If you want to use the 800 x 600 SVGA projector with your PC or Mac, you can hook it up via the MiniUSB port.  Meanwhile, the A/V inputs are intended to be used with DVD players and other media sources.  BeamBox reckon you’ll get up to a 75-inch picture with a 200:1 contrast ratio, and there’s 1GB of internal storage together with a microSD card slot.

The 12W LED is rated for up to 20,000hrs, and there’s a tiny 0.5W speaker along with a headphone socket.  The BeamBox Evolution R-2 is available now, priced at £250/$361.60.

As for pricing, it’s a reasonable £199 (pre VAT) in the UK or $350 in the US.  That’s an expensive iPhone case, certainly, but not at all outlandish for a pico-projector right now.  BeamBox themselves are currently selling their standalone Evolution R-1 – which we tested back in March – for $420.

You’re not just limited to iPhone content, either; there’s both an AV and VGA input together with a built-in speaker and an audio output.  Brightness is 10 lumens with a 100:1 contrast ratio and 640 x 480 maximum resolution.  The integrated battery can either be used solely for powering the pico-projector, or it can actually recharge your iPhone.

What we don’t know is exactly when the MiLi iPhone Projector will ship, but we’re guessing it won’t be too long after preorders start.  After all, a reasonably priced iPhone pico-projector could please a whole lot of people under the tree this Holiday season.

That means you could feasibly recharge your phone and iPod simultaneously, or your wireless mouse and your Bluetooth headset.  Each of the USB ports has an LED to show charge status of the attached gadget, with 5V/500mA provided to both sockets.

Since an international adapter is no use if it blows up with a slightly higher voltage supply, the MiLi is content with 12-24V DC power or 100-240V AC power.  There’s also over-current and short-circuit protection, not to mention nine different colors to choose from.  The BeamBox MiLi Universal Charger is available to pre-order now, priced at $37/£20.

As with the R1 there’s 1GB of onboard storage, but unlike that model there’s no integrated battery.  That means you’ll always need external power to drive the G2, but since it shows up via USB as a secondary monitor when plugged into a laptop or netbook that should be no great issue. 

There’s also a remote control and tripod mount, and it’s compatible with both Windows and Mac machines.  Contrast ratio is 100:1 and the Essential G2 can create up to a 73.5-inch image from three meters away.  It’s available for pre-order now, priced at £220 or $250, with deliveries expected to begin on July 29th.

The R1 offers a choice of two modes.  At its simplest, the pico-projector works as a basic A/V display, taking composite video and stereo audio input.  This will work with pretty much any standard source, whether a portable DVD player, camcorder or even a laptop with a suitable adapter.  More interestingly, the R1 also has an onboard media player, turning it into a standalone system rather than one tethered to an external source.

Holding down the play/pause button boots up the media app, which offers a choice of Music, Video, Photo, eBook, Explorer and Settings.  The GUI is basic but reasonably attractive, and hides a fair degree of functionality.  Audio tracks can be organized by artist, album or genre, together with all tracks and playlists (the latter of which can be copied over to the R1, but not created on-device), with an on-screen equalizer animation, bitrate and ID3 details.  Controls include play/pause, track skip and fast-forward/rewind, together with volume.

In the video player, it’s a similar arrangement.  Files are selected from an explorer browser, and support fast-forward and rewind.  The photo viewer is basic, with manual scrolling or an automatic slideshow of JPEG, BMP and GIF files, and the eBook viewer works in a similar way, taking text files and allowing you to scroll through them.  Navigation takes a little getting used to: with the exception of the main menu, which runs horizontally, all the file explorer dialogs scroll vertically, but are still controlled by the left and right buttons.  Pressing and holding the down button allows you to tweak the volume with the same navigation keys.

It won’t rival the GUI of an iPod, then, but there’s a reasonable choice of codec support on offer.  Audio files can include MP3, WMA, WAV, APE, FLAC, AAC/AAC+ and MPEG1/2/2.5, while video choices cover AVI, MPEG1/2/4, 3GP, WMV9/VC1, ASF, RM/RMVB and FLV, with a maximum resolution of 640 x 480.  The R1 can’t deal with DRM files, not through the onboard player anyway, though if you plug in an external source that can handle them there’s no problem using the pico-projector to display.  Onboard storage is 1GB – though the media player occupies around 30MB of that – and the microSD slot will take up to 4GB  cards; we had to format our 2GB test card before the R1 would recognize it.  The R1′s mini-USB port lets it act as a mass storage device – mounting as two separate drives, one internal and one for the microSD – but there’s no support for video over USB.

Image quality is a balance between picture size and resolution.  According to BeamBox, the Evolution R1 is good for a 40-inch (diagonal) image at 1.5m; it’ll scale up to 100-inches if you have more distance, though you’ll need a darker room for the 30 Lumens LED to cast enough light.  No matter the size, the resolution is always 640 x 480 VGA, and while this may sound relatively low it’s a decent portable compromise.  Surroundings have much more of an impact on viewing quality than the R1′s own abilities – BeamBox quote a 200:1 contrast ratio – and while the pico-projector is capable of pushing out a visible image in a daylight room, you need to be less than a meter from your projection surface in order to see any detail.

Step into a darker room, though, and the R1 gets a whole lot more interesting.  Projecting onto the ceiling, or the back of a door, is great for impromptu videos, with the stiff focus wheel showing a broad range of granular adjustment despite its limited travel.  Colors are surprisingly vibrant while blacks are, although not inky, better than you’d expect from a pico-projector.   The 1W mono speaker, meanwhile, is good enough for sharing brief video clips though lacks strength in anything below the mid-range; happily there’s a 3.5mm socket for plugging in headphones or powered speakers.  It’s loud enough, though, to drown out the otherwise mildly intrusive fan noise, which is high-pitched and makes no adjustments no matter the temperature.

We tested battery life by fully charging the Evolution R1 and then playing a looping 30fps MPEG1 video, with the sound muted, until the pico-projector refused to play any more.  The clip was loaded into the R1′s onboard storage and played through the integrated media app, and the projector lasted 1 hour 13 minutes.  That’s 17 minutes less than BeamBox’s promised 90 minutes of playback from a single charge, and while not enough for a full-length movie is certainly sufficient for a couple of TV episodes and a few YouTube clips.  You also have the choice of running the R1 from the PSU rather than off the battery, though with the cable at only 42-inches you’ll need to be pretty near a power point.

An obvious improvement would be to the supplied cables.  BeamBox provide a simple A/V input cord, but considering the number of iPod users there are around, we’d like to have seen a straightforward way to hook up an Apple PMP.   We’d also like to be able to hook up a laptop via the mini-USB port; BeamBox suggest a VGA to component video adapter, but this is where DisplayLink’s USB external display technology would come in very handy.  Finally, a PowerPoint viewer could have been a draw to mobile professionals; as it is, the R1 doesn’t recognize the files.

Still, it’s tough to fault the BeamBox Evolution R1.  As a pico-projector it offers some of the best image quality specifications we’ve seen, which translate into decent real-world performance with strong colors and reasonable audio.  The absence of an iPod cable in the box is offset by the very useful integrated mediaplayer, which while uninspiring from a usability perspective nonetheless makes the R1 a realistic standalone PMP.  That the codec support is so broad is icing on the cake, and even the battery life – while not quite as promised – is reasonable.  £260 or $360 isn’t exactly pocket-change, but compared to rival pico-projectors that lack the onboard media functionality, the Evolution R1 is better value for money.

Of course, just because there’s a significant announcement from them, it doesn’t mean the Apple rumor-machine winds down but for a second.  This week we’ve heard about a possible OLED maelstrom from the company, with not only iPhone and iPod touch models using the new display technology but a netbook, desktop and more. 

Dell’s Adamo launch didn’t quite have the same impact as iPhone OS 3.0, but then now perhaps isn’t the best economical time to offer a luxury notebook.  Still, it’s a handsome machine and, in the unboxing experience and metal-to-metal, does a decent job of holding its own against the MacBook Air.  What could undermine the whole thing is if users demand performance along with their glossy casings: neither the entry- nor high-spec Adamo’s pack the punch to go along with their price-tags.

Ironically, Steve Ballmer picked this week to accuse Apple of attempting to sell the same hardware as everyone else, only with a $500 logo charge.  According to Ballmer (who obviously missed out on the Adamo press release) the tide has turned and Apple’s days of selling overpriced computers are nearing an end.  Cue much Apple/Microsoft drum-banging and banner waving, as most people forget that, like with so many things, when it comes to computers it’s really what you do with it that counts.

In mobile devices, Sony Ericsson’s Idou smartphone showed its pre-production head not once but twice, amid talk that Ericsson were considering selling off their stake in the collaboration to Sony.  Perhaps Sony were too busy toasting their successful negotiations with Google for over 500,000 ebooks on the Sony Reader to notice.

As for the SlashGear testbench this week, two of Logic3′s iPod touch/iPhone docks – the i-Station Rotate and i-Station25 – strut their musical and video stuff, while the BeamBox Evolution R1 pico-projector shed its packaging in our video-unboxing.  We’ll have the full review of the R1 this coming week, together with a few more AV pleasantries.

Finally, there are fresh faces old and new here at SlashGear, with the return of former writer Brenda Stokes and the arrival of Steven Grady, a new member to the team.  Brenda will continue her broad consumer tech coverage and sparring with me in a new round of “He Says, She Says” editorials, while Steven will focus on gaming news.  For Steven’s full introduction, check out his introduction at My Pre, where he’ll also be community manager.

Unboxing video and first-impressions after the cut

For that, the Evolution R1 has 1GB of onboard storage and a microSD slot content with up to 4GB cards.  File format support is broad, too, including flash-video, various MPEG formats and WMV files, together with audio and image files too (full list here).  The AV input takes standard audio L/R and video component signals, and the rechargeable battery is apparently good for up to 90 minutes runtime.

First impressions are good, with the metallic-red finish R1 feeling weighty but not overwhelming the in hand.  The buttons are loud when pressed but the layout is decent, and the focus control requires a sturdy grip as it’s particularly stiff to turn.  Still, a little practice and it allows for pretty granular adjustments.

So far we’ve unboxed it (the video is below), loaded a couple of video files and checked out the basic projection abilities.  Despite the 30 lumens brightness you’ll still need a relatively dark room if you want to make out detail, but that’s par for the course with a pico-projector.  Sound quality is surprisingly good, though, considering the size of the 1W speaker, and the picture very watchable with fair color saturation at the preset settings.

We’ll be putting the BeamBox Evolution R1 though its paces over the weekend, and checking out the battery claims too – is this really something you could watch a whole movie with?  More details on the R1 itself at BeamBox’s site.

What separates the R-1 from other pico-projectors is the brightness: at 30 lumens, it’s twice as bright as some rivals.  Contrast is 200:1 while ports include mini-USB, AV-in and a 3.5mm headphone jack (there’s also a 1W onboard speaker); a rechargeable battery is good for 90 minutes wire-free use.

For the full list of supported media formats check out the spec sheet in the gallery below.  According to Beambox, while they’re expecting deliveries to start at the beginning of April, those who pre-order may get them earlier.  The R-1 is priced at £260 ($360).

There’s also an AV-out socket and a 3.5mm headphone jack, plus an integrated battery and a microSD slot happy with up to 8GB cards.  The Beambox Evolution R-1 will be available in black, silver, white and red.

Beambox are currently taking reservations for the Evolution R-1, with deliveries expected to begin on March 20th.  It’s priced at £250 ($360).

[Thanks GarryX!]