{"id":949,"date":"2011-03-30T12:41:56","date_gmt":"2011-03-30T11:41:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.elementally.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/?p=949"},"modified":"2011-03-30T12:41:56","modified_gmt":"2011-03-30T11:41:56","slug":"the-new-3m-mp180-fun-but-not-for-the-serious-presenter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/the-new-3m-mp180-fun-but-not-for-the-serious-presenter\/","title":{"rendered":"The new 3M MP180:  fun, but not for the serious presenter"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Sleek, robust, light and portable, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m excited to try this neat, all-in-one projector.\u00c2\u00a0 I love the idea of bluetooth connectivity and a built-in browser, with WiFi, too.\u00c2\u00a0 Setting up is intuitive, and I only need to glance once at the Quick Start guide.<\/p>\n<p>Although a frozen touchscreen called for a restart,\u00c2\u00a0 it connected easily to the Mac.\u00c2\u00a0 \u00c2\u00a0 It comes with a cute little tripod which is set up easily.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/zL2HIC_oLEo?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>So far, so good.<\/p>\n<p>Now, though, it all goes a bit wrong. \u00c2\u00a0One of the slides I pick at random contains embedded music.\u00c2\u00a0 The clarity of the built-in speakers is pretty good, but overall the sound quality is no better than speakers built into my Mac. \u00c2\u00a0So it&#8217;s great if you want to travel light (sorry about the pun) but not much use if you need to have your laptop with you anyway&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>The connection cable is too short for my liking, too.<\/p>\n<p>When it comes to the visual presentation, the beam angle isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t bad at all.\u00c2\u00a0 It projects reasonably large images over short throw distances.\u00c2\u00a0 But, sadly, <strong>there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s just not enough power.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s a sunny day and the windows are south facing.\u00c2\u00a0 I take pity on the machine and draw the blinds. \u00c2\u00a0Still not enough image.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s like playing a Robert Plant track with only 3 Watts in your amp. \u00c2\u00a0It simply doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have the impact.<\/p>\n<p>I sit and I think &#8211; is there something I&#8217;m missing?\u00c2\u00a0 I go to the website to download the manual, but it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not available yet. Well, as I&#8217;ve got the MP180 before it&#8217;s public release, I suppose I can forgive them.\u00c2\u00a0 Almost.<\/p>\n<div style=\"width: 268px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"   \" title=\"snake image\" src=\"http:\/\/www.wallpaperbase.com\/wallpapers\/animals\/snakes\/snake_4.jpg\" alt=\"snake image\" width=\"258\" height=\"194\" \/><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Killer images demand the best projection<\/p><\/div>\n<p>A quick check of the <a href=\"http:\/\/solutions.3m.co.uk\/wps\/portal\/3M\/en_GB\/PocketProjectors\/HomePage\/2\/Specs\/\">specifications of the MP180<\/a> reveals an output of 30 lumens. \u00c2\u00a0My faithful old Acer projector throws out 2500.\u00c2\u00a0 That means I can project colour images, like this snake, with confidence. \u00c2\u00a0The MP180 barely shows the snake at all in a dim room.\u00c2\u00a0 And in a room with normal light levels, I couldn&#8217;t see anything except the lighter parts of the image &#8211; such as parts of the head.<\/p>\n<p>It fared better with non-image-based slides, particularly with white text on a black background, but as my job is to encourage people to move away from dull and ineffective bullet-point slides, that doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t help me much.<\/p>\n<p>The MP180 is a cute bit of kit and has value if you&#8217;re on the road a lot and your audiences are small. \u00c2\u00a0 But if you&#8217;re only displaying to a couple of people, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s probably just as easy to use a tablet computer or laptop. \u00c2\u00a0 <strong>It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a great toy<\/strong> and I can see my kids having fun projecting things onto walls for a laugh, but it&#8217;s simply not a professional&#8217;s piece of kit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sleek, robust, light and portable, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m excited to try this neat, all-in-one projector.\u00c2\u00a0 I love the idea of bluetooth connectivity and a built-in browser, with WiFi, too.\u00c2\u00a0 Setting up is intuitive, and I only need [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-949","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-presentation-tips","category-reviews-case-studies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/949","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=949"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/949\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}