The Dangbei N2 Mini’s brightness is only high enough to project a relatively small picture, preferably in a dark room. But with the right settings, it delivers good picture quality for the price.
The Dangbei N2 Mini is a decent projector with a low list price ($229) that fares well against similarly priced competitors, such as the Aurzen EAZZE D1G and the Kodak Flik HD9. Its sealed light engine boosts its performance, but its main shortcoming, much like these two competitors, is its low brightness. All three mini projectors are rated at just 200 lumens—bright enough to give you a highly watchable picture in a dark room, but not an impressively large one. If you don’t mind sacrificing picture size, the N2 Mini is a solid option for watching TV or settling in for a movie night. Note, though: Beyond the Aurzen and Kodak models above, we’ve recently tested two additional low-cost models that we’ll get into later in this review; all four have different strengths and weaknesses for budget buyers to weigh.Design: A Dust-Free LCD Is a Dream
The N2 mini is built around a single LCD and a white LED light source rated at 20,000 hours. Dangbei didn’t confirm the geometry of the LCD matrix itself, but for most 1080p projectors in this price range, having a single LCD translates to having a 5,760-by-1,080-pixel LCD with a red, green, or blue filter on each cell, or 1,920 (5,760 divided by 3) by 1,080 red/green/blue pixels. Dangbei did confirm the color filters on each cell, a design that guarantees it can’t show rainbow artifacts (red/green/blue flashes).
One feature that sets this projector apart from other single-chip LCD models is its sealed optical engine, which prevents pesky dust specks from popping up on the LCD.
I did spot some moiré patterns in test images. Usually, this results from a mismatch between the number of pixels in the image and the number on the display chip, either because of digital adjustments (which is why we turn those off for our tests) or because the actual number of pixels for the display chip is slightly different than the rating (as with some DLP chips). But according to Dangbei, the cause is a Fresnel lens (one with concentric rings etched into the surface). Fortunately, the moiré will rarely be visible in photorealistic images, though it could be an issue if you use the projector for presentations with finely detailed line graphics or patterned fills.
Physically, the N2 Mini falls squarely in our mini projector category, as a mini tower permanently mounted on a stand.
