Performance
The ABOX T22 has a minimum working distance of around 1 metre, which gives you a projected image of the size of a 32″ TV. It is supposed to be able to project an image equivalent to a 176″ TV!!!! But that would require a focusing distance of 5 metres, which unfortunately we just don’t have at hand. We are expected to give this a proper go once the weather clears up and we try the T22 outdoors!
Projected images of the T22 can be displayed in either 2 aspect ratios; 4:3 or 16:9, the former will give you black bars at the top and bottom of the image, whilst the latter would fill the projected image entirely.
In my first tests all I did was hook up the ABOX T22 via HDMI to my laptop, played a video and thought that the image was a bit grainy. I had not realised that my laptop had defaulted to a very low screen resolution, and it was only after playing around with the display settings of my laptop that I set the T22 to display at 1080HD, and boy did it make a difference!
The first test was done in a blacked out room, with the image projected onto a white screen. As you can see contrast and colours are very sharp. The middle of the projected image shows better sharpness, but towards the very edges of the image you start to get some smearing. This smearing is down to the curvature of the lens, and unless you are talking of optics in the thousands of dollars, you are always going to get this. Image sharpness is good enough to make out texts which will come in handy if you choose to use the ABOX T22 to display presentation slides. There is some light falloff in the corners, but again this is expected from the optics.
Here’s a quick video for demonstration purposes:
With 2400 lumens, the projected image was bright, but not so bright it would hurt your eyes if you looked at it too long. I did feel comfortable enough watching the images projected by the T22 to go through several of Winston’s YouTube videos in one sitting! We were projecting at a distance of 2 metres, so that’s around a 72″ TV equivalent, and the image did not look faded at all. Moving the projector closer to the screen, the image got even more sharper.
Things got very impressive in our next test. This test was done around noon on a bright day, in a slightly shaded room with no lights on. With a focusing distance of 3 metres, you can see from the photo above that the projected image is still very decent. In such a brightly-lit room, the projected image obviously had some light leaks and the contrast was much lower, but the sharpness is still intact and the image was still very watchable. Moving the projector closer to the wall gave an even clearer and sharper image, gaining more colours and contrast back….that’s the power of 2400 lumens!
As mentioned earlier, the internal stereo speakers produce very clear sounds, but the downside of generating so much lumens is that the ABOX T22 does get quite warm. To dissipate the heat the T22 has internal fans blowing onto the projection LCD and you do get a slight constant whirl sound in the background. Due to this heat being dissipated, the vents on either side of the T22 blows warm air out….so ideally you would use the T22 in a cool air-conditioned environment or outdoors.
Verdict and Conclusion
It was definitely fun testing out the ABOX T22 but it was also a lot of hard work as well. We wanted to present the ABOX T22 as it would be used by any normal user, in every day situations such as watching movies, doing presentations, and even gaming on a console, so it hard finding suitable locations with a suitable surface to project on. As such, we will continue updating this review with more experiences in the near future!
Final Thoughts
The ABOX T22 would definitely improve any man-cave you are building, and it wouldn’t be out of place in any home. Investing in a 50″+ TV can be very costly, but if you have the room for a projector, then getting HD quality images at that vast size can be achieved for a fraction of the cost by getting an ABOX T22 at just US$129.99!
You can get the ABOX T22 portable LCD projector right here (US) or here (UK) – https://amzn.to/2jRtSiF
