High-resolution projectors have been getting smaller, cheaper and more powerful in recent years, but the Piqo, which has raised over 70 times its Indiegogo target, offers 1080p resolution, 240-inch maximum screen size, and Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity in a 2.25-inch cube that's somehow half the price of a fairly ordinary TV.
At 200 lumens of brightness, the Piqo's certainly not going to make a bright big screen in a day-lit room like more expensive gear such as Epsom's Home Cinema 4010, which does 4K vision, downsampled to 1080p, at 2,400 lumens. But that thing's bigger than a phone book, to choose an utterly irrelevant late-noughteens size comparison, and it costs US$2,000.
The Piqo is absolutely tiny, a cube with 2.25-inch (5.7-cm) sides. Into that cube, it packs a tiny touch panel for control, a battery that's good for five hours of video playback, a pair of high fidelity speakers, and a gravity sensor that automatically corrects the keystone distortion when you sit it on an angle and point it at a wall or ceiling.
In a dark room, you can get yourself a projected image as large as 240 in (610 cm) diagonally, which is pretty enormous. Doubtless you'll have to move it closer and use a smaller screen if you're trying to use it in a well-lit room.
It runs its own custom Android operating system, so you can use it as a standalone Netflix/Youtube/Google Play unit. But it also connects to most other devices; Apple phones, tablets and laptops through Air Play, Android gear through Chromecast-style screen mirroring, other devices including game consoles and laptops via Bluetooth. Or you can plug in an HDMI cable, MicroSD card or a flash drive. It's got 16 GB of built-in memory, so you can even save some media on the Piqo if you can't stream it.
Piqo comes with a dinky little remote control, as well as a mini tripod that makes it easy to aim. It weighs in at just 8 oz (210 g), making it an extremely portable little gadget that works as a 50-hour Bluetooth speaker when you're not watching video.
And at an early bird price of just US$325 a pop on Indiegogo (regular pricing is expected to be US$700), it has already proven incredibly popular. It's certainly one of the most fully-featured pico projectors we've come across, at an outstanding price point. The Piqo team was hoping to raise US$10,000, and it's currently sitting on nearly three quarters of a million dollars worth of sales, with just under a month of crowdfunding yet to go. Deliveries are slated to begin in March 2019 if all goes to plan.
We've hopefully got a review unit in the pipeline, but the above early bird pricing is limited.
Update (May 30, 2019): Piqo offered us a review unit, but only under the conditions that we'd write an "enthusiastically positive" review, and not publish anything negative. We declined the offer, and suggest you take any "enthusiastically positive" Piqo reviews you might find online in the coming months with a grain of salt.
You can check out the pitch video below.
Source: Piqo Indiegogo
