This cheap, compact projector can turn your wall into a giant whiteboard – and it has gesture controls too

• Honor's revealed a compact projector called the Choice Bee AI Projector Air
• It supports both stylus input and gesture controls
• It's extremely cheap, but is so far only available in China

Honor has just unveiled a curious projector that would probably be an impulse buy for a lot of people – if it becomes available outside China.

Sadly, right now the ‘Choice Bee AI Projector Air’ is limited to China, but we hope that changes, because it has two big things going for it. The first is that the 1080p projector supports stylus input and gesture controls. So you could essentially use the projector to write or draw on whatever surface it’s pointing at (without actually leaving any marks on your wallpaper).

This sounds niche, but – as Android Authority points out – it could be useful for your next game night, or just for any time you wish you had a large whiteboard or a giant touchscreen to scribble things on.

Of course, that all depends on how well this stylus input actually works in practice, which we haven't seen yet. And while the gesture controls, which track the movement of the stylus, sound useful in theory, we'll have to test them out to see if they transcend gimmick status.

Extremely affordable

That brings us to the next big thing this projector has going for it – namely its price. At just CNY 599 (around $85 / £65 / AU$130) this is extremely cheap. So much so, that we're concerned that its stylus input and gesture controls might not be polished enough to see it rank among the best portable projectors.

Its specs are expectedly quite basic too, with it offering just a 1080p resolution and 280 CVIA lumens of brightness. Still, it is compact, can tilt up to 160 degrees (allowing you to point it at a ceiling), and has a headphone port, a 5W speaker, and support for Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.0, HDMI 2.0, and USB connectvity.

It’s unclear right now whether the Choice Bee AI Projector Air will launch beyond China, but it’s shipping there on December 8. And even if this particular model doesn't go global, we're hoping to see more affordable options adopt this tech because it definitely has potential for presentations, game nights and more.

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