Projectors

BlitzWolf BW-LT1 LED Lamp Review: The Ultimate Gadget Fan’s Lamp?

The BlitzWolf BW-LT1 is an 48 LED lamp from the company that offers a range of lighting modes, touch interface and a USB port for charging your gadgets. Is it a useful gadget or waste of money? Read our BlitzWolf BW-LT1 review to find out!

I want to say thanks to Banggood for sending me a sample to review

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What’s Inside The Box?

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Inside the box, you’d get everything you’d expect

  • 1x BlitzWolf BW-LT1 Lamp
  • 1x Power Adapter
  • 1x Instruction Manual
  • 1x Warranty Card

The lamp itself comes in 3 pieces that need to be assembled. It only takes a few seconds. Insert the lamp into the base and attach it using the screw cap.

BlitzWolf BW-LT1 Review: Design

The Blitzwolf BT-LT1 definitely follows modern stylings,  using a minimalist design with clean lines.

The whole unit is made of glossy black plastic that looks fantastic out of the box. However, if you’re handling it regularly, expect it to be covered in fingerprints.

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The lamp is designed to be as flexible as possible. When not in use, you can fold it down onto itself, collapsing down to a fraction to its size.

There’s actually three separate hinges, allowing a remarkable amount of flexibility. The bottom hinge allows for 40 degrees, the middle allows for 140 degrees whilst the top lamp section itself can also rotate 180 degrees.

The whole lamp itself can rotate a 180 degrees on its base, allowing you to get the light where you need it.

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The angled control panel is located at the bottom of the unit. It features a touch interface, with “buttons” for brightness, the four lighting modes, power and the sleep timer.

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It also houses a 2.1A USB port for charging your gadgets around the right side but more on this later.

The lamp’s base is heavy and the rubber and foam padding protects your desk and makes sure the unit doesn’t move.

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BlitzWolf BW-LT1 Review: Using It

The lamp comes disassembled in the box. Putting it together is easy. Just slide the lamp body into the base, using the screw-on cap to lock it into place. Plug in the power and when the red power LED is on, you’re ready to go.

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The touch panel is quite responsive and I rarely had any issues. Though I did notice that the power button occasionally didn’t respond if I was pressing the power button in quick succession. Given that you’re unlikely to try and use the lamp for a rave, it’s not really a big issue but worth mentioning nevertheless.

There’s four lighting modes on offer here, called Read, Study, Relax and Sleep. It’s clear that BlitzWolf have been paying attention to the recent studies on light temperature. Whilst the Study mode uses a cool white light, believed to improve focus and energy, the sleep mode opts for warmer tones. Similar ideas have shown up in the popular F.lux application and Apple’s new Night Shift Mode.

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Clockwise from Top-Left: Read, Study, Relax and Sleep

Each light mode offers 5 brightness levels offer enough flexibility to get a comfortable amount of lighting.

There seems to be a built-in memory for each light mode so the lamp will actually keep track of the brightness per mode which is pretty awesome, particularly if you like it bright for working but dim if you’re wanting to go to sleep. It only works whilst plugged in though so be aware that unplugging it will reset it.

There’s also a 60 minute sleep timer for those that need it which is handy if you want to use it as a side table lamp, though it would have been nice to have shorter times available as I felt 60 minutes was way too long.

Blitzwolf claim that their LEDs offer a CRI (Color Rendering Index – a measure of how accurately a light source reveals colors) of above 90, suggesting that the light should be able to reveal colors faithfully. This makes the light perfect for those working with colors regularly, such as photographers, videographers and graphic designers.

BlitzWolf-BW-LT1-Review-Charging

The USB charging port worked but I wasn’t able to achieve the 2.1a current draw that Blitzwolf claims the lamp is capable of outputting but this could be due to the various devices I tried to charge. My USB power meter only registered a draw of 0.95A when my iPhone 6 was connected. Voltage output generally hovered between 4.9-4.95V which remains within USB’s 5V specifications.

Verdict

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I was impressed with the BlitzWolf BW-LT1. It’s a little pricey for some, but the amount of flexibility on offer here, combined with a stylish design makes it a solid contender.

From the 48 LEDs that sip power to the various lighting modes that let you tailor the lighting to your needs, if you’re wanting a lamp that does more than just provide light, I’d strongly recommend taking a look.

Getting One

You can purchase the BlitzWolf BW-LT1 from Banggood.

Check Price at Banggood

Alternatively, it’s available from Amazon.

Blitzwolf BW-MP1 LED Projector Review: It’s Amazing How Much $100 Gets You

The Blitzwolf BW-MP1 is a small LED projector with a variety of intelligent features built in for under $100. Sporting an 800×480 pixel resolution, 1200 lumens of brightness and built-in wifi, is this the ultimate budget projector?

I want to say thanks to Banggood for sending me a sample to review.

Check Price

Blitzwolf BW-MP1 Video Review

What’s In The Box?

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Blitzwolf have given you everything you need to get started:

  • 1x Blitzwolf BW-MP1 LED Projector
  • 1x IR Remote
  • 1x Composite Cable
  • 1x Power Cable
  • 1x English User Manual

Blitzwolf BW-MP1 Projector Review: Design

The Blitzwolf BW-MP1’s design keeps the standard projector stylings. It’s a medium-sized rectangle with some raised geometric features that add character.

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The front sports the unit’s large projector lens – protected by a rubber lens cap that’s only held in place by friction. As such, it has trouble staying in place and won’t grip unless the lens is fully retracted. I wish the company opted for a more robust system, particularly given that they’re positioning it as portable.

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Just above the lens is two dials for focus and keystone correction to get the best  image possible.

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There’s also a set of controls on the unit for navigating menus and controlling media playback.

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Ports are located on the right and rear sides. The right side features a 3.5mm audio output jack, composite video output, HDMI In, an SD card slot and two USB ports, although one can only be used for charging devices whilst the other can be used for media playback.

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The back of the unit has an IR sensor and VGA port (tucked under the rear vent).

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If you can’t mount  the projector directly in front of the screen, there’s a small riser that will allow you to angle the projector up. It’s a pretty handy solution to a common problem, particularly if you’re using it portably.

Blitzwolf BW-MP1 Projector Review: Using It

The projector is switched on via the post button at the top of the unit. It takes a few seconds to boot up before you see the menu.

The first thing you’ll notice is the sound of the fan that keeps the unit cool. It’s not exactly quiet so prepare to hear it during quiet scenes. However, it’s quieter than other cheap protectors such as the UNIC UC40.

The UI is exactly the same as the one seen in projectors such as the UNIC UC46. It’s bright and colorful, with separate tiles for movies, photos, music and text.

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The file browser is functional but nothing special. Icons represent files and folders, though I wish the file/folder icons were more distinctive to make it easier to tell them apart. One thing that was frustrating (and was the same with the UNIC UC46) was that you need to press the play button to start playing a video as the OK button just adds it to the playlist. It feels like either OK or Play should be able to start the video.

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The unit’s media player handles the most common codecs well. I was able to play 30fps H.264 videos, MPEG2 and the like, though don’t expect more demanding videos to work. 4K H.264, H.265 and Hi10p samples didn’t play at all.

Also note that Dolby audio isn’t supported so those files play without audio. If you need Dolby audio, you’ll either need to transcode the files or add a dedicated media player.

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Blitzwolf BW-MP1 Projector Review: Image Quality

As with my other budget projector reviews, I’ll prefix this section by saying that it’s important to remember I’m talking about a sub-$100 projector and image quality won’t be as good as a proper home theatre projector. That said, they also cost significantly more so it isn’t really fair to put them face-to-face.

The Blitzwolf BW-MP1 claims to offer 1200 lumens of brightness but it isn’t enough to produce a bright image in a well-lit room.

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Turning off the lights makes a massive difference however, with a bright image with colors that are fantastically vivid.

Blitzwolf-BW-MP1-Projector-Review-UI-01I was able to project a fairly large image too. At around 2.5m away, I was able to project an image equivalent of a 90+ inch screen which is great for an immersive viewing experience.

Out of the box, picture quality is average with everything looking awful and oversaturated regardless of which image preset you choose.

Blitzwolf-BW-MP1-Projector-Review-Picture-OOTBHowever, after adjusting the picture settings playing with the settings, I was able to get a really nice looking image, with lots of detail.

Blitzwolf-BW-MP1-Projector-Review-Picture-01The projector’s 800×480 pixel resolution is on-par with DVDs. Most of you will be used to glorious 1080p so the drop in image quality can take some getting used to but there’s enough detail for movies or gaming.

Blitzwolf-BW-MP1-Projector-Review-Picture-02The image sharpness does soften towards the edges of the image and using keystone correction makes this worse (due to how these units do the keystone correction). The effect is particularly noticeable where fine detail is involved such as on the menu but it’s not significant enough to make it unreadable.

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Blitzwolf BW-MP1 Projector Review: Audio Quality

The Blitzwolf BW-MP1 features a tiny 1.5W downward firing speaker, making the unit pretty much plug and play. However, the speaker performs about as well as you’d expect, lacking bass and sounding tinny. I’d strongly recommend hooking up a good quality speaker such as the Blitzwolf F1 Bluetooth speaker via the projector’s 3.5mm audio output.

Blitzwolf BW-MP1 Projector Review: Wireless Streaming

One of the biggest features of the Blitzwolf BW-MP1 is “BW-Link”. This is a wifi-based streaming solution that allows you to stream content via Miracast, DLNA and Airplay without any wires.

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Setting it up is simple. Just connect to the SSID on the screen and then navigate to the provided IP address to get to the projector’s web interface.

The web interface itself is hideous and really hurts the device’s presentation. It looks like something you’d expect to see on Geocities, complete with terrible GIFs and a lack of design consistency. It’s the same as the one on the UNIC UC46 but I’d hoped Blitzwolf would have fixed this up.

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In it, you can set up wifi, switch between DLNA and Miracast streaming and use a web-based remote. That said, I couldn’t wait to never use the interface again and you really don’t need to once you’re hooked up to your wifi network thankfully.

The actual streaming part worked really well. Video streaming from my server using BubbleUPNP worked flawlessly. 720p and 1080p H.264 videos streamed via WiFi without any buffering.Blitzwolf-BW-MP1-Projector-Review-BW-Link

Miracast worked fine with my Samsung Galaxy S4, allowing me to mirror my screen easily.

AirPlay and AirPlay mirroring also worked well on my iPhone 6 running iOS9. I did have the occasional issue where the next video wouldn’t play but this is sadly common with most unofficial Airplay implementations.

Should You Get One?

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The Blitzwolf BW-MP1 is a great budget LED projector and a steal at its sub-$100 price tag. For such a low price, you’re getting a unit that’s capable of outputting a nice and large picture in addition to a variety of useful features such as the in-built media player and wireless streaming functions. Whilst an awful web UI and disappointing image presets let down the package, you’re getting a great source of entertainment for a reasonably small outlay.

Getting One

You can get the Blitzwolf BW-MP1 from Banggood for around $99.

Check Price at Banggood

Alternatively, it’s available from Amazon.