Tri-folds are having a moment. There’s that impressive Huawei device, my favorite 3-in-1 Apple charger, and now this: the Zip tri-fold projector from a company called Aurzen. It’s the most gadgety gadget I’ve tested in a long time.

The Zip’s heft, texture, and hinge stiffness evokes quality at first touch and it’s impressively bright for a compact battery-powered projector that initially costs $249.

Using it is also a joy. It connects quickly to iPhones over AirPlay and to Android devices over Miracast, Smart View, or similar using Wi-Fi Direct — no hotspot required. It then automatically focuses and aligns the image on any available flat surface including walls, t-shirts, and pillows. It works in both landscape and portrait modes and pairs with Bluetooth headsets for private audio or Bluetooth speakers for a shared experience. The built-in rechargeable battery lasts about 80 minutes in my real-world testing, but you can always plug it into a powerbank or wall jack to extend that.

Using it sucks, however, if you’re trying to stream from services like Netflix and Disney Plus or trying to watch Spotify music videos. That’s because all those companies protect their content with DRM, and Zip’s mirroring feature “doesn’t meet HDCP content protection standards,” according to a popup message I received when trying to stream video from Amazon Prime.

Otherwise, it mirrored everything I could see on my iPhone, Mac, and Android phone, including Plex videos, games, locally stored media, PDFs, PowerPoints, and every app that I opened.

The Zip is so easy to carry and set up that I’ve been using it almost daily over the last few weeks.

I used it on a 10-hour train ride to watch downloaded movies with Bluetooth headphones. I’ve used it in the bedroom paired to a Bluetooth speaker to watch a film streamed over Plex with my wife after the kids took over the television. But mostly I’ve been using it on any suitably flat surface to aimlessly flip through my social media feeds or play some casual games on a screen that’s much larger than my iPhone. A friend said he’d love to borrow the Zip projector for PowerPoint presentations at client sites, and I can see it playing a recurring role in my vanlife adventures to come.

The Zip’s Z-shape works either upright for films and YouTube, or on its side for full-screen portrait video favored by TikTok and Instagram Reels. When upright, you can easily adjust the hinges to get just the right angle and image size. When sideways you have to get more creative to avoid obstacles.

The autofocus works well, but the auto-keystone correction has a very limited range and works best when the Zip is placed directly in front of the projection surface. If you don’t like the results you can give the projector a little shake to try again — just don’t expect miracles. The Zip’s base is metal so it can be affixed to magnetic mounts, including Aurzen’s own $25 suction-mount.

If streaming services are critical to your usage, then Aurzen offers a bulky $65 CastPlay HDMI dongle as a work around. Modern phones with USB-C ports that support video output can then stream DRM-protected content directly to the Zip using a USB-C to HDMI adapter. I did not test this because, a) I don’t have such an adapter, b) it adds too much complexity to a device that thrives on its simplicity.

The Zip projector is great for anyone traveling light, without a laptop or tablet, that still wants a big(ger)-screen entertainment option for the phone they’re carrying. It’s best in dark rooms, but works surprisingly well during the day so long as you don’t mind viewing a smaller image to concentrate all that LED projected light. Color saturation and contrast aren’t great, but they’re passable, even at the Zip’s 720p resolution.

Aurzen tells me that the Zip — currently available for $249 early bird pricing on Kickstarter — will cost $299 starting March 1st. Both prices seem reasonable for the experience provided. The average price will eventually rise to about $349 once it moves to Amazon which is a bit steep for a portable projector that can’t easily stream your favorite shows.

Photography by Thomas Ricker / The Verge