The Touchjet Pond ($599) is an interactive projector with Android OS built in. It comes with two interactive pens that let you work with the projected display the same way you would use your fingers on a standard touch screen. The Touchjet Pond can be used to play Android-based games, view photos, watch YouTube videos, stream movies, and even show business presentations. In short, it lets you do anything you'd typically do on a tablet, and there's no need to connect the Pond to a separate device.
The Pond isn't the only projector that runs the Android OS, but it's the only one we've seen that includes an interactive display. With the AAXA LED Android Projector, for example, you use the projector's remote or a connected USB mouse to control the Android OS or apps. With the ZTE Spro 2 Smart Projector ( at Amazon) , you use a touchpad on the top of the projector. With the Pond, however, you can use up to four interactive pens to interact with the image itself. Two are included with the projector.
Aside from the fact that you use one or more pens with the Pond, the process is the same as giving commands with your fingers on a tablet screen. You can even zoom in or out by using two pens at once. Just move the pens on the projected screen in essentially the same combined motion you would use for expanding or pinching together two fingers on a touch screen. Alternatively, you can give commands with the supplied remote, which doubles as an air mouse. You move the remote to move a mouse pointer on the screen, and then give the equivalent of a touch command by pressing a button.
There are other differences between the Pond and these other models, including variations in brightness and resolution, but the most important is that the AAXA model is more projector than Android device; the ZTE model—which is the only one of the three that connects to a cellular data network—is part projector, part Android device, and part hotspot; and the Pond is more Wi-Fi-only Android device than projector.
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Basics and Setup
The Pond itself weighs just shy of 10 ounces and measures 1.3 by 3.8 by 4.3 inches (HWD). That includes the built-in computer, which runs Android 4.4.2 and, according to Touchjet, offers 18GB of available memory for storing apps and data. The weight of the device itself doesn't include the power block, the two interactive pens, or the combination remote and air mouse. Add those in, along with the hard-shell case Touchjet includes to hold everything, and the total weight is a still highly portable 1 pound 8 ounces. The case measures roughly 2.5 by 9 by 9 inches (HWD).
Setting up the Pond varies depending on what you want to do with it, and whether you want to use AC power or the permanently installed rechargeable battery. To use the battery, you simply turn the projector on. To use AC power—or charge the battery—you plug in the power block. The battery life, according to Touchjet, is 120 minutes, but it lasted a bit longer than that in my tests.
If you want to use the Pond as an Android device with the interactive pens, you'll also need to calibrate the pens first. The calibration is quick and easy, with only five points you need to touch on the calibration screen. However, you have to do it every time you set up or move the projector, which could turn into a small annoyance if you have to do it often enough.
Beyond that, if you want to use an app that's already downloaded to the Pond and doesn't require connection to the Internet, you can simply run the app. To use one that requires a connection, however, you'll need to connect to an access point on a nearby network that's connected to the Internet—just as you would with a Wi-Fi-equipped tablet. As is typical with palmtop and pico projectors, there's no optical zoom, and getting the focus just right is a little tricky, although it's easier to focus the Pond than most other small projectors.
Setup
You can use the Pond as a standard projector, but the choice for image inputs are limited. A mini-HDMI port will, in theory, let you connect to anything that also has an HDMI port, but I couldn't get it to work with the Blu-ray player we normally use in my tests, even though it worked without problems with a computer and with a FiOS box. Touchjet has no comment about the problem, saying that it has never tested the Pond with this sort of video source, because it's not intended for this kind of use. Note too that you can also connect using standard Wi-Fi or Miracast.
The only other image input on the projector is a micro-USB port, which works in concert with a supplied adapter that offers a female USB Type A port at its other end. Plug the adapter into the projector and a USB memory key into the adapter, and you can read files directly from the USB key. This doesn't work as a built-in feature, however, the way it does with most projectors. Instead, you have to use any Android file-management app (one is already installed), to navigate to the files on the USB key and open them.
Brightness and Image Quality
Touchjet rates the Pond at 80 lumens with AC power or 50 lumens using the built-in battery. That's significantly less than the ZTE Spro 2, rated at 200 lumens, or the AAXA LED Android, rated at 550 lumens, but it's enough to be useful. As a point of comparison, the Celluon PicoPro , our Editors' Choice pico projector, is just 32 lumens.
I tested the Pond primarily with AC power. Based on the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) recommendations, 80 lumens is bright enough for extended viewing of a 35- to 47-inch image (measured diagonally) in theater-dark lighting at the Pond's (nearly) 16:9 native aspect ratio. In moderate ambient light, it's suitable for a 23-inch image. For shorter sessions, you can also use larger images without tiring your eyes.
The Pond's native resolution of 854 by 480—one of the common variants of WVGA—limits its usefulness for images with fine detail. However, the Pond's quality for data images is reasonably good for the resolution, as demonstrated on our standard suite of DisplayMate tests.
In particular, color balance is excellent, with suitably neutral shades of gray at all levels from black to white. Color quality is good, although red and blue are both a little dark in terms of a hue-saturation-brightness color model. The Pond also does a good job in resisting showing rainbow artifacts (flashes of red, green, and blue). The only time I saw any in static data screens was with a test image that's designed to bring them out, and even with that image I saw them only by rapidly shifting my gaze back and forth.
Because I couldn't get the Pond to work with the Blu-ray player we normally use for our video tests, I couldn't run our standard suite of clips, which include some that are particularly demanding. However, I was able to view an assortment of video input using a FiOS connection.
The 854-by-480 native resolution necessarily limits video quality. Within those limits, however, image quality is more than acceptable for long sessions, despite the projector's tendency to lose shadow detail (details based on shading in dark areas). As was the case with data images, I saw almost no rainbow artifacts in testing.
Audio quality for the 1-watt speaker is good enough to be useful, with surprisingly high volume for such a small projector. For better quality, stereo, or still higher volume, you can plug a headset or external sound system into the stereo audio output.
Conclusion
The Touchjet Pond is an intriguing device if you want a projector that's also an Android device and works like a tablet, right down to a big image you can interact with directly. But if what you want is a projector that's also an Android device and can connect to a cellular data network on its own, consider the ZTE Spro 2. If you're looking for the best portable projector, take a look at the Celluon PicoPro.
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