BenQ Joybee GP1 Pico Projector

If the BenQ Joybee GP1 Mini Projector is anything, it is an easy-to-use projector. It is designed to be moved around and set up over and over again. It has numerous features to help even the modest tech consumer create a mini home theater wherever they want.

Except for being tethered to a wall outlet for power, this little projector has great dexterity; able to move from room to room with ease. Aside from being too short the included A/V cable works just like you'd expect. The GP1 was able to project the output from two different game consoles (a Microsoft Xbox 360 and a Nintendo 64) with sound just by plugging it in and turning it on. Projecting a laptop screen was just as easy: plug it in and go (though on most laptops, you need to enable the secondary display). In a poorly-lit room with the lights turned on, the GP1 was able to project a good, clear image on a wall from five feet and a pretty good image from ten feet. With the lights turned down, the colors really pop.

Two features that turn this simple projector into an easy-to-use projector are the auto keystone feature and wall color correction. When moving this projector from room to room and from house to house, there are going to be discrepancies in wall color and placement of the GP1 with respect to the display surface. To account for these differences without having to change all of the setting every time the auto keystone feature detects the angle of the projector so you get a uniform square picture every time, no matter if the screen is high on the wall or low. The GP1 also has a neat color adjustment feature called Wall Color Correction. Instead of playing with the saturation, hue and white balance to adjust the colors every time for different wall colors, the GP1 has five built in wall colors so depending on your shade of wall the colors are always as accurate and bright as possible.

The easy-to-use features of the GP1 worked just as described. The auto keystone was very accurate at detecting the angle, making sure that the projected image was square at the corners. This only works when aiming at a wall, but if you have really high ceilings, it will still be able to correct the stretch so it doesn't need to be mounted on the wall or ceiling-a coffee table will work just fine. If you want to aim the projector at the ceiling, it helps to turn off the auto keystone as it will get a little confused. With the limited wall color selection while testing, the built in corrections seem to work pretty well. On either a bluish or yellowish white with the proper setting, all the colors were still clear and vibrant.

According to the press release, the Joybee GP1 Mini Projector is the "World's First LED Pocket Project with Integrated USB Drive." It may be one of the first mini projectors with a USB port to plug in peripheral devices, but it is not going to fit in any of my pockets any time soon. It is a far cry, in size, from any of the pico projectors that have started to hit the market in 2009, which are comparable in size to a cell phone, whereas the GP1 is more like a sliced bread sandwich stacked tall.

After you squeeze the GP1 into your pocket, make sure you have more pockets for the power cord, which has a decent sized power brick; as well as the A/V connector, if you're not going to use the USB port. The GP1 does separate itself from the pico projector crowd as its brightness is claimed to be ten times greater than that of any other pico projector in the market to date, and obviously with the capability to play files from USB flash drives. Not to mention the myriad of traditional home theater and gaming technology, and other portable devices including digital cameras, PDAs, and smartphones with A/V outputs and even iPods and iPhones (via optional dock).