It’s finally happened. The Sony Xperia Touch has arrived in the US, and it is expensive. If you try to buy one of these bad boys on Amazon it is going to set you back $1,699.99. At this point you are either thinking that this price is way too high, or you are thinking that this price might be justifiable if the Xperia Touch is a good projector, or you may even be thinking about getting it as a projector rental.

The key question of this article is whether or not the Sony Xperia Touch is actually a good projector. While I do not have any personal experiences I can inform you with, I can compile the reviews from a bunch of other sources and lob them at you for you to ponder.

Let us start our review journey with the humblest of review platforms, the Amazon customer review section, in which there is only one comment for the Sony Xperia Touch at the time of this article’s publication.

The lone reviewer gives the Xperia Touch 2 stars out of 5, and says that the sound system on the device wasn’t great, also saying that “The projector is a joke”, in reference to the lumens put off by the device.

According to Sony’s webpage for the Xperia Touch, the projector only projects a 100 lumen image. For comparison, our short throw and standard projector rentals have projection brightnesses ranging from 1500-2500 lumens, which we recommend for low light and some light scenarios, but do not recommend for well lit environments.

If one Amazon review is not a good enough source for you, tech reviewers also have gripes with the display, but from what I have seen they are more forgiving of the low lumen count. However, tech reviewers are generally less forgiving when concerning the projector’s casing and battery life, so it evens out a bit.

I don’t want to draw this out too much, so I am just going to say that there are much better short throw projectors out on the market if you are looking for brightness. The one saving grace of the Xperia Touch is the fact that you can touch the projected image and get a response. If that is something that interests you, shoot for the moon.

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The Sony Xperia Touch has finally hit the shelf in the United Kingdom and other European countries, and it is still scheduled for release in the United States. The Xperia Touch currently carries a pretty hefty price tag, as it is currently selling at £1,299.99/€1499, which is twenty dollars short of or five dollars over $1700 depending on which currency you are converting from. The high price point will probably deter many consumers for buying this as a product to use around the house, but the Xperia Touch is actually a projector which could make for a good business projector rental.

So, why is the Xperia Touch so expensive? First let’s look at what is under the hood of the Xperia Touch. The Xperia Touch isn’t the most portable projector in the world, but there’s good reason for that. The Touch comes equipped with the Android 7.0  Nougat operating system, a 32 gigabyte storage, and 3 gigabytes of RAM. The touch also has built-in Wifi and bluetooth compatibility and a micro (Type D) HDMI port.

Another thing which may contribute to the high price point of the Xperia touch is the amount of sensors the device has. According to Sony’s website, the touch has gps trackers, gyroscope, barometer, humidity detector, movement sensor, ambient light detector, accelerometer and a temperature detector.

The Xperia Touch is also pretty impressive in terms of display and touch registration  (unless you are currently planning on using the gesture mode, don’t). The Xperia touch is capable of projecting a clear display even in regularly lit rooms, and the display has a variety of sizes – from 23 to 80 inches. The projector is capable of detecting up to ten inputs (fingers) on the projected image, but the detection will require your projector to be closer to the surface you are projecting on in order for it to register properly.

The Xperia Touch is not “ultra-portable”, but it is lighter weight than a lot of laptops and is much more portable than standard projectors are. The Xperia Touch would be a good projector choice if you needed something which you could carry with you to a small sized business meeting or even over to a friend’s house just to watch movies. Although, the battery life of the projector is pretty lackluster, so if you are planning on using your projector for a time period longer than an hour bring a charger.

Want to share this story on social media? Use this hashtag! #XperiaTouch