Review: Elmo BOXi T-200 Pocket Projector

Posted on January 6, 2014 by Art Feierman

ELMO BOXi T200 PROJECTOR: OVERVIEW: The Elmo T-200 is a solid performer, with WXGA resolution, and very good picture quality for a lower cost pocket projector. Elmo, long known for their products for the classroom, houses of Worship and business introduces a mid-brightness (100 to 250 lumen range) projector that offers a very good value proposition. This projector review has just posted, and will be added to. The Elmo BOXi T-200 is about to be launched at the 2014 CES show on Jan 7th. Elmo was able to deliver to us a pair of T-200 projectors, so that we could complete and post this review in time for the formal announcement. Considering these are preproduction demo units, they performed very well. Read on!

Specs Preview

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BOXi T200 Specs
Price	429
Technology
Native Resolution
Brightness (Manufacturer Claim)
Contrast
Zoom Lens Ratio	N/A
Lens Shift	No
Lamp Life
Weight	0.66
Warranty	1 Year Parts and Labor

The BOXi is a cute pocket projector that claims 150 lumens, enough to do some serious things and do them reasonably well as long as the environment and projected size are reasonable. Way back in the beginning of modern projectors ('93 give or take) the first portable projectors weighed in at about 20 pounds, and cranked out 110 lumens. Certainly back then, 250 lumens was "auditorium capable" (very dark auditoriums, and 20 foot screens). Mind you, projectors in the .5 to 1.5 pound range, are really portable, and there are far, far brighter projectors even at 4-5 pounds (2500+ lumens). This projector's strength is it's size and weight, not its muscle.

Still, in this day and age, please, let's not put the BOXi T200 in an auditorium.

Boxi T200 Projector For Business and Home

In low light, here's an extremely portable projector that can be used for a multitude of purposes. I've projected at 25" and 40" sizes with very good success, looking at spreadsheets, Powerpoint presentations and browsing the internet. I viewed at both sizes with the rear lights of my theater turned on. With the lights off, even 60" diagonal was viable.

For home use, I watched parts of movies with the screen mostly at the 50 and 60 inch diagonal sizes. After all, in theory you only need about 400-450 lumens to fill a 100" screen at movie theater brightness. Thus, to do a 50" diagonal, you have only 1/4 the area, so need only 1/4 the brightness.

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Portable Classroom Use

While many pocket and pico projectors have media players built in, so they can run slide shows off of USB thumb drives, or off of SD and other cards, this BOXi T-200, lacks that functionality. Instead think of this BOXi as a very small "traditional" projector, other than it's extremely long lived LED light source. (And it has an HDMI input!) After some thought, I even decided to list the T200 as suitable for a classroom.

No, it's not going to get use in the traditional US classrooms, but very small portable projectors have made their mark in rural areas, and in many second and third world countries (no offense intended). More about that, under special features.

Let's take a close look, starting with a few of the "special features" of the BOXi T200.