The Benq Joybee projector is something that you're either going to think is silly or you're going to fall in love with nearly instantly. It's a bunch of neat features balanced by one or two shortcomings, and the price tag—$500—is an awkward straddling of price points for a piece of audio-visual equipment. Is there a market for a "budget" projector that fits in the palm of your hand? Will people find a use for it?

The answer to that question is largely personal, but after using the Joybee for a number of days, I have my verdict: I'm in love.

Let's get the stats out of the way. The projector is tiny, weighing in at only 1.4 pounds. The maximum resolution is 858X600, but it's able to scale anything you throw at it. The projector can display in both 4:3 and 16:9 resolutions, and can also stretch a normal image to widescreen. The bulb-less LED light is bright: 100 lumens, with a 2000:1 contrast ratio. In a reasonably dark room we were able to get a perfectly viewable image, and even moderately light rooms will give you a good result. While these stats may not blow your socks off in any other projector review, keep in mind this thing is tiny, measuring 5.4 by 4.7 by 2.1 inches. The build quality is also impressive; it feels like an actual projector, not a toy.

I did have a few rough moments trying to figure out how the buttons on the top of the unit worked; they often wouldn't pick up the fact that I had hit them at all. It's not a touchpad, but it also doesn't require a ton of pressure—it's somewhere in between, and incredibly awkward. Get ready to spend some time getting used to hitting them correctly. The included remote is much better, although it's laid out in a slightly goofy way and will also take time to get used to. These aren't deal-breakers, but on a product that looks so elegant, they're somewhat disappointing. The breakout cable also adds some bulk and mess to the unit, and since the projector doesn't use batteries, you'll have to plug it in with an AC adaptor with quite the large power brick. It's not a big deal, but neither of these pieces of equipment (both of which you'll need to get the projector up and running) fit into the included soft case.

You have two options for connections: you can either use a breakout cable to attach a composite or VGA source to the projector, or you can plug a USB 2.0 stick into the port in the back of the hardware. That's right, the projector will run a number of file types directly off a USB stick, including .avi, .mp4, and .mov, not to mention plenty of image types. I threw a number of video files I had on my computer at the projector, and they all played fine, with only one issue: the audio codec support wasn't nearly as robust, and I couldn't find a single file that would work with sound.

BenQ Joybee GP1 from Ars Technica on Vimeo.

That problem disappears when you hook an external source up to the projector, of course, but the hardware's 2W built-in speaker did a fine, if slightly tinny, job in a medium sized room turned up 2/3 of the way.

Giving a micro projector to the site's gaming expert to review lead to one thing: testing with video games first. Let's see how things held up.

Real-world use

While there may be some small niggles with the buttons or the remote or the cables, the Joybee projector delivers where it counts: in actual performance. Even in a moderately light room, the picture is bright and clear. If you're projecting on a wall that isn't white, the software comes with a variety of color adjustment settings to make the picture look as close as possible to how it would look on a white screen.

The options are impressive. Included on the hardware is a foot on the bottom that can be screwed in and out to tilt the projector up if you need to place it somewhere low, and there is a standard tripod connection on the bottom as well. The software features automatic keystone correction, which means that even at a severe angle the projector will know what angle it's at and square the picture for you. In testing, this feature worked perfectly, and using the built-in foot, keystone correction, and color correction with my wall I had a solid-looking image in under five minutes. The biggest selling points of this projector are its portability and ease of use, and both aspects of the product live up to that promise.