These days, this business of phone-as-brain goes way beyond stand-alone apps. Nowadays, the iPhone handles the computing, connection and display tasks for a huge range of hardware from other companies. Why should they jack up their products’ prices by selling you a screen, memory, processor, microphone, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth when you’ve already got all of that in your pocket?
There are blood pressure monitors (iHealth), bathroom scales (Withings), physical activity monitors (Jawbone), sleep monitors (Zeo), credit card readers (Square), security cameras (iZon), remote-control helicopters (Parrot) and, of course, about 73,001 speaker systems. All of them rely on the iPhone as a brain.
Until the Epson Megaplex came along, however, one screamingly obvious iPhone accessory didn’t seem to occur to anybody: a home theater projector.
Why is it such an obvious idea? Because these days, millions of people carry around their photos, videos and music on their iPhones, iPads and iPod Touches. The world is teeming with charging docks that also play their music. It shouldn’t have taken so long for someone to create a dock that also plays the photos and videos.
But that’s what the Megaplex does. Tucked in the back is a retractable tray containing the standard charging connector for Apple i-gadgets. Insert your phone, iPad or Touch, and suddenly you can play its music through the Megaplex’s speakers — or view its TV shows, videos, slide shows and presentations on a screen, wall or ceiling, 300 inches diagonally.
Now, there have been projectors for Apple devices, which throw a 40-inch image onto the wall with 40 lumens of brightness, requiring a totally dark room. But the Megaplex is a true desktop projector, like the ones you find in boardrooms and home theaters. It pumps out 2,800 lumens, which is enough to see even with the lights on or sunshine coming in.
But if you do create a completely dark room for the Megaplex, oh boy; 2,800 lumens in 720p hi-def looks stunningly bright and clear. Like a movie theater in your home, which I guess is the point.
From Epson’s perspective, the Megaplex wasn’t such a stretch; the company already makes a wide range of projectors, some very similar to this one, that don’t have the iPhone connector.
In fact, there are two Megaplexes. The nicer one is the MG850HD; it costs $650 online and offers that 2,800-lumen, hi-def picture. You can save about $100 by buying its little brother, the MG-50, which isn’t hi-def and offers 2,200 lumens. (Tip: Go for the nicer one.)
You might think that $650 is a lot to pay for an accessory, but that’s right in line with non-iPhone home theater projectors of this type. In fact, this one’s better than many of its rivals, for a couple of reasons.
First, it has built-in speakers, which many don’t. Stereo speakers, 10 watts. These puppies are loud. They’re not audiophile quality — you’ll get crisper highs and thuddier lows from, say, a Bose audio dock — but if you need more than their boombox quality, you can always hook up a sound system.
Second, the Megaplex has inputs for everything. You can plug in a DVD player, Blu-ray player, Xbox or PlayStation, still camera, camcorder, just about anything, and blast its image onto your screen or wall. You can plug in a laptop or USB flash drive, the better to project your PowerPoint slides or family photos. There’s even a microphone input, so you can use it as a public address system.
Third, there’s a carrying handle. The thing weighs only 8.5 pounds, so it’s not like it’ll send you to the chiropractor. It’s shiny black, 4.5 x 13.4 x 11.5 inches. But the handle emphasizes the Megaplex’s aspirations to be a one-piece home theater machine that you can take to a friend’s, and it’s a nice touch.
Finally, you benefit from jumping into the projector game in 2011. These things have come a very long way. For example, it’s shockingly easy to focus and aim the image, thanks to a pair of levers on top — one for projection size, one for focusing. There’s even a keystone-correction lever right there on top, which you use to make the projected image perfectly rectangular if the screen is at an angle. On most projectors, you have to visit menu hell to perform this kind of adjustment; on the Megaplex MG850HD, you can fix a nonsquared image with the flick of a finger.
E-mail: pogue@nytimes.com
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