Customer Reviews

Cinemin Swivel Multimedia Pico Projector

5 star:		(22)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(20)

 

 

This is really an impressive little gadget. Quite easy to use, just plug it in to charge, turn it on and attach a device. I attached my iPhone and watched videos through iTunes and YouTube quite easily. On a wall, on a ceiling. There really needs to be very little ambient lighting though. But when it's dark, really a pretty sharp picture for the size of the thing and its resolution. And I was especially impressed by the sound given the tiny size of the speaker.

My only complaint is a lack of documentation. The box came with a "quick start guide" which told you very little beyond how to charge it and a couple of other notes and one "sample" configuration. That's it, and there doesn't seem to be any more documentation online. But given how relatively easy to use it is, this is a minor quibble.

I was very much looking forward to this amazing gadget. A few weeks later I am slightly disappointed and thought I would share this so that other users know what they let themselves in for. I bought it specifically for my iphone, but was very gutted to hear that it only supports video and photo slideshow on the phone. I was hoping to show of some of the amazing apps I bought and am developing myself. The resolution is not great and it needs to be very dark for you to achieve a good enough image. They advertise it by showing that you can shine it on the side of a tent - I am not so sure what that would accomplish. If you are in a dark room and you have got a smooth white surface to project against, it is all right. If you were thinking of using headphones while watching the movie, you can't change the volume. So all and all, I would give it a 3 out of 5 and probably would not have bought it had I the chance to do it again.. Sorry.

I'm rarely the first to get anything but this thing is COOL. I'm a sucker for tiny form factors. Priced right for a new gadget (thought I could see it going lower in time--under $200 would be nice). We had been looking at buying a used LCD/DLP projector but with this, we got what we needed and more. We just got it yesterday and found it easy to use, reasonably easy to set up with the exception of hooking it up to our portable dvd player. We needed to jerry rig it into a M2M AV connection--the quick start guide doesn't cover this at all and we stole the cable from our tv to make it work. Haven't checked battery life but it's easily run off the ac adapter

That said, my 6 year old LOVED hanging out in our living room watching a movie both off my iphone and the portable dvd. She's already plotting her next sleep over. The picture quality is amazing--our display on the living room wall was probably about 4' x 7-8 feet and very clear given that the room was not completely dark. For a group, you might want to hook it up to external speakers (we hooked it up to our Bose SoundDock and it worked great) but when traveling or for a small group, the sound on the little device is fine. Great when you don't have to force 4 kids to crowd around a little dvd player.

For work, I can definitely see taking this to client sites when I need to do presentations. It's about the size of a digital camera even with the case and cables. Very light, compact. Comes with all the connectors you need for the most part including power adapters for int'l travel.

A clever gadget, especially for the $$. Would be fun if they produce them in different colors like the apple products.

Can't wait to get a monster huge projector one day for my future Home theatre room (don't we all think we will eventually have one?), but until then the coolest new gadget I recently bought is my Swivel. It's like a mini home theatre projector that I can put in my pocket. I travel a lot so now when I want to wind down in my hotel room, I no longer have to surf bad tv. I plug in my Ipod to my Swivel and watch movies projected on the ceiling. Very Cool. I also have been able to show friends some of my fave music videos while we are out in a bar or restaurant. People always ask me what's in my hand. The Swivel is my new favorite gadget to take everywhere.

I have had this gadget on back order since reading the rave reviews about it from this past year's CES convention. I am not normally an early adopter -- craziness in my book -- but in this case, I made the exception because I could imagine that the cinemin could have a role in my life and so far so good.

It's fairly idiot proof, which is a good thing. It's got a great picture that rivals that of my television, and the ability to watch from any surface is just really cool. I've been projected the image on my entire bedroom wall, and it's just awesome. Raymond Chandler would be proud. The cool bits are simply that you can take it from room to room, and also the swiveling head, which seems like a no-brainer once you've seen it, but it is for some reason the only one on the market with this feature.

I say - skip the new tv - buy yourself an I-Phone and a Cinemin and maybe a Slingbox and watch away.

I was very anxious to recieve this as a christmas present this year. I currently have a Infocus projector which is rather large. It to is a DLP and has a very nice quality of picture to it. I read all the reviews about this prior to my wife purchasing the item (she cant keep secrets very well.)

Lets just start off with the packaging of the item. Very neat well packaged when I opened it up. I m not one for reading instruction manuals, but I did take a peak at the manual, very short and to the point not a lot of detail. My main reason for looking at the manual was to find out about charging the battery before use. Well there wasn't any information that I could find on it so I went straight into testing it out. The iphone adapter is pretty straight forward. Plug it in just like the issued iphone/ipod cable and wait for the blue light to appear to ensure it is seated properly. I then took my 3.5mm AV cable and plugged that into the bottom of the adapter and then the Cinemin. Of course it was daylight out so the picture wasn't very visible. I then took it to a darker room in the house and projected my image on the wall. Very clean after a few tweaks of the focus scroller. I then tested the sound out. Now being that you lose all control of the sound on the Ipod/Iphone after the adapter takes over I was limited to the sound of the Cinemin. The sound was very limited and not very loud. Just enough for 1 person to hear. But I wasnt to concerned about that cause she also bought the Tweakers mini Speakers which work wonders for the sound. In the end I am very pleased with the Cinemin projector and look forward to breaking it with use over the next few years and future deployment I have in the middle east.

Pros: Size, Picture quality, Ease of Use

Cons: Very dark room to watch, Sound on the speaker not very loud.

-Purhased the Cinemin SWIVEL Projector and SWAP converter to use w/ a PC, online at amazon.com
-Followed all connection instructions, turned it ON, and Cinemin/ logo flashed onscreen briefly, then no picture.
-Read the user guide, made all adjustments thru Settings/Control Panel/Display/Settings, adjusted the resolution; the projector was not listed nor recognized as an additional external monitor so could select it. Have tried several weeks, and now giving up.
-User Guide for both products says to contact [...]for SUPPORT.
-When you enter that website, you instead get [...]
-When you seek SUPPORT, you're taken to a screen to send an online request message; the screen left side asking Name, email, phone, etc. is in black, so you can barely see the category, and after you've filled out the info, there's nowhere to click on it to send the message.
-The Contact section gives a 1-800-310-3033 to call, and when I called, rec'd a recording to leave a message and they'll call back.
-I've had the product less than 30-days, can't get it to work, so I'm sending it back. DON'T GET THE CINEMIN PROJECTOR or the SWAP Converter.

I was in a hurry to buy a reasonably priced projector, and purchased this without realizing that it DOESN'T WORK WITH LAPTOPS, only with smartphones, ipods, etc. =( Obviously that is my own fault, not the fault of the projector, but it really could have been better marked!
Anyway, we haven't actually used the projector yet, due to the fact that the selection of cords that comes with it doesn't include a cord that works for an Android phone.

It came very much on time, though, and was well-packaged.

Yes, this is basically a toy, but it's exactly what I expected. I just wanted something compact to show pictures and video from my iphone and still camera. My husband was interested in a projector that a friend had but that one cost $1,000. This is something fun that we will use once in a while. Whenever I take pictures or video of my nieces they want to see themselves immediately and this makes them feel like movie stars. Yes, the room does have to be dark and you might have to buy some additional cords, if you want something for business purposes then you need something more heavy duty and with more features. This projector like going to a drive in movie as opposed to a theater, the picture is always a little washed out. It also reminds me of trying to decide on a new laptop. If you want one that's very compact then you might have to carry an external DVD player with you sometimes depending on what you're doing and you give up memory and processor speed.

I thought that it would be sufficient for my needs but in reality it needs utter darkness to work efficiently. Ugh. S depressin