The ZenBeam E1 is ASUS answer to the pocket LED projector also known as pico projector. It boast a 150 lumens brightness which is decent for a pico projector. It’s quite small and comes with a pouch. It has a big battery of 6000mAh which also acts as a powerbank if you are in need of a quick charge. The battery life is stated to last up to 5 hours of usage.
Booting up the ZenBeam takes about 10 seconds. For my viewing pleasure, I plugged in my chromecast dongle directly into the HDMI port and use the USB Port just beside it to power my dongle. It has a feature called auto keystone correction, it automatically eliminates trapezoidal images that can happen because the device is put on an angled surface.
Once connected, the keystone correction will adjust the image automatically to make sure the screen is shaped properly.
It has a maximum of 30000 hours of life which is about 41 months of non-stop use. Contrast Ratio of 3500:1 which is decent enough.
To protect the lens from any dust and dirt it has a sliding lens cap which has a nice click when it’s closed properly.
It is using DLP technologies which efficiently boosts brightness and contrast by up to 30% while lowering power consumption by up to 50%. The ZenBeam is running on a native WVGA 854×480 resolution but is able to support 1080p sources.
The ZenBeam is able to project up to a huge size of 120-inch from 3.7 meters or 12 feet away.
ASUS ZenBeam E1 only weighs 307g it’s palm size dimensions of 83 x 29 x 110 mm.
Notice the side grills which are designed for ventilation.
For input it has a HDMI/MHI Port at the rear and a 2.0 USB 5V/1A for charging your devices. Also located at the rear is the 3.5mm headphone jack, charger port and the on/off button. Surprisingly it has a 2W built-in speaker which is good enough for a small room.
Located at the bottom of the project is a tripod socket which is the standard size that most standard digital camera uses.
Buttons located along the top of the ZenBeam are easy to identify and adjust the volume, colour, contrast, and focus functions .
ASUS Splendid display mode (Standard, Presentation, Eco, Presentation)
To adjust the volume, press the 2nd button to lower and the 4th button to increase. It has 10 levels of volume control.
Third button is to access the menu settings like brightness, contrast, manual keystone, aspect ratio, projector position (front, rear), language and auto keystone. From this setting menu, the 2nd button acts as the left and 4th button acts as the right selection and the 3rd button selects it, the 1st button is like a back button which is used to go to previous menu.
Text appears quite sharp and colours display is pretty good. Make sure the room is dark enough to best appreciate this projector.
I’m not sure how big the screen is but I was standing about 3 meters away. maybe 100 inches ? The ZenBeam works as stated and projects a quality and big screen from such a tiny device.
If you look closely you can make out the shape of my ac3200 router.
Just for giggles I cast my screen to my chromecast device and tried to take a picture of the projection.
