TMY Mini Review

To perform well in a home entertainment setting, a projector needs to offer great contrast, brightness, and sharp focus. Smart features, like native streaming apps, are a bonus commonly found on more advanced projectors, and we awarded extra points to projectors that have them. Unfortunately, the TMY mini falls far below our standards in all of these areas.

We don't recommend this projector if you're even slightly concerned with getting good picture quality and color accuracy for your games and movies. The picture on this one was dim and dull, with poor clarity and focus and no onboard streaming apps or smart features to redeem it.

Business

To be fit for the conference room, a projector needs to offer high brightness and cut through the fluorescent lights. It also helps to be portable and have onboard controls and a good selection of ports to accommodate a wide range of laptops and mobile devices, and it needs good edge-to-edge clarity for spreadsheets.

The TMY Mini has excellent portability, and it has onboard controls and a manual zoom/focus ring as well as a remote control, but its selection of ports is relatively poor, with only one HDMI, one Computer, and one audio in/out. To make matters much worse, it has extremely poor edge-to-edge clarity on spreadsheets and is so dim that most text is very hard to read in a well-lit room, no matter how close you are to the screen. Therefore, we do not recommend this projector for business use or in any bright environment, for that matter.

Contrast Ratio

With a low contrast ratio of 41:10, the TMY Mini Mini fails to adequately render light and dark areas on the screen, resulting in a dull and lackluster picture. It ranks among the worst projectors we tested, trailing way behind average and premium-priced units in our ANSI contrast test.

Brightness

The TMY Mini projects a very dim image. In fact, it was the dimmest projector we tested, registering only 119 lumens when strategically measured with an ANSI luminance test and our light meter. As established earlier in this review, it can be tough to see images from this projector in bright rooms.

Setup & Use

For this metric, we consider the setup and useful features of the projector. While pricier models boast advanced features like auto keystoning and adjustable front and rear legs, the TMY Mini is much more basic. It has manual vertical and horizontal keystone adjustment and a single leg on the front for leveling. In terms of usability, it falls short of average, offering only a basic remote control free of any advanced features found in higher priced products, although we do appreciate its manual focus control and that the TMY Mini can easily be screwed into a tripod or ceiling mount.

Input Lag

Low input lag is crucial for gamers using projectors, and the ultra-budget-friendly TMY Mini does well here, demonstrating some of the lowest input lag among all tested projectors. This might be due to its more basic operating system that doesn't use any resources on image processing.

Testing with a specialized video signal input lag tester across top, middle, and bottom areas of the screen yielded an impressive average of 45 milliseconds; up there with the lowest input lag we've seen on a projector.

Should You Buy the TMY Mini?

If you've got super low expectations and you're looking for one of the cheapest projectors you can get, the TMY Mini might work out for you in a dark room. However, anyone looking for a decent viewing experience for entertainment or business would be better served with one of the more traditional models.

What Other Projector Should You Consider?

If affordability is your primary consideration for a new projector, consider the Happrun H1. While it may not compete with pricier models, it's our top recommendation among the super-budget units we tested. Read up on our Best Buy Award-winning Viewsonic PA503W for a more solid, feature-rich projector that still doesn't break the bank compared to premium offerings.