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First there was the Nikon Coolpix S1100pj digital camera, and now there’s the HDR-PJ10E – an HD camcorder with a built-in LED projector. It’s crammed into the back of the LCD viewfinder, which is a little thicker than most camcorders’ but apart from the tiny lens and focus slider on top, you’d hardly notice it.
It has a resolution of 640×360 and can project up to a 60in image using its 10-lumen LED. As with most pico projectors, you can only really use it in a darkened room unless you’re happy to keep the screen size to around 10in. Image quality isn’t too bad, but footage appears murky and dim and the low resolution doesn’t do 1080p clips justice. We can’t help but feel that – as with the Coolpix – it’s a gimmick. You’ll see better quality if you connect the camcorder to your TV with an HDMI cable.
It’s easy to dismiss the PJ10E because of this, but there’s plenty to like about this camcorder. It starts with a reasonably wide-angle lens (the 35mm equivalent of 30mm) and zooms in to 894mm (that’s 30x, before you reach for your calculator). As you’d expect at this price, optical image stabilisation is built-in and helps make this zoom range usable without requiring a tripod. In our tests, footage was acceptably stable when walking around, but impressively still when the camera is held in one position.
Colours were exceptional, even indoors during the day. Skin tones were accurate and other colours – particularly grass and skies – were vibrant. Despite the backlit CMOS sensor, which puts the circuitry at the back instead of the front, plenty of noise and smeared details emerged in dim light. Our main criticism is that, even at the highest quality 24Mbit/s mode, the image wasn’t quite as sharp as we’d expect. Plus, details in the background were smeary, even when the main subject was perfectly sharp. This wasn’t simply due to the depth of field, as some objects remained sharp while others – particularly those with detailed textures such as foliage – were messy. Another problem was that the PJ10E couldn’t retain its focus on an object while zooming. It took a couple of seconds of hunting following a zoom to refocus again.
Enthusiasts may miss an accessory shoe, but there are mic and headphone minijacks. There’s no video light for movies or flash for photos, either. Although the menus provide some manual control including spot metering and focus, there’s a general exposure setting rather than shutter speed and aperture controls.
Audio is recorded using a 5.1 surround microphone, but audio separation will never equal a professionally recorded movie, of course. Sound quality was very good in general, though. A handy built-in USB cable makes it possible to charge the PJ10E from your computer as well as easily transfer movies from the 16GB of internal memory, a Memory Stick or an SD card.
Since the projector is a novelty rather than a genuinely useful feature, plus the fact that footage is slightly soft, the PJ10E can’t match the quality and value of the £370 Panasonic HDC-SD90. That camcorder doesn’t have any built-in storage, but then a 16GB SD card costs only £15.
