The Kodak Luma 500 is the latest flagship in a line of Kodak projectors that all share a flat, rectangular palmtop shape, though they differ in size, features, and price. The Luma 500 is the biggest in the group (by two-tenths of an inch in two dimensions) and the most expensive, at a list price of $699.99, though it's widely available for less. More important, it's the most impressive palmtop model we’ve yet seen, with solid image quality, particularly for SDR input, and features that include HDR support, 1080p (1,920-by-1,080) native resolution, built-in Google TV for streaming, and even a full-size Google TV remote complete with voice control. That makes it an easy pick as our newest Editors' Choice winner for a palmtop projector.

Design: Think 1080p Mini Projector in a Palmtop Size

If you're in the market for a palmtop projector, small size and easy portability are among your top concerns. The good news on that score is that, even though the Luma 500 is on the large side for a palmtop, it's still small enough to fit easily in a coat pocket, measuring 1.3 by 5.2 by 5.2 inches (HWD), and weighing just 1.2 pounds. It also offers a sleek design and a choice of case color schemes: white with gold, or black with silver.

Like most pocket and palmtop models, it's built around RGB LEDs for the light source and a DLP chip. In this case, the projector offers native 960-by-540 resolution from the chip, paired with TI's XPR fast-shift pixel shifting to display 1,920 by 1,080 pixels on screen. Somewhat unusually, Kodak doesn't publish a rated life for the light source, but LEDs are generally rated at 20,000 hours or more.

One welcome touch is that the Luma 500 offers Google TV for its OS and for streaming, along with Chromecast. Most palmtop projectors—or at least those we've seen so far—either don't offer streaming at all or use a much less capable option that relies on apps that can be flaky or hard to use. Google TV has neither of those problems and offers a wealth of apps to choose from.

(Credit: M. David Stone)

You can run the Luma 500 on AC power or use its built-in battery. The rated life (and brightness) varies with the power mode: 2 hours in Eco mode and something lower (with no official rating) in the full-power Standard mode. The physical setup requires no more than connecting to AC power or ensuring the battery is charged, optionally connecting a video source, and then turning the power on. Google TV setup is standard, with Wi-Fi as the only option for connecting to your network. For connecting to local video sources, there's an HDMI port on the back, a USB Type-A port for reading files from USB memory, and the built-in Chromecast for iOS and Android devices connected to the same network.

Kodak includes a table-top tripod along with the projector, which is a mixed blessing. It makes it easy to aim at whatever you're using as a screen, but it also makes it more likely that you'll tilt or swivel the projector and need a keystone adjustment to square off the image. The catch is that the Luma 500 has a low brightness to begin with, at a rated 150 lumens, and keystone adjustment will lower the brightness even further for any given size image. In short, it's best to avoid using either auto or manual keystone features if you can. That said, if you choose to use it anyway, note that the auto keystone worked well in my tests. Auto focus worked well, too, and there's no reason to avoid using it.

(Credit: M. David Stone)

The onboard dual 1.5-watt speakers deliver usable sound quality, but at a volume suitable for a quiet, small-to-medium-size family room. For decent volume or better audio quality, plan to use the 3.5mm audio out port or Bluetooth to connect headphones or an external sound system.

Performance: Good Enough Image Quality for HDR, Better for SDR

Thanks to the Google TV OS, the Luma 500's menu options are more in line with mini projectors than with most palmtops, resulting in a richer, more useful set of image-quality settings than you'll find in its closest competition. For SDR input, you can choose from five predefined picture modes. Most lack any settings adjustments. However, Custom mode lets you change contrast, saturation, sharpness, color temperature, and gamma. Missing from that list is a traditional brightness adjustment for adjusting black level, which is unfortunately becoming common on many projectors.

On our standard PowerPoint test images, all five modes, including Custom with default settings, delivered suitably neutral color for graphics. They also handled photos reasonably well, although Vivid mode delivered slightly more realistic hues than the other choices.

(Credit: M. David Stone)

For our SDR viewing tests with movies, colors were slightly desaturated across all modes, which made Custom, with its Saturation control, my preferred choice. Boosting the setting brought colors into a more realistic-looking range. Color accuracy was still off by enough for someone with a critical eye to notice, but at a level that few, if any, will find bothersome. Contrast, black level, and sense of three dimensionality in dark scenes were similarly in the range of reasonably good, which is actually high praise for a palmtop. Even shadow detail held well. Some minor detail in the darkest areas of our test clips didn't show, but I had no trouble making out what was happening in those scenes.

Results for the same scenes played from 4K HDR10 versions of the same movies were similar in most ways. The entries on the picture mode menu switched to versions that added "HDR" to the names, including an HDR-Custom mode as the only one that allowed changes.

(Credit: M. David Stone)

Here again, colors were desaturated using the default settings, and I improved them by raising the Saturation setting. I also switched the Gamma setting from the default Normal to Bright to brighten up the image overall. However, even with the adjusted Gamma, the image was substantially dimmer than with SDR input, forcing me to move the projector closer to the screen to get a brighter, but smaller, picture. After my adjustments, HDR image quality was similar to SDR, except for a significantly greater loss of shadow detail, making it hard to make out what was happening in dark scenes.

The good news for HDR viewing is that most movies have few or no dark scenes where poor shadow detail is a problem, but it's still best to stick with SDR input if you can. Very much on the plus side, I didn't see many rainbow artifacts (red/green/blue flashes that DLP projectors tend to show) in any of the viewing tests. As always, keep in mind that some people see these flashes more easily than others. If you're concerned with the issue, be sure to buy from a dealer that allows easy returns.

(Credit: M. David Stone)

One plus for gamers is a short enough input lag for all but the most serious gaming. I measured it with my Bodnar 4K Lag Tester at 21.7ms for 1080p/60Hz input. As expected for projectors at this brightness level, there is no 3D support.

Image brightness in my tests was roughly what I expected from Kodak's 150 ANSI lumen rating—a respectable level for a palmtop. Using Society for Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) recommendations for a dark room, 150 lumens is enough to light up a 47-to-64-inch diagonal, 16:9, 1.0-gain screen. For my SDR tests, I settled on a 56-inch image. For the dimmer overall image with HDR, I dropped the size to a smaller, brighter 42 inches.