Yoton Y4PRO Mini Projector

Is the Yoton Y4PRO Mini Projector worth buying?

Yes, if you want the cheapest honest brightness in this class: the Yoton Y4PRO Mini Projector costs £39.99 and gives a figure of 200 ANSI lumens that you can hold against any other projector, which works out at 20p per ANSI lumen. It suits a bedroom, a small flat or a first projector for a teenager, and Android TV 14 is already installed so Netflix, Prime Video and Disney+ are ready to sign into. It is not the one to buy if you watch with the lights on or want the sharpest possible picture, because 200 ANSI lumens and a 720p panel have limits.

The 1,791 owners who have rated it give 3.9, the lowest score among the top five in our ranking, and that is the honest trade for the price. On a dark evening with the curtains shut, it does the job a £130 projector does, and it does it for £90 less. The decision comes down to whether you need a 1080p chip or just a decent picture after dark.

What does 200 ANSI lumens actually look like?

200 ANSI lumens is a dark-room figure, bright enough for a 30 to 100-inch picture on a wall or a ceiling once the curtains are drawn. It works out at 20p per ANSI lumen at the £39.99 price, the best rate on our ranking matched only by the £109.99 Wielio, which delivers 550 ANSI lumens for the same 20p each. In practice, a 60-inch image at night looks clear and colourful, with the 9,000:1 contrast ratio keeping dark scenes readable.

The lamp is rated at 30,000 hours, around three hours of film every night for 27 years, so the projector will outlast the flat you watch it in. Video arrives at up to 1080p or 4K input and is displayed at the native 1280 x 720, which means the sharpness is fixed by the panel and not by the source. A 40W draw is modest, about the same as a small television.

What comes in the Yoton Y4PRO Mini Projector box?

You get the projector, a power cord, an HDMI cable, a remote control and a user manual, so it works out of the box without a trip to the shops. The unit measures 15.5 cm long, 12.2 cm wide and 13.1 cm tall, which fits a bedside table or a shelf, and the 180° rotating stand lets you aim it at the wall or the ceiling. Auto keystone correction squares the picture when the unit sits at an angle, and manual focus keeps the image sharp.

Setup is a Wi-Fi 6 connection for the apps and Bluetooth 5.4 for audio, with a focus wheel on the body and 50% digital zoom to resize the image without moving the projector. The throw ratio is 0.8:1, so a 100-inch picture comes from 1.8 m, a 30-inch one from as close as 0.5 m, and the largest is 150 inches from 5 m. Yoton offers lifetime technical support and, for a limited time, a wired mouse or a 100-inch screen on request from its support team.

Where does the Yoton Y4PRO Mini Projector fall short?

The panel is 1280 x 720, so a 1080p or 4K stream is scaled down to 921,600 pixels, and no amount of processing puts back the detail a native 1920 x 1080 chip like the XuanPad's would show. Focus is manual, a wheel to turn by hand rather than the autofocus on the £99.99 ZDK and the £129.99 XuanPad, and it is the one job you do every time you move the unit.

Brightness is the other limit: 200 ANSI lumens needs a dim room, and a lamp on in the corner washes the picture out. The 3.9 score from 1,791 owners is lower than the 4.0 of the £54.99 Magcubic, and that average is a signal to set expectations at the price. Nothing here goes wrong, but nothing here pretends to be a living-room projector for daylight.

How does the Yoton Y4PRO compare with the Magcubic and the XuanPad?

The Yoton Y4PRO at £39.99 and the Magcubic at £54.99 deliver the same 200 ANSI lumens, so you pay £15 for a DLP chip, an 8,000:1 contrast ratio and a noise floor below 28 dB on the Magcubic, plus 8,936 owner ratings against 1,791. Choose the YOTON if the £15 matters or if you want Android TV 14 with the apps already installed, and choose the Magcubic if you want the quieter, better-established machine.

Against the XuanPad at £129.99, the Yoton Y4PRO costs £90 less and gives less in return: a 720p panel against a native 1080p one, 200 ANSI lumens against a 40,000-lumen headline, and manual focus against TOF autofocus. The XuanPad is the better projector and the YOTON is the better first projector. For a dark bedroom and a £40 budget, the YOTON does what most people actually need.