for a pocket projector
- Connection to HDMI devices requires optional dongle
Aurzen ZIP Tri-Fold Portable Pocket Projector Specs
| Dimensions (HWD) | 1 by 3.3 by 3.1 inches |
| Engine Type | DLP |
| Inputs and Interfaces | Wi-Fi Direct |
| Maximum Resolution | 1280 by 720 |
| Native Resolution | 1280 by 720 using 640-by-360 DLP chip with XPR fast-switch pixel shifting |
| Rated Brightness | 100 |
| Warranty | 2 |
| Weight | 9.9 |
At $399.99, the Aurzen ZIP Tri-Fold Portable Pocket Projector is the most expensive model we've seen in its size class. That makes it more than twice the cost of the Kodak Luma 75, our current Editors' Choice pick for a pocket-size projector, but it's also more capable by far, thanks to a brighter image, wireless connections, and more. Given the price difference, the Luma 75 remains our top budget pick. However, the Aurzen ZIP's strong feature set makes it our new Editors' Choice honoree for a premium pocket projector.
Design: Projector Origami, Anyone?
True to its name, one of the most striking features of the ZIP Tri-Fold projector is that, thanks to its three sections held together with hinges, you can fold it into a compact 1-by-3.3-by-3.1-inch near-square that easily fits in a pocket. (Fun fact: the folded-up shape is called a cuboid.) When unfolded, but pointing straight ahead to project on a vertical surface, it's shaped like a Z when viewed from its left side. The bottom piece serves as a base, the middle piece becomes a stand, and you can pivot the top piece up or down to point at whatever you're using for a screen. (Auto keystone correction squares off the image for you.) It weighs just 9.9 ounces, or about 2 ounces more than my Samsung Galaxy S25.
Starting from the cuboid position, you can also pivot just the top section to point straight up to project on the ceiling, or turn the unit over—with the top section hanging straight down over the edge of a table—to project on the floor. Flip it on its side, and it will project a TikTok video or similar vertical content in portrait format, automatically rotating the image to the right orientation. It's also the first pocket projector we've seen with autofocus.
(Credit: M. David Stone)Aurzen offers the ZIP in a choice of colors. The unit I reviewed is best described as having a matte silver finish, but Aurzen calls it Titanium Gold. Other choices are blue, gray, and white, with more choices on Amazon than on Aurzen's own site. Regardless of color, the design earns points for its good looks, with rounded corners and a set of touch-sensitive controls on top near the back, a black background running across the entire control-button area, and the buttons indicated by white icons. A set of power status lights sits in front of the controls. There is no remote, but the Smart AurzenHub App, available for Android and iOS, will turn your phone or tablet into one.
The top section also has two touch-and-hold switches on the left side for volume and for toggling power on and off, and one small slide switch on the right side for setting the power level—and brightness—to Full Power or Eco modes. However, note that if the battery charge falls below a minimum level, the projector will switch to—or stay in—Eco mode no matter what position the switch is in.
(Credit: M. David Stone)All connections to video sources are wireless. (More on that shortly.) The only connector on the ZIP is a USB-C port on the middle section, strictly for power. An included USB-C-to-USB-C cable will let you connect it to any handy USB-C port. If you need to plug into a USB-A port, you'll need to get a USB-A-to-USB-C cable separately.
Battery Life and Connectivity: Almost Feature-Film Length
Aurzen rates the battery at 90 minutes in Eco mode—a respectable length for a pocket projector, but a little short for, say, watching a movie. And note that although you can charge the ZIP using a 5-watt USB port or phone charger, you can't use the projector with one if the battery is dead. For long sessions, Aurzen recommends a 24-watt charger, which will let you use the ZIP and charge it at the same time. If you don't have one, you might want to order it when you buy the projector.
In my tests, connecting the ZIP wirelessly to my Android phone, my Windows PC, and an iPad was almost as easy as using cables. When you turn on the ZIP, it projects an image with shorthand instructions for connecting from Android, Windows, iOS, and macOS devices, including the ID to look for when connecting. For my Samsung phone, for example, I simply made sure Wi-Fi was turned on, activated Smart View, and chose the ZIP. The steps for Windows and iOS AirPlay were different, but just as easy.
(Credit: M. David Stone)The ZIP can't connect to HDMI sources like Blu-ray players or game consoles out of the box. If you're willing to shell out another $99.99, however, Aurzen's CastPlay HDMI Dongle will add that capability. Connecting it wirelessly to the ZIP was a bit of a problem in my tests, but only because the setup steps weren't spelled out completely in the dongle's manual or even on a website FAQ. Aurzen says it will both update the manual and add an instruction video for setup on the website. But if you get a unit before the update is done, you can get the details from Aurzen's support team. Once the connection to the dongle was set up, it worked without problems with both my Blu-ray player and as an alternative way to connect to my PC. You may want to consider getting some other accessories, as well, most notably a $39.99 carrying case.
(Credit: M. David Stone)As with most small projectors, the ZIP is built around a DLP chip and uses a red/green/blue LED light source. The chip is actually 640 by 360 pixels, according to Aurzen, but it takes advantage of TI's XPR pixel shifting to put more pixels on screen. Aurzen claims that the chip delivers a native 720p (1,280-by-720-pixel) resolution, but my Windows PC-based tests show moiré patterns with 1,280-by-720-pixel images, which indicates that the number of pixels in the projected image isn't exactly 1,280 by 720. (This is not unusual for DLP chips. Some offer a native resolution that is close to, but a little off, the standard they're named for.)
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The tendency to add moiré patterns won't be an issue for most photorealistic images, but it can be one if you plan to show presentations that include slides with patterned fills. The need to interpolate pixels when converting from one resolution to a slightly different one can also have a visual effect that resembles having a soft focus.
Sound quality and volume are necessarily limited in such a small projector, but the dual 1-watt speakers do a serviceable job in a quiet room. If you want better audio or the ability to watch a movie in, say, an airplane seat without disturbing your seatmates, you can use Bluetooth to connect a headset or powered sound system.
Performance Testing and Image Quality: Suitably Bright
Nobody expects top-tier image quality or high brightness from a projector that fits in your pocket. But in that context, the Aurzen ZIP does well enough on both scores.
The soft focus effect I've mentioned hurts fine detail slightly, which was most notable when trying to read emails and smaller fonts in text slides. However, the ZIP compensates for that with its higher resolution than its competition. The Luma 75, for example, offers 640-by-360-pixel resolution. It also helps that the ZIP's autofocus makes it easy to get the best focus possible. The combination falls short of the sharpness a 720p projector should deliver, but it compares well with other pocket models.
(Credit: M. David Stone)Beyond that, for business presentations, the ZIP's color accuracy was generally good enough for most purposes by most people's standards. Skin tones in one photo were a little green. However, that photo is included in our test suite precisely because it tends to reveal even the slightest green bias. Overall, I'd call the ZIP easily suitable for presentations, including almost any that include photos. It's also suitable simply for showing photos.
For SDR movies and video, colors were slightly desaturated as well as slightly green-shifted, but they were within the realm that most people will forgive, particularly for such a small projector. I also saw some noticeable loss of shadow detail, but it held well enough that I could still make out what was happening even in the darkest scenes in our test suite. The ZIP does not support HDR.
Note also that although Aurzen says the ZIP will accept 4K/60Hz input and downconvert it, a spokesperson said that to get a 4K connection, you need to use the HDMI dongle, and that the dongle downconverts the data to 1080p before sending it to the projector. In my tests connecting to my PC via the dongle, however, Windows 10 offered 1080p as the highest available resolution. And when I tried playing a 4K disc on my Blu-ray player, the player connected at 1080p as well, after showing a message on screen that it couldn't connect at 4K due to the display's lack of support for the appropriate copy protection protocol (HDCP 2.2).
As of this writing, Aurzen has indicated that this is not expected behavior, but it hasn't come up with a solution. But this makes little practical difference, since the resolution on screen would still be limited to the ZIP's native 720p. The only difference would be which piece of hardware is doing the downconversion.
(Credit: M. David Stone)Despite my eyes being sensitive to seeing rainbow artifacts, the only time I saw them was with a single image in our test suite that's designed to bring them out, and even then, they were exceedingly minor. If you don’t see these kinds of artifacts easily, you likely won't see them at all.
Brightness for the ZIP was close to what I expect from the rating. A 100-lumen image should be enough to light up a roughly 40-to-55-inch, 1.0-gain screen, according to the Society for Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) standards. I found it comfortably bright for extended viewing in a dark room at a 50-inch size using the Full Power setting, and at 44 inches using Eco. You'll need to drop the on-screen image to a smaller size in ambient light, but it will still be bigger than you can get on a phone or tablet.