What Is It?
A jack of all trades and a master of none. The ZTE Spro 2 is a tiny,
kind of awkward Android tablet (running Android 4.4.4, if you must
know), a sort of large and bulky 4G LTE hotspot and a portable, 200
Lumen projector. It’s pretty awesome, but also completely awkward and
weird. It’s very much a “sometimes” gadget, something that doesn’t have a
regular place in my day-to-day life, but can be handy to have around.
Using It
OK, let me level with you: I called the ZTE Spro 2 part tablet, but
that’s not completely true. Yes, it has a landscape-oriented touchscreen
with an Android interface, but using it for more than a few minutes is
kind of uncomfortable.
You can blame the chassis — the Spro 2 is primarily a
Mini Projector, and
it’s shaped like one: It’s a big, heavy, inch-thick brick. You aren’t
going to use it to check your email, play touch games, browse the web or
anything like that: this device’s screen is just a means to end… and
that’s ok! This thing exists to project movies, and it’s surprisingly
great at that.
Getting started is easy: The typical viewing session consists of
tapping the smartphone-sized touchscreen a few times to launch a
streaming app (Netflix, Hulu, Google Play, whatever), picking your
programing and tapping a floating “projector” icon that’s always
hovering in the screen’s upper right hand corner.
That’s it. The
projector focuses automatically, the quick menu lets you adjust
brightness (between low, medium and high, although only low and medium
are available if you’re running on battery) and it’s pretty great.
If you want to get really advanced, the options menu lets you
manually adjust the focus or digitally tilt the projection to match the
angle of a wall or ceiling. You can manage Android projection, Miracast
or HDMI inputs — more than enough options to provide a deeper projection
experience, if you need it.
The problem I had was figuring where it fit in my life.
What I Actually Used It For
As a portable projector, the ZTE Spro 2 doesn’t fit easily into my
life. At home, I already have a 40-inch television and a dozen other
screens on which I can enjoy content. If I’m going over to a friend’s
house for movie night, they probably
also have a TV, a solid
internet connection, or sometimes even a high-end home theatre
projector. For the Spro 2 to make sense, I had to put myself into a
situation where I needed a large screen and a stable internet connection
in a place where I would normally have neither. That was hard.
See, the projector has its limits: It can only go up to medium
brightness on battery, which makes it pretty worthless outdoors during
daylight hours (though it was perfectly usable indoors, with the lights
on, as long as the projector was within four or five feet of the target
surface). I tried using it to watch a movie in my backyard BBQ pit, but
it was pretty hard to see until the sun started setting.
The best use I can imagine the Spro 2 is camping. Maybe it’s late at
night and you can’t sleep — it’s already dark and tent material makes a
great makeshift projector screen, why not watch a movie? But… I’m not
going camping anytime soon.
I did manage to watch a few movies on the Spro 2 while my TV was
unplugged over the weekend (I was rearranging the furniture), but that
doesn’t happen on a regular basis — and while the Spro 2 is technically a
full Android tablet, it’s too awkward to use for more than a couple of
minutes. So what did I use it for? Well, it turns out it’s a pretty good
LTE hotspot. When my internet died last week, the Spro was there —
pumping fast, reliable LTE wifi to all the devices in my house. It’s
absurdly large for a LTE hotspot, true — but the functionality made it
useful to me on a more regular basis — power outages, train rides,
airport layovers. That’s a big deal.
Like
The projector is smart enough to know if its projecting on a slanted
surface, and will automatically adjust the angle of the projection to
compensate for the surface. It made watching TV on my ceiling much
nicer.
Battery Life: The projector was able to Stream Netflix over LTE for 2:40 minutes, enough to watch
almost any film.
In addition to mirroring its own screen and projecting Miracast devices, the ZTE Spro 2 has a full-sized HDMI input.
No Like
The audio quality is iffy at best. Yeah, you can hear everything just
fine, but it’s not particularly loud and there’s no discernible stereo
separation. I didn’t expect much more from the tiny box’s speakers, but
the disconnect between where the screen was and where the audio coming
from was noticeable. Pair it with a bluetooth speaker if you want a
better audio experience.
Battery Life: The projector was able to Stream Netflix over LTE for 2:40 minutes, not quite enough to watch
any movie in my library.
HDMI input (and projection) is capped at 720p. Hardly a dealbreaker, but definitely a bummer.
You know that micro USB cable you use to charge every phone and tablet you own? It won’t work with the Spro 2.
Cr.
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