Chinese consumer electronics startup Dongying has revealed a novel projector that can beam images onto a wall or a ceiling, serve as a mini smart display, and even act as a bedside clock.
It’s called the Dongying A3, and although it's quite cheap, it sounds pretty damn powerful, as it can push out 4K visuals with 3,000 lumens of brightness, making it viable for daytime viewing.
Dongying previously just made projectors for other brands, but it debuted the first of its own models earlier this year with the A2 Pro, which was exclusively sold in China, where it has been showcased by the YouTuber Store Know Shadow.
But with the A3 landing on Kickstarter, Dongying is now targeting the international market.
The device is said to be powered by a 4K UHD projection engine that’s capable of receiving 8K signals, and it can beam a truly enormous image of up to 450-inches, which is why the company proclaims that it’s the “ultimate choice for immersive visuals on a grand scale”.
According to Dongying, the A3 projector features a tilting stand that can move across 260-degrees, ensuring versatility in terms of placement. The stand allows it to beam images onto the ceiling, and there’s a clever sensor in the lens that deactivates it when its tiled down onto the floor, before reactivating it when it’s tilted back up again.
Inside, there’s a powerful 20-watt speaker system that should provide a beefy soundtrack for movies, and it can also act as a simple Bluetooth speaker. There are autofocus features built into it that should ensure easy setup without the need to fiddle around trying to sharpen the image. However, there’s no mention of things like keystone correction or object avoidance, so it might not be the best in that regard.
The Dongying A3 is powered by a MediaTek MT9669 chip and comes with 4GB of RAM and 32GB of storage space, and it runs the Android 11 operating system, meaning it offers access to streaming apps like Netflix and Disney+ as well as a few games.
Interestingly, the company claims that it has customised the Android platform specifically for its projector, so it aligns with its hardware capabilities and user needs, whatever that means.
What really sets the Dongying A3 apart though is its ability to function as a kind of tablet device. There’s a full HD touchscreen display integrated on the top of the device, which provides access to various apps, including Gmail and YouTube, as well as Google Chrome for browsing the web and Google Docs for work-related tasks. There’s a touch keyboard, and users can also hook up an external keyboard and mouse, essentially transforming the projector into a device that’s capable of getting some work done in the home office. You can also project the desktop onto a wall, and literally immerse yourself in work, if that’s what you want to do.
The A3 also supports wireless screen sharing, so you can use your smartphone to scroll through a presentation, scroll through your photo albums or access movies stored on your handset. Weirdly, Dongying’s brief fails to mention support for WiFi, but given all of the talk of web browsing, streaming capabilities and screen mirroring, we can assume that’s just an oversight, and it does support this.
Best of all, the Dongying A3 is available at the staggeringly cheap price of just $209 for the earliest backers who get in first. The registered retail price is given as $399, and even that seems very reasonable for a device that packs so much functionality.
Assuming it all goes to plan and Dongying raises the funds it needs, the A3 will start shipping to customers in March 2025.
