OJO Portable Switch Projector Dock Throwback Review

Here at Broken Fuse VG Blog, we’ve adopted some pretty niche products on occasion and the OJO Portable Switch Dock Projector is one of them.

The projector was originally crowdfunded on IndieGoGo back in March 2017 and started delivering units in October of the same year. It retailed for $370 USD, but we picked it up on the early bird special for $270 USD.  It was available for sale on Amazon and their own site (yesojo.com). Unfortunately the company has essentially gone silent since August 2021 and their website is “under construction”. The projector measures 8.5 cm wide by 17.1 cm long and 8.7 cm high and weighs 800 grams or 1.76 lbs. There is a slot to dock the Nintendo Switch, on the back there is one HDMI input and 3.5mm aux output, two USB A ports for charging and accessories like the GameCube controller USB adapter and charges using USB C connection. The speaker is rated for 5 watts, which is good enough for regular use, the internal battery is rated for 20,400 mAh and is rated for 4 hours of play. The projector resolution is rated for 854×480 and projects to 30” to 120” (0.76m – 3.05m) screen size at 200 lumens. There are four buttons on the top of the projector to adjust the focus on the lens and the speaker volume.

The build quality is decent and there’s minimal flex to the housing. We’ve found that the fans do run a little loud, though that’s not a huge issue as you can turn up the volume. Audio quality is ok for a small portable projector, but don’t expect anything substantial in depth and quality of the audio due to the smaller speakers on it. The OJO Projector does keep the Switch charged up during usage. Battery life on the unit does not reach the full 4 hours that the manufacturer claims as we get about 1.5-2 hours of actual usage out of it. We have found that the brightness is a bit lacking and when the battery is close to fully depleted, the brightness drops and occasionally the projector bulb doesn’t get quite enough power and video gets a bit choppy. If you plan to play in anything but a dark room, the projector will struggle due to the low lumens rating. The other gripe we have is that the resolution/quality of the video is not all that great, and would have preferred it to be 720p/1080p for the price we’re paying for it.

We do like the concept of the portable switch projector dock, even with the flaws it has. Over the past 5.5 years that I’ve had it, I’ve brought it out to quite a few parties/gatherings and it does well indoors with minimal lighting and does a decent enough at night projecting onto a lighter colour wall.  If it was to be refreshed for today’s market, I’d improve on it with having a brighter projector bulb, bump up the resolution to 1080p, a bigger 20-30w speaker and increase the battery size to 30,000-40,000 mAh for longer play times. Overall a fun, niche product that almost overcomes it’s flaws and high asking price.