The concept of the pico, or pocket projector is a bit less than seven years old. In that short time span, major advancements have been made which make it virtually an essential technology for small and large businesses. It is somewhat costly, but the prices have gone down exponentially since the inception of the item, with average pricing now in the neighborhood of 400-750 USD.

The pico projector is a projector technology in a hand held device. The technology involves being able to project the information which you have in hand, (quite literally) onto a nearby viewing surface. Explay first introduced the Pico hand-held technology in 2003. They showed the concept to several major players in the technology field. The response was a showcase of the actual technology in action at the Anza conference in late 2006.In a scant 3 years, the technology was expanded on and made a reality. The bandwagon was quickly filled by players which included Himax, Syndiant LCoS, Mitsubishi, 3M, Explay and multiple others.

These manufacturers of the pico projectors have offered projectors that offer decreased energy consumption, along with excellent brightness, and superb high resolution imagery. Most of them tend to run for about two hours on a single charge. The only real critique of the pico technology is it’s lack of brightness in some cases when they are used in normal daytime room lighting. They are best suited for darkened or dimly lit rooms but even given that limitation they make possible a wide array of things which were not possible just a few years ago.

Many of the pico and micro projectors began with single LCoS chip. While this does offer higher resolution and a speedy response time, it is at the expense of the quality of color that the projector offers. One substantial performance enhancement that has come out since the technology began is the inclusion, by 3M and others of the color sequencing LEDs. This brings an highly improved quality of color but it does also add to the cost somewhat. Laser projectors such as the Microvision SHOWWX offer laser projection which means no fiddling around with adjustment knobs. Given the advancements that have taken place in the pico projection technology in the short span of time since it’s inception, we expect to see great things as it continues to grow and to evolve. When we look at the fact that the first home PC’s were not available to us until a scant 25 years ago at a price that the average household could afford, and in consideration of the vast scope of improvements and technological advancements that have taken place in that technology, we expect similar advances in the pico or hand-held technology as well.

With a few limitations, the hand-held projectors of today are well capable of offering you a wonderful means for showing off your company or business in a favorable light, as well as to avail yourself of new methods of gaming on a hand held device. Consider what a year or more of technological advancements might offer in the hand held technology field.

Author Bio: The technology upon which pocket projectors are based is constantly being improved for our benefit. I believe it helps the end consumer when there is a source of information out there to help them make sense of it all when they go shopping for the best pico projector for their needs.

Category: Computers and Technology
Keywords: microvision,pocket-projectors,presentations,consulting,pocket-projector,showwx,explay,pico