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The Sony Xperia Touch projector.
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The Sony Xperia Touch projector.
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The Sony Xperia Touch projector.
Sony has finally brought its Xperia Touch projector to market at $1,699.99. The device can project a fully functional Android interface onto a table, wall, or other flat surface in your home, and it can be used to watch movies or play video games, too.
The Xperia Touch can project a 23-inch multi-touch Android interface that works well, or it can do up to 80 inches on the wall for movie and video game viewing. However, it only has a 1366×768 resolution, 100 lumens of brightness, and a 4,000:1 contrast ratio.
Ars got some hands-on time with the Xperia Touch at Mobile World Congress earlier this year, and we found that the 23-inch projection created some fun and handy new use cases. However, the picture quality left something to be desired—especially at this high price point.
The multi-touch interface leans on a built-in, 60fps camera and an infrared light array. It runs Android Nougat and has 3GB of memory, Bluetooth 4.2, 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac Wi-Fi, GPS, NFC, 32GB of storage, a gyroscope, and an accelerometer. The official specs page doesn’t specify the chipset for this release model, but it had a 1.6GHz Snapdragon 650 SoC back at MWC. It also comes with a 13MP camera.
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The Sony Xperia Touch. It’s a little projector.
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And I do mean little. It’s about as tall as a smartphone.
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You get a few modes. Here’s what I’ll call “Table mode,” which uses the excellent IR touch controls.
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This one would be “wall mode,” which still uses the IR touch controls. Note how it’s a lot easier to block the image here.
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And this is “far away from the wall mode” where you’re supposed to use gesture commands via the front facing camera. This doesn’t work yet.
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Table mode is great. Here are a few MWC attendees playing a math game. Who will buzz in first?
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The Android homescreen.
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The app drawer.
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On the back are Micro HDMI and USB-C connectors.
The Touch runs all sorts of Android apps, from Skype to calendars to games for kids. At MWC, we were able to use it at a distance rather than touching the projection, too. Holding a finger up in the air created a circular cursor on the projection that could be used to select things with a pinching gesture.
At the time of this writing, the Touch is already out of stock on Amazon, but more are “on the way.” You can also buy it at T-Mobile stores in some cities, including Los Angeles, Chicago, Miami, and New York, according to The Verge.
