BenQ GV31

Home cinema hits the bedroom

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We have recently seen all kinds of weird and wonderful designs as manufacturers try to find original ways to cater for the 'movies anywhere' projector market. No convenience-focused projector we have seen, though, has looked like BenQ's GV31.

Its mostly circular shape slots vertically into a simple desktop cradle, within which it can be rotated through 135 degrees to show images on either a wall or - get this, lazy home cinema fans - ceiling.

Perhaps the closest projector rival to the GV31 right now, in the sense that it also sits in a cradle within which it can be rotated through (actually more than) 135 degrees, is Samsung's barrel-shaped, but much smaller and more portable, The Freestyle.

The GV31 features an upright circular design, where its 20cm-high wheel-like body is only broken by a single angular protrusion containing a rectangular lens aperture. The sides of the GV31's wheel shape feature grilled finishes to allow the projector to emit both heat from its LED lighting system and sound from an integrated stereo speaker system.

The circular projector's stability is aided by a gentle magnetic 'grip' within the base, while it also rotates smoothly when you want to adjust the projected image's orientation from the wall to the ceiling. It's a design that doesn't look as though it should work, but it does. It is compact enough, too, to sit on a bedside table.

The clever way the GV31's design is used to integrate a 4W speaker into each side (with a claimed soundstage splay of more than 270 degrees) and an 8W subwoofer 'chamber' pays off handsomely. In fact, so confident is BenQ in the GV31's audio performance that it even provides the option to use it as a wireless speaker.