The Brookstone Pocket Projector was my first projector. I saw it in a Brookstone catalogue and pitched it to my wife as a potential Christmas gift. It is 4” x 4” X 1” so plenty small and it is rechargeable with a 2 hour internal battery that can be used to charge items (cellphones, tablets, etc.) via a USB port. It only puts out 100 lumens, but in a semi dark room, I found that to be plenty. While it advertises a 100” image, I found you can still go larger while producing a watchable image. It has an HDMI port and comes with a micro/mini HDMI adapters.
The small size and battery got me thinking that it would be perfect for off the grid movies! My wife and I owned a small camper and I thought it would be neat to sit around the campfire with a beer in hand, watching a movie in the wilderness. I know some of you are rolling your eyes…I guess we were more into glamping (glamour camping) than camping. Santa was good to me that year and brought me this sweet little projector. It worked perfectly! It even features a pretty decent internal speaker, so other than having to provide a video source, it is very self-contained. I purchased an Acer Iconia Tab tablet to use as my media source. Having my video source and projector both running on batteries was awesome and gave me a lot of flexibility. I even took this setup on a few deployments, passing the time waiting for the plane by broadcasting episodes of Family Guy on the passenger terminal walls. If you are going to run it off battery, you want to consider the length of your film, since you will eat up some of your 2 hours life span getting it setup and focused. That limitation aside, this projector packs a lot of punch in a small package and was a great entry point into outdoor movies. I still own it and can’t forsee getting rid of it, due to it’s portability.
Pros:
Portable
Battery Powered
Compatible with international outlets
Built-in Speaker
Tripod mount
Focus
100 lumens-doesn’t require complete darkness
Can be used to charge other items
Cons:
Battery only lasts two hours
Must be perfectly square
Max image is ~100”
Not 720/1080P
Speaker is tinny
Expensive…but getting cheaper