HOW TO: Make a Mini Movie Theater With Your iPhone

Product: MiLi Power Projector 2 pico projector

Price: $399.95

What It's Good For: Portability, easy set up and decent picture quality.

Who It’s Good For: Anyone who wants to share his iPhone's video content with a group or see it larger.

Limitations: It's not a cheap gadget.

Bottom Line: The MiLi Power Projector 2 offers iPhone owners a fun way to watch and share video.

 

A Look at the MiLi Power Projector 2

The second-gen MiLi Power Projector boasts a few improvements on the first. It has shed a good few inches of bulk, boasts better 2.5-hour battery life and now has a fanless design for near-silent operation. Offering a fun way to view video content larger and with a group of others, we were interested to test it out.

Setting up the projector is easy. Once you've charged it via mini USB, just open it, pop out the stand, stick your iPhone on the built-in Apple dock, and it recognizes the input right away. You can tweak brightness and contrast in the menu using the remote control, while the volume control and the focus wheel are on the projector itself.

MiLi claims a projection area of up to 70- inches, but you do have to consider that the further away the projector is from the wall, the less bright the image will be. We found a sweet spot of size and brightness to be around 40 inches, which is obviously much larger than the iPhone's display and a decent size to watch a movie.

In a dark room, the image quality was good. The projector only boasts a VGA resolution, so you're not going to see the nuances and details you might be used to on your big screen TV, but it's not a replacement for that — it's a fun and very portable way to share video from your iPhone or iPOD touch.

We feel the pico projector's novelty value doesn't necessarily outweigh the high cost, but we were impressed with the gadget and can recommend it to anyone who can afford to splash out.