A bargain-bin yet surprisingly capable mini projector
The Vankyo Leisure 470 Pro can't match more expensive projectors for image quality or brightness, but it offers a watchable image that's acceptable for movies in the backyard or for ad hoc setup indoors.
The Vankyo Leisure 470 Pro's most eye-catching feature is its price. Officially $249.99, Vankyo frequently sells this mini projector for less—we've seen it as low as $170. That should tell you immediately that it's not a projector you'd want for an immersive home theater setup. However, it offers acceptable image quality for casual viewing, and it's inexpensive enough to be worth considering even for strictly occasional use on rainy days indoors and movie nights outdoors. It also offers a surprising number of features for the price, including reasonable audio quality, wireless screen mirroring for Android and iOS devices, an included HDMI cable, and a soft carrying case for storing it safely when you're not using it.
The 470 Pro offers a native and maximum 1080p resolution, using a white LED light source and a single 5,760- by-1,080-pixel LCD chip. The chip uses red, green, and blue filters on individual cells in the LCD matrix to produce an image measuring 1,920 by 1,080 pixels. By showing all three primary colors at once, instead of one at a time, the 470 Pro eliminates any possibility of showing annoying rainbow artifacts, as projectors with single DLP imaging chips frequently do.
As with the Vankyo Leisure E30 and Leisure 495W, the 470 Pro is a mini projector, not the even-smaller palmtop or pocket size that is typical for most LED DLP projectors in this price range, such as the ViewSonic M1 mini. However, the 470 Pro is on the small side for a mini projector, weighing in at 2.2 pounds and measuring 3 by 7.8 by 5.7 inches. Two other differences from most palmtops and pocket projectors is that there's no external power block—just a power cord—and it lacks a battery for unplugged use.
Very much on the plus side is the range of image sources you can use. The left-side panel includes two full-size HDMI ports and a USB Type-A port, which can power a streaming stick connected to one of the HDMI ports or let you read files from a USB memory key. There's also a memory card slot for reading files from TF or microSD cards.
Another particularly useful touch is built-in Wi-Fi Direct for screen-mirroring Android and iOS devices. I connected to a Samsung Galaxy S20 FE phone in my tests, and launched its Netflix app; everything worked without problems. For those mobile devices that support it, you can also mirror the device through a wired connection between the phone and the 470 Pro.
Physical setup consists of little more than plugging in the power cord, connecting to an image source, and pointing the 470 Pro at whatever you're using for a screen. You can also adjust image size by moving it closer to or farther from the screen, and manually adjust focus. Note that although Vankyo's user manual says the lens will focus from as little as 4 feet and 3 inches from the screen—producing a 39-inch diagonal image—the company says the actual spec is 43 inches plus or minus 10%. During testing, the smallest image I was able to focus was 47 inches diagonally, from a distance of 4 feet and 9 inches, which is within the spec. This is also the image size I wound up with as the largest I'd want for comfortable viewing in a dark room.
The 470 Pro lends itself to situations in which external speakers might not be available, so it's great that the onboard 3-watt speaker delivered high enough volume in my tests to fill a small to medium-size family room with usable-quality audio. The ability to adjust bass and treble separately adds to sound quality. If you do happen to be near an external sound system, there's also a 3.5 mm stereo audio-out port for connecting to it.
One potential shortcoming is a high level of cooling-fan noise, which may be an issue for those who tend to find fan noise annoying. I'm not particularly sensitive to it, having grown up in a house in earshot of a highway, but the level in my tests was high enough to draw my attention.
The 470 Pro's menus offer three predefined color modes—Standard, Vivid, and Soft—that allow changing only the color-temperature setting. There's also a customizable User mode that adds settings for contrast, brightness, sharpness, and color saturation (though not color hue). All offer more-than-acceptable color accuracy by most people's standards, which translates to not being far enough off for photorealistic images to spot any errors in images you're not already familiar with. Vivid mode offers the best shadow detail, but it blows out highlights. I picked User mode as my preferred choice, because it let me adjust the brightness a bit to give noticeably better shadow detail than Standard or Soft, without making brighter scenes look faded. There is no 3D support.
Arguably the 470 Pro's most important limitation is its maximum brightness, which Vankyo rates at 170 lumens. As already mentioned, in my tests in a dark room, I settled on a 47-inch image using a 1.0 gain screen, which was also bright enough to stand up to low levels of ambient light, and is about what I would expect for 150 ANSI lumens. Larger images were watchable, but may tire your eyes for long sessions in the dark or look washed out in ambient light. And because you can't focus the image at sizes smaller than 43 inches (plus or minus 10%), you may find that it won't deliver sufficient image brightness in higher levels of ambient light at the sizes you can coax from it while keeping the image in focus.
The 470 Pro's relatively low input lag is easily suitable for casual gaming. I measured it with a Bodnar meter at 26 milliseconds for 1080p, 60Hz input.
Most projectors in the Vankyo Leisure 470 Pro's low price range fall into one of two categories. Some, including the ViewSonic M1 mini pocket projector, are smaller and more portable, but with less-capable sound systems, a DLP chip that can produce rainbow artifacts, and often lower native resolutions. Others, as with the Leisure 530W (aka E30), are more directly competitive, as mini projectors with different strong points. The 530W/E30, for example, is brighter and comes with a screen. But if you care more about color accuracy, the 470 Pro is the clear choice between the two.
Also, although Vankyo markets the Leisure 470 Pro as an outdoor-capable projector, there are really no outdoor-specific features, like waterproofing. If you want water resistance or drop resistance, as with the BenQ GS50, you'll have to pay a lot more for it. The same goes for higher brightness at 1080p resolution, as you'll find in the Editors' Choice-winning Anker Nebula Solar Portable, our top pick for mini projectors.
As it stands, the 470 Pro is simply a small 1080p projector that you can take to the backyard—or anywhere with a power outlet—and set up easily. When added to its good color accuracy and workable audio, and in spite of the high fan noise, that's enough to make it a perfectly reasonable choice in its price range.
The Vankyo Leisure 470 Pro can't match more expensive projectors for image quality or brightness, but it offers a watchable image that's acceptable for movies in the backyard or for ad hoc setup indoors.
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Most of my current work for PCMag is about printers and projectors, but I've covered a wide variety of other subjects—in more than 4,000 pieces, over more than 40 years—including both computer-related areas and others ranging from ape language experiments, to politics, to cosmology, to space colonies. I've written for PCMag.com from its start, and for PC Magazine before that, as a Contributor, then a Contributing Editor, then as the Lead Analyst for Printers, Scanners, and Projectors, and now, after a short hiatus, back to Contributing Editor.
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