My PicoPix Max 10-Day Review

Is the ppm in energy saving mode in the photos?

That’s a good question! Honestly this projector seems to be brighter than my original Epson Home Cinema 705HD. The picture quality has been quite good for my casual-consumer standards. I’ll let others with proper tools measure contrast. Even the projector I linked will likely be hard to see if you’re watching a dark scene with sunlight streaming into the room.

So basically I view a home theater as a collection of components (projector/TV, receiver/amplifier, speakers, universal remote, media sources) assembled into a system, while PicoPix Max is already a self contained system. Starting with just a PicoPix Max and building up to a proper home theater over time can make sense to me. I won’t say that’s a bad idea and presumably you’re a backer already and in your case the physical profile of this Pico projector matches your size constraint. Sounds like a plan.

It’s just that, at some point along the line I’d see myself wanting to swap the pico projector out for a “proper” one.
Here’s a rough outline of why I would still prefer a full-size projector for my own living room:

  1. Normal consumer projectors include an On Screen Display which can be accessed at any point over top of the content and is often quite dense. This display includes quick access to color and image settings & input signal specifications (resolution, frequency, etc). It’s not clear if/how PicoPix Max will gain this functionality, and my understanding is PicoPix Max will never be capable of displaying a menu over top of HDMI content, due to hardware limitation.


    This is specific to PicoPix Max and maybe will get better over time, and/or completely solved in a later v2.
  2. Classic projectors do not include a battery to fail of old age. Instead they have lamp units which burn out, and are easily replaceable, Epson bulbs often costing under <$50. Pico projectors should last longer since it doesn’t have the same kind of “bulb”, but you’re depending more on the warranty since it’s more complex, smaller, and not as user-serviceable.
  3. If you are installing a proper home theater, odds are you are going to have an A/V Receiver running the surround sound and switching between HDMI inputs for Bluray, Roku, Game console, etc. In this case, the projector including Android is not going to be useful, and will probably just get in your way. This is similar to why home theater people often don’t want a Smart TV. Home Cinema projectors often are not “smart” and just take a signal to put on your screen.
    Note: If you plan on using PicoPix Max’s Android for most of your content, and using Bluetooth or Headphone Jack for sound, this point doesn’t matter.
  4. A larger projector should have less fan noise in general, due to the fan just being physically larger.

Nothing crazy and I wish you luck on your PPM adventure :slight_smile:

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Thank you very much for the write up. Great job! Fair review. Thanks.

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Yes, all of my photos are in “Energy Saver” mode, and all except the last photo are running on Battery Power as well. Thus most photos are at the lowest possible LED brightness. (this is different than the “Color Adjustment” brightness. I haven’t actually used the Color Adjustment menu yet. I am using defaults)

Also note that none of my photos involve real sunlight. It’s a very cloudy week (month?) here in Berlin. I have definitely bumped up to “Normal” mode more than once while operating by an open window.

Thanks a lot for your thoughts. My main usage will be internal so HDMI issues are not much of a pain (at least at this point). They have promised Sonos support (that I hope they’ll keep) so Android on board makes sense in this case for me not only for content and portability but for wireless connection to my surround Sonos system. As for the battery - they said that there will be a bypass function (but now I see that there isn’t and probably won’t be so this is a promise not kept). This is going to be my first projector so I’m not much in this by now but why would I need so much those on screen display settings (I see only this as a minus to my use case)?

P.S. The place that I can put a small projector with the size of PPM is actually the perfect spot for a projector with throw ratio 1.2 to have 120inch screen size (I can’t have any bigger than this anyway in that room) so even if I decide to put something in the HDMI port the only downside will be lack of bluetooth but as I said I’m using Sonos so no bluetooth speakers at my home at all. Won’t be able to use Sonos as well from inside the projector but my Sonos Beam has HDMI input so a simple HDMI spliter will do the job. At least that’s the plan :slight_smile:

Hi @danopia, great review and thanks for your impressions! I added them already to the big review topic :slight_smile:

https://community.philipsprojection.com/t/picopix-max-reviews/

One question though, from the professional review from PHC blog, it appears that the contrast on the projector is quite low. Is that something you have noticed? Particular in movies where there is a lot of black/dark scenes (sci-fi for example) :slight_smile:

Thanks again!

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Wow, the like button is small for the effort you’ve put in writing this extensive review. Thank you!

@Sirolf since you’re the headmaster of this topic PicoPix Max Reviews (I don’t want to edit it), can you please add a link to the review? Thanks.

Cheers,

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Way ahead of you, already done 10 seconds after is was online :wink:

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I’m not at all surprised! I’m sure I could run into this problem by watching dark scenes during the daytime or with lights on in the room. I know this because I had the same problem with my two “proper” Home Cinema projectors. I very clearly remember us desperately sealing a patio door with various blankets every time my friends wanted to watch Handmaid’s Tale a couple years back.

Honestly, if you’re trying to watch dark content with other lights (windows, lamps) in the room, I’d recommend an OLED TV. I’m curious what the price point is like on a projector that can handle actual high contrast, just so I know haha

That being said I think you would be ok if the room is actually dark. I haven’t tried it personally. This review is biased towards my own media habits - Youtube, Switch games, variety TV and the like. I believe other reviews go more into picture technicals as you mention.

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Sounds like a good plan for a small scale home Theater :slight_smile: I’ve used HDMI extraction boxes for my previous projector installations, they do the job pretty well. Usually my remaining struggle would be switching between HDMI inputs, and figuring out how to play unrelated music over a video/game. Sonos should probably even cover that last one for you! (I ended up with a Minimixer combining Chromecast Audio with the extracted HDMI audio, which worked suprisingly well tbh)

I reviewed my post and realized at least one of the sentences saying when not to buy a PPM were copied from an earlier shorter review I wrote on a totally different forum. As this community is for backers I’ve edited the phrasing somewhat. Cheers!

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Still don’t get what you mean by “small scale home theater” :slight_smile: 120 inch isn’t small for a home theater I think (could be wrong though) and with fully featured (and very strong btw) surround sound and a proper screen (recessed 120 tab-tensioned is the plan for now) I think it should be quite good. However you are not the first one to degrade my enthusiasm :slight_smile: hope that my plan will come out as in my head and will give me good entertainment moments.

BTW Part of the plan is to include the recessed screen, projector lift and the window’s motorised shades in my smarthome system for full automation. I already have a scene in my Alexa than I can trigger with my voice through Sonos Beam called “Cinema”. For now it only turns off the main lights and turns on hidden led strip light in the double ceiling for a cinematic feeling in the room. So if plan goes well this same scene will lower the projector’s lift, the screen and the shades on the window. However if that doesn’t bring me good enough picture I’ll really regret giving so much money for the setup - recessed screen and the lift are not cheap and won’t be able to use them at all if PPM fails.

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As long as you don’t get a defective unit and the room is dark, this would be a better theater setup than I ever had! I’ve literally always just used bare walls for the past 10 years. Can’t imagine the picture looking bad.

Looking forward to hearing your feelings once you have your PPM delivered and plugged in.

BTW, if you want Alexa to turn the projector on for you too, I believe you’ll have to use something like Logitech Harmony to send the IR remote signal. There’s always more to invest in in home theater.

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Thanks for the review, well done !

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I already have an IR sender attached to my smarthome - really convinient when for example I want to switch the channel on the TV from bathroom only through voice :slight_smile: Thanks again for your posts here, really helpfull.

Great review. I’ve just received my PPM and have been doing a quick comparison between my Anker Mars and my new PPM. I’m underwhelmed by the picture quality and brightness.

I’ve had my Anker Mars for two years and love watching films outside with it, however it’s a bit bulky and not bright enough to watch anything until Dusk. This is where the PPM purchase comes in, the PPM is rated 850 ANSI Color Lumens the Anker Mars is 300 ANSI Lumens so was expecting a lot in the area. The side by side comparison shows the Anker Mars is actually brighter! Moreover, the picture (aliasing) is much smoother. I would be interested to hear a response from one of the Philips Reps on this

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Wonder if you actually switched PPM to Presentation mode in order to get those 850 ANSI lumens?

I tried this mode and the Anker Mars was still brighter :slightly_frowning_face:

Well that’s really odd. From pictures above and from others that I’ve seen lately PPM is incredibly bright for its size. Wonder if it could be a defective unit.

Wow, that doesn’t sound like a great situation. I remember hearing about there being differing ways of measuring lumens which rated different projector technologies differently, but given that these both say ANSI, 850 should definitely be greater than 300.

Unfortunately I cannot side-by-side with anything as I sold my previous projectors a month ago. My most recent previous projector was rated around 3,000 lumens which is my mental comparison point, though again I don’t own it anymore.

Can I confirm whether you have wall power attached the PicoPix Max? In my experience the 3 brightness settings actually result in 6 levels of real brightness, once you factor in battery power vs. wall power.

If you are using wall power on Presentation and it still looks dimmer than a 300-lumen projector then I’m going to say something is wrong with the unit.

Yep both units were plugged in side by side. I’ll find some time tonight to post some pictures.

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