Kodak’s Luma 75 Is a Great Entry-Level Pocket Projector — Thought for Your Penny
Smartphones have evolved a lot in the past decade, and we’re carrying portable computers in our pockets already. Kodak expands the power of your pocket even further with a sleek, small portable pocket projector in the Luma 75. It’s the entry-level projector in the Luma line, followed by the Luma 150 and Luma 300.
Kodak sent me a free review unit to check out its capabilities, and I get an affiliate commission from Amazon if you click-through to their links on this page. I don’t get a commission if you click-through to Kodak, as I am not part of their affiliate program.
Entry-level doesn’t mean it’s not a capable projector. In fact, I found it to be a great wireless, portable projector, and its 1080P support made both my laptop and phone look great on display. Its small form-factor and light weight make it the perfect portable presentation device that fit in my laptop bag with ease.
Kodak Luma 75 Specs and Features
The Luma 75 has a sleek exterior with a textured silver finish and plenty of silver accents. Its minimalist design packs everything into a 3 x 3 x 0.8 inch frame that ways 5 oz. The display is listed as 75 lumens on the Kodak website, but the 25 ANSI lumens on the box is much more accurate.
It combined an LED lamp with a 0.20″ DLP display to give you anywhere from 5″ to 80″ display, with a throw distance of up to 13 feet. Its native resolution is 640×360 with a 16:9 (WVGA) aspect ratio, but it’s capable of dsiplaying 1080P through the HDMI cable. A 30,000-hour lamp life makes this projector capable of lasting about 12 years of constant, 8-hour marathons.
The display is 8-bit color processing with a 1300:1 contrast.
It also squeezes a 1W mono speaker in the front, which I almost wish wasn’t there to make room for something else. Pairing with a bluetooth speaker is necessary to listen to sound out of this thing anywhere by the most perfectly silent and small room.
The headphone jack makes a little more sense, and I can definitely see getting some utility out of it. It also has a USB port to connect an external hard drive and a microSD slot on the opposite side of all these ports. It charges with a standard micro-USB cable, so it’s easy enough to switch my vape pens and projector.
Luma 75’s battery lasts about two hours, so you can easily get through most movies on a single charge if camping. Of course, hooking it to your laptop or an external power source will extend that quite a bit.
Kodak Luma 75 Performance
As you can imagine, the screen isn’t that bright in a well-lit room in the middle of the day. At night, however, it’s stunning. The pic above was actually taken during the day with the curtains and doors closed to block off as much ambient light as I could. Even without a projection screen, it’s still detailed enough that I can easily work off that.
At ~12 feet away from the wall, I maxed out the ~72 inches between those two doors. The autofocus worked well, and it was a simple plug-and-play affair to get started.
I also aimed the smartphone camera straight into the projector lens to get the red, blue, and green lines. I’ve always been a fan of TI’s DLP technology and love how crisp and vivid it made the screen on this simple projector.
Final Thoughts on Kodak Luma 75
The Luma 75 is a great entry into pico projectors. It’s just a shame it’s not sold anywhere anymore. Essentially Kodak’s marketing rep was apparently blowing me off, because the Luma 150 and Luma 300 are all they seem to be selling in stores. The Luma 150 doubles the lumens and adds another 0.5w to the useless speaker, and at $200, it’ll outperform a projector I’m perfectly happy with.
If I were to buy a pico projector, I wouldn’t have gone with the entry-level model, but it’ll work for what I need it for. Of course, if you don’t need portability, check out Anker’s Nebula Prizm II, which outperforms both in the $200–300 price range.
Final Grade: B-
Originally published at http://thoughtforyourpenny.com on November 30, 2019.