Optoma Technology Incorporated, claimed as one of the world's bestselling brands of DLP projectors, has just announced a noticeable extension on its Pico line of projectors, with the addition of two new models, the PK201 and PK301. Both projectors provide a better brightness, as well as more connectivity and storage solutions for the user to enjoy a better versatility in the product.

"Mobility and portability are increasingly important to end-users, both for business and personal use," said Jon Grodem, Optoma's director of product and marketing. "These two new Pico projectors put us in the best position to meet the performance needs of more demanding users, enabling them to easily share videos, photos and graphics on the road or at home."

I’ll start with the PK301 that offers best in class brightness of 50 lumens, and packs a variety of features that make it ideal for the a laptop and netbook companion, as well as a suitable tool for road-warriors desiring means of sharing more content on a wide range of environments. As for technical specifications, the PK301 has a native resolution of 854 x 480 (that's right - 16:9, baby), a 2000:1 contrast ratio, an LED lifetime of 20,000 hours, 28MB of internal memory and will project images between 5 and 120 inches for more than two hours on bright mode.

"The PK301 is the gold-standard of Pico projectors," stated Grodem. "It is a different direction in Pico projectors, but its 8 ounces are packed full of added power and features."

The PK201, on the other hand, has the same native resolution, but a mere 20 lumens brightness, keeping the 2000:1 contrast ratio, yet somehow the battery life falls down to an hour. Just like the PK301, this also has a mini HDMI input, VGA Component In, 3.5mm Audio Out and supports up to 16GB of microSD memory cards. The two share supported file formats like AVI, MOV, MP4, 3GP, JPEG, BMP, GIF and, for my personal impression, TIFF as well. Pricing is set at $299 for the PK201, and $399 for the PK301.


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