AKIYO O2 Projector

Is the AKIYO O2 Projector worth buying?

Yes, the AKIYO O2 Projector is worth buying at £39.70 for a small dark room where the wall sits less than a metre from the bed. Android 14 comes on board with more than 8,000 apps, so there is no Fire TV Stick to buy, and 1,614 owners rate it 4.1. It is the pick for a bedsit, a caravan or a child's bedroom, not for a living room with the lights on.

Skip it if you want a 1080p picture or a machine that focuses itself, because the panel is 1280 x 720 and focus is a wheel you turn by hand. That is no hardship when the projector stays on one shelf, and more of a chore when it travels in a bag each weekend. Anyone who wants the same money with a brightness figure they can compare should look at the YOTON Y4PRO at £39.99.

How big a picture does it throw, and from where?

A 0.8:1 lens means the throw distance is 0.8 times the picture width, and the O2 delivers exactly that: 35 inches from 0.6 m, and a 200-inch diagonal, around 4.4 m across, from 3.5 m. In practice a bedside table 0.6 m from the wall already gives you a picture the size of a 32-inch television, and the 180° stand swings it onto the ceiling without a tripod. The 50% zoom then trims the image without you moving the unit.

Brightness is the number to settle before you pay, and the O2 gives 18,000 LM with a 12,000:1 contrast ratio and no ANSI lumen figure, so its price cannot be divided the way the £39.99 YOTON Y4PRO can be, at 200 ANSI lumens for 20p each. The 3 W lamp is rated for 20,000 hours, which is roughly 18 years of three-hour evenings. Video arrives as H.264 or H.265, so a downloaded film on a USB stick plays without a laptop.

What comes in the box and how easy is it to live with?

You get the projector, an HDMI cable, the power adapter, a remote and the user manual, plus a free 100-inch screen or a mouse while the offer runs. The body measures 9.5 x 9.5 x 15.8 cm and weighs 360 g, so it drops into a coat pocket, and it carries a tripod mount for anyone who wants it off the table. The 180° stand means it also works sitting on a shelf as it comes.

Set-up is a turn of the focus wheel plus automatic vertical keystone correction, which squares the frame in about a second when the unit aims up or down. You can drive it from the remote, the buttons on the body, or the tranScreen app on a phone, and AKIYO sends a mouse on request for point-and-click operation on screen. Wi-Fi 6 runs on 5 GHz and 2.4 GHz, so the stream holds when the router is at the far end of the flat, and Bluetooth 5.4 is two-way.

Where does the AKIYO O2 Projector fall short?

The panel is 1280 x 720, so a 1080p film is scaled down to 921,600 pixels, which looks fine at 60 inches in a dark bedroom and soft past 100 inches. Focus is manual, so every time the projector moves you turn the wheel again, and the automatic keystone works vertically only, which means an off-centre table needs the picture nudged by hand.

The picture also wants the curtains shut. 18,000 LM is a bedtime figure rather than a daytime one, and on a grey afternoon the image washes out, as it does on any projector at this price. Plan the room around a dark wall and the O2 looks far better than its £39.70 suggests.

AKIYO O2 Projector vs the YOTON Y4PRO and the Magcubic: which one?

Against the YOTON Y4PRO the gap is 29p and one comparable number. The YOTON costs £39.99 and gives 200 ANSI lumens at 20p each, with Android TV 14 and Netflix already installed. Take the AKIYO for the 0.8:1 lens, the 360 g body and the 0.6 m minimum distance, and the YOTON if a brightness figure you can hold against other projectors matters more.

The Magcubic at £54.99 costs £15.29 more and answers the two things the AKIYO leaves open: it gives 200 ANSI lumens and it runs below 28 dB, with a DLP chip and horizontal keystone correction for an off-centre table. Where the fan noise or a second viewer on the sofa matters, that £15.29 is the better spend. The AKIYO still wins on the entry price and on how little wall space it needs.