The Sony Xperia Touch projector.
The Sony Xperia Touch projector.
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.
The Sony Xperia Touch. It’s a little projector.
And I do mean little. It’s about as tall as a smartphone.
You get a few modes. Here’s what I’ll call “Table mode,” which uses the excellent IR touch controls.
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.
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.
Table mode is great. Here are a few MWC attendees playing a math game. Who will buzz in first?
The Android homescreen.
The app drawer.
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.
