Best in Class – Over $500: AAXA M6

Posted on November 6, 2018 by Art Feierman

The AAXA M6 was my first pocket projector, and is still one of my all-time favorites. That is mainly due to the projector having full HD resolution – most pocket projectors will either be 720p or WXGA, which have larger pixels than 1080p – and let’s not forget this AAXA projector’s brightness claim of 1,200 lumens! It’s small enough to be taken on the go, whether you’re wanting to watch in your bedroom instead of the living room, or traveling – and because of its brightness, it’s also viable for business presentations. It’s just 7” long, 7” wide, 2.1” tall and comes with a carrying case – awesome.

Overview

The AAXA M6 has the best quality image of the projectors in this report, and does a great job on skin tones, though lips tend to be a little too pink.

Peeta's skin tone looks natural, save for the vibrant pink of his lips.

The AAXA M6 does a good job on dark scenes, especially for a pocket projector.

Text is super sharp on this 1080p pocket projector.

This scene from The Blacklist shows some of the most natural looking handling of skin tones the M6 is capable of.

❮ ❯

The AAXA M6 is a $599.99 projector with 1080p resolution – 1920 x 1080 pixels – the highest resolution of any projector considered in this report, save for our Smartest Pocket Projector Award winner, the LG MiniBeam PF1000U, which is also 1080p. It didn’t win this award because of its price and the fact that it’s on the larger side of pocket projectors, but more on that later. This AAXA M6 has an LED light engine with a lifespan of up to 30,000 hours, which translates to many years of constant viewing before the brightness begins to dim.

Best Pico and Pocket Projectors Report - Best in Class: Over $500 AAXA M6

Speaking of brightness AAXA claims 1,200 lumens for the M6. Not quite, but it is brighter than the competition. It measured 835 lumens in its brightest mode, Presentation, with its better modes, Movie and Standard, measuring at 832 and 824 lumens respectively. This means that no matter what mode you’re in, you’ll get a similarly bright image. I spent a lot of time watching it in my home studio while writing the review – a room that constantly has ambient light leaking from the horizontal blinds. I found it to be bright enough to handle some modest ambient light – so, shades drawn, you should be good to go.

Like the others, it has a fixed lens, so where you place it determines the size of the projected image. The M6 can project an image of up to 200” diagonally without going blurry, but I wouldn’t recommend going that large during the day if you don’t have the ability to fully (or at least, mostly) darken your room. The bigger the screen size, the more lumens you need, so stick to 100” or so for the best results in a room that has modest ambient light. Come nightfall, though, make it as big as you like! Well, by movie theater standards you can go to 150” diagonal, in a fully darkened room.

As mentioned in our discussion of the AAXA P300 Neo, many pico and pocket projectors have a built-in battery feature, allowing you to take the projector anywhere without the need for a power outlet. The M6 has a battery life of 90 minutes, which is enough for a few episodes of The Good Place (and other shows with short episodes), an old animated film like those pre-Pixar Disney movies, and 1.5 hours of gaming time. This would be ideal for outdoor hang outs, but isn’t really long enough for a movie night. Stick to the DC power, if you can.

The color handling on the AAXA M6 is pretty good! As is true for all pico and pocket projectors, color isn’t 100% accurate, but for the most part, all modes look good. There’s not a ton of difference between each mode, so it’ll just be a matter of preference. There’s RGB controls you can use to improve upon the color, but I didn’t spend much time with that. I used Movie Mode until I realized the color was a bit too pink, especially on Katniss and Peeta’s lips in The Hunger Games. After I messed with the controls a little bit, everything looked more natural.

The AAXA M6’s 2-watt speaker is loud enough by itself, but just in case you’re into portable speakers for better quality sound, the projector has an AV port – or you can plug in headphones or earbuds, or powered speakers, via the Headphone jack. On the input side of things, it’s got a DC power input, a that headphone port and AV connector, one HDMI input, and a VGA connector. Those are the HDMI and USB ports, and continued on the side of the projector are the TF card (SD card) and the power switch to turn the projector on and off.

For gamers – its input lag measured within the acceptable range at 42.4ms. For all but the most competitive, hardcore gamers, anything between 33ms to 40ms is considered good, with 50ms being at the top of what’s considered acceptable. The best of the best projectors measure around 16ms for input lag, but for most, that 42.2ms will be just fine. It puts it at a little more than 1 frame behind with 30fps games, and a little over two frames for 60fps games. I tested the M6 with my PlayStation 4 and the NVIDIA Shield, and it performed well in both instances. The AAXA M6 comes with a standard 1 year parts and labor warranty.

The Bottom Line on the AAXA M6

Bottom Line: Good color, very portable (it even comes with its own carrying case), with a long light engine life that will have you enjoying many years of movie and TV watching, as well as gaming. Another projector that would be good for a child, teenager, or college student, it has some capabilities that would make it useful for the road warrior on a budget, as the M6 has a built-in media player for PC-free presentations. This projector is definitely one that lives at the top of my best projectors under $700 list (we recently published an article by this title, and the M6 is featured). As mentioned, this can be used as a business projector, which you can read more about on the Pico and Pocket Projectors for Business Purposes at the end of this report.

AAXA M6 Review

Full Review

The AAXA M6 was my first pocket projector, and is still one of my all-time favorites. That is mainly due to the projector having full HD resolution – most pocket projectors will either be 720p or WXGA, which have larger pixels than 1080p – and let’s not forget this AAXA projector’s brightness claim of 1,200 lumens! It’s small enough to be taken on the go, whether you’re wanting to watch in your bedroom instead of the living room, or traveling – and because of its brightness, it’s also viable for business presentations. It’s just 7” long, 7” wide, 2.1” tall and comes with a carrying case – awesome.

Overview

The AAXA M6 has the best quality image of the projectors in this report, and does a great job on skin tones, though lips tend to be a little too pink.

Peeta's skin tone looks natural, save for the vibrant pink of his lips.

The AAXA M6 does a good job on dark scenes, especially for a pocket projector.

Text is super sharp on this 1080p pocket projector.

This scene from The Blacklist shows some of the most natural looking handling of skin tones the M6 is capable of.

❮ ❯

The AAXA M6 is a $599.99 projector with 1080p resolution – 1920 x 1080 pixels – the highest resolution of any projector considered in this report, save for our Smartest Pocket Projector Award winner, the LG MiniBeam PF1000U, which is also 1080p. It didn’t win this award because of its price and the fact that it’s on the larger side of pocket projectors, but more on that later. This AAXA M6 has an LED light engine with a lifespan of up to 30,000 hours, which translates to many years of constant viewing before the brightness begins to dim.

Speaking of brightness AAXA claims 1,200 lumens for the M6. Not quite, but it is brighter than the competition. It measured 835 lumens in its brightest mode, Presentation, with its better modes, Movie and Standard, measuring at 832 and 824 lumens respectively. This means that no matter what mode you’re in, you’ll get a similarly bright image. I spent a lot of time watching it in my home studio while writing the review – a room that constantly has ambient light leaking from the horizontal blinds. I found it to be bright enough to handle some modest ambient light – so, shades drawn, you should be good to go.

Like the others, it has a fixed lens, so where you place it determines the size of the projected image. The M6 can project an image of up to 200” diagonally without going blurry, but I wouldn’t recommend going that large during the day if you don’t have the ability to fully (or at least, mostly) darken your room. The bigger the screen size, the more lumens you need, so stick to 100” or so for the best results in a room that has modest ambient light. Come nightfall, though, make it as big as you like! Well, by movie theater standards you can go to 150” diagonal, in a fully darkened room.

As mentioned in our discussion of the AAXA P300 Neo, many pico and pocket projectors have a built-in battery feature, allowing you to take the projector anywhere without the need for a power outlet. The M6 has a battery life of 90 minutes, which is enough for a few episodes of The Good Place (and other shows with short episodes), an old animated film like those pre-Pixar Disney movies, and 1.5 hours of gaming time. This would be ideal for outdoor hang outs, but isn’t really long enough for a movie night. Stick to the DC power, if you can.

The color handling on the AAXA M6 is pretty good! As is true for all pico and pocket projectors, color isn’t 100% accurate, but for the most part, all modes look good. There’s not a ton of difference between each mode, so it’ll just be a matter of preference. There’s RGB controls you can use to improve upon the color, but I didn’t spend much time with that. I used Movie Mode until I realized the color was a bit too pink, especially on Katniss and Peeta’s lips in The Hunger Games. After I messed with the controls a little bit, everything looked more natural.

The AAXA M6’s 2-watt speaker is loud enough by itself, but just in case you’re into portable speakers for better quality sound, the projector has an AV port – or you can plug in headphones or earbuds, or powered speakers, via the Headphone jack. On the input side of things, it’s got a DC power input, a that headphone port and AV connector, one HDMI input, and a VGA connector. Those are the HDMI and USB ports, and continued on the side of the projector are the TF card (SD card) and the power switch to turn the projector on and off.

For gamers – its input lag measured within the acceptable range at 42.4ms. For all but the most competitive, hardcore gamers, anything between 33ms to 40ms is considered good, with 50ms being at the top of what’s considered acceptable. The best of the best projectors measure around 16ms for input lag, but for most, that 42.2ms will be just fine. It puts it at a little more than 1 frame behind with 30fps games, and a little over two frames for 60fps games. I tested the M6 with my PlayStation 4 and the NVIDIA Shield, and it performed well in both instances. The AAXA M6 comes with a standard 1 year parts and labor warranty.

The Bottom Line on the AAXA M6

Bottom Line: Good color, very portable (it even comes with its own carrying case), with a long light engine life that will have you enjoying many years of movie and TV watching, as well as gaming. Another projector that would be good for a child, teenager, or college student, it has some capabilities that would make it useful for the road warrior on a budget, as the M6 has a built-in media player for PC-free presentations. This projector is definitely one that lives at the top of my best projectors under $700 list (we recently published an article by this title, and the M6 is featured). As mentioned, this can be used as a business projector, which you can read more about on the Pico and Pocket Projectors for Business Purposes at the end of this report.