olena
Member
I went looking at these three because my sister wants something under forty bucks to throw cartoons on the ceiling for her kid, and I fell down a rabbit hole of cheap mini projectors. What stopped me cold was the brightness claims. Two listings put a number on it (160 ANSI and 180ANSI), the Sainyer at $34.19 doesn't list brightness anywhere in the data I pulled. That silence is usually worse than a modest number.
The DreamFair Store one at $37.69 is the only listing here with a real track record: 4.4 stars from 1186 ratings, and 400+ bought in the past month. It's the HY300Pro PT, an upgrade of the HY300, and the listing is honest enough to name the GPU (Mali-G31) and WiFi 6. 180 ANSI is not bright. In a dark bedroom projecting onto a ceiling it'll do fine. In a living room with the blinds open, a kid's afternoon cartoon is going to look like a washed-out ghost. Nobody should buy this expecting daylight viewing.
The middle listing at $36.99 is the one that made me suspicious. 160 ANSI, Android 11, 180° rotation, auto keystone, 35"-130" screen, and 1K+ bought in the past month, which is the strongest sales signal on the page. But 4.4 stars from 9 ratings is not a track record, it's a rounding error, and there's no brand name attached. "Support 4K 1080P" in that title means the decoder accepts a 4K signal and downscales it. It does not mean you get a 4K image. Same trick on the Sainyer title, same trick on the DreamFair title. All three are 1080p-support-at-best panels.
The Sainyer at $34.19 is the cheapest and has the most ratings of the two non-DreamFair options, 565 of them at 4.4 stars. The 270° rotatable stand is the genuinely useful idea here, and electric keystone means you can ceiling-mount it without a ladder and a screwdriver. But no brightness figure and no resolution figure in the spec fields I have means I'm buying blind on the two things that matter most. A $34 projector that's dim is a $34 paperweight.
So my read: DreamFair if you want the least chance of a dud, Sainyer if the ceiling angle is the whole point and you accept the risk, and the 160 ANSI one only if you trust 1K+ recent buyers more than 9 ratings. I'd skip all three for anything but a dark room.
What I actually can't answer from these listings: does the DreamFair HY300Pro run Google-certified Android 13 with the Play Store, or is it a fork with a sideloaded app store? The listing says Android 13 but the bullet talks about a pre-installed AV ecosystem, which smells like the latter. Anyone here actually running one?
What the listings say (as of Oct 23)
The DreamFair Store one at $37.69 is the only listing here with a real track record: 4.4 stars from 1186 ratings, and 400+ bought in the past month. It's the HY300Pro PT, an upgrade of the HY300, and the listing is honest enough to name the GPU (Mali-G31) and WiFi 6. 180 ANSI is not bright. In a dark bedroom projecting onto a ceiling it'll do fine. In a living room with the blinds open, a kid's afternoon cartoon is going to look like a washed-out ghost. Nobody should buy this expecting daylight viewing.
The middle listing at $36.99 is the one that made me suspicious. 160 ANSI, Android 11, 180° rotation, auto keystone, 35"-130" screen, and 1K+ bought in the past month, which is the strongest sales signal on the page. But 4.4 stars from 9 ratings is not a track record, it's a rounding error, and there's no brand name attached. "Support 4K 1080P" in that title means the decoder accepts a 4K signal and downscales it. It does not mean you get a 4K image. Same trick on the Sainyer title, same trick on the DreamFair title. All three are 1080p-support-at-best panels.
The Sainyer at $34.19 is the cheapest and has the most ratings of the two non-DreamFair options, 565 of them at 4.4 stars. The 270° rotatable stand is the genuinely useful idea here, and electric keystone means you can ceiling-mount it without a ladder and a screwdriver. But no brightness figure and no resolution figure in the spec fields I have means I'm buying blind on the two things that matter most. A $34 projector that's dim is a $34 paperweight.
So my read: DreamFair if you want the least chance of a dud, Sainyer if the ceiling angle is the whole point and you accept the risk, and the 160 ANSI one only if you trust 1K+ recent buyers more than 9 ratings. I'd skip all three for anything but a dark room.
What I actually can't answer from these listings: does the DreamFair HY300Pro run Google-certified Android 13 with the Play Store, or is it a fork with a sideloaded app store? The listing says Android 13 but the bullet talks about a pre-installed AV ecosystem, which smells like the latter. Anyone here actually running one?
What the listings say (as of Oct 23)
| Spec | Sainyer Store | Mini | DreamFair Store |
|---|---|---|---|
| Price | $34.19 | $36.99 | $37.69 |
| Amazon rating | 4.4 (565 ratings) | 4.4 (9 ratings) | 4.4 (1186 ratings) |
| Bestseller rank | #19 | #13 | #17 |
