Array
The Vimgo P10 is one of the seemingly countless projectors on Amazon I’m going to christen as „ultra budget.“ Its price varies between $200 and $250, similar to the AAXA P8, the cheapest projector we’ve reviewed thus far. To answer the most obvious question up front: Yes, the Vimgo P10 does actually work.
I was all ready with a long list of hilarious comparisons to describe how bad the Vimgo P10 was. After all, how good can a projector that costs less than a pair of good headphones really be? The answer is, to my surprise, not bad. Not good, certainly, but considering the low price, it’s relatively bright, has an impressive contrast ratio, and even has Netflix built in, although there’s no built-in battery.
So should you trade in your Sony 325ES to get this stunning achievement in video projection? Absolutely not. However, you might be surprised to learn how far the low end of the projector market has come.
Many of the P10’s biggest issues, and one strength, stem from its bizarre lens. It’s by far the simplest — and for the category, largest — lens I’ve seen on a projector like this. Typically, large lenses are a good thing, as they let more light pass through. With cameras, a big lens offers a variety of image-quality benefits. With a projector there are similar benefits, but there are also a variety of tradeoffs. Without going too far into the weeds for lens design, I’ll just say that the P10’s abnormal lens gives it surprisingly good brightness and contrast, seemingly at the cost of uniformity and overall sharpness. The P10 is 1080p resolution, which is rare among cheap projectors, but its sharpness and detail suffer quite a bit toward the edges of the image.
Another weird thing: There’s no upwards throw. Projectors are usually designed to project an image with a lower edge that’s at or above the top of the projector itself, so you can place the projector on a coffee table, or mount it on the ceiling upside-down, and project the image roughly in the middle of a wall. The P10 projects straight ahead. This isn’t unheard of — the high-end Epson 5050, LS11000, and Sony 325ES do this, for instance. But what those projectors have, the P10 does not: zoom. With no zoom, the P10 creates a 100-inch image when placed roughly 9 feet from the screen, right where you’re probably sitting, and then needs to be about 4 feet off the ground. So more or less at eye level.
I recommend using a tripod with the P10 rather than trying to stack books or boxes on a table to get it high enough. That, or you have to create a smaller image than perhaps you’d want by placing it closer to the screen and watching from behind. Yes, you could use keystone adjustment, but you absolutely shouldn’t.
The P10 is, surprisingly, relatively bright. Vimgo claims 300 lumens, and I measured 271, which is not only one of the closest claimed-to-measured amounts I’ve tested, but also roughly the same as the AAXA P8 and even the far more expensive Xgimi Halo Plus.
