We Watched a Film in the Garden at Midnight. The Projector Made It Happen.

By Siobhan Rafferty-Oduya

The idea started, as most of my better ideas do, with a problem I couldn't solve any other way. We have a small house. We have a living room with a television that is a perfectly reasonable size for a perfectly reasonable living room, and we have four people who all want to watch different things on it at different times, and we have a garden that sits empty most summer evenings because there's nothing to do out there after dinner except sit in the dark and listen to the neighbours.

I wanted an outdoor cinema. Not a permanent one — we don't have the space or the planning permission for that kind of ambition — but something I could set up on a warm evening, project onto the white wall of the garden shed, and watch a film under the sky with a glass of wine and a blanket. Something that didn't require a dedicated room or a fixed installation or a degree in home theatre systems.

I looked at portable projectors for about three weeks before I found the right one.

Why the Pico Genie Impact 4.0 Plus

My requirements were specific. I needed 1080p resolution — not because I'm a resolution snob, but because anything lower looks noticeably soft on a large projected image and I knew I'd find it distracting. I needed enough brightness to work in a garden that isn't completely dark — ambient light from neighbouring houses, the glow of the sky in summer, the general not-quite-darkness of a British evening in July. And I needed it to work without being plugged into a wall, because the nearest outdoor socket is on the wrong side of the garden.

The Pico Genie Impact 4.0 Plus met all three. 600 ANSI lumens — genuinely bright for a portable projector, enough to hold a clear image in moderately lit conditions. 1080p native resolution. A 10,000 mAh rechargeable battery offering up to two hours of cordless playback. AndroidTV 9.0 built in, which meant Netflix and YouTube without needing to connect anything else. USB-C and HDMI for when I did want to connect something else.

The size was the final thing that settled it. It fits in a bag. Not a large bag — a normal bag. I can carry it to the garden, to a friend's house, to a hotel room, to anywhere with a flat surface and something to project onto.

I ordered it: Pico Genie Impact 4.0 Plus 1080p Portable Projector | 600 ANSI Lumens

The First Evening

I set it up on a garden table, pointed it at the shed wall, and had a working image in about four minutes. The setup is genuinely simple: power on, connect to WiFi, open Netflix. That's it. No calibration ritual, no hunting for the right cable, no asking my husband to come and look at something that isn't working.

The image on the shed wall was about 90 inches diagonal — considerably larger than our television, considerably more dramatic, and considerably more enjoyable to watch from a garden chair with a blanket over my knees. The picture was sharp and the colours were accurate. The built-in speaker was better than I'd expected from something this size — not a home theatre system, but perfectly adequate for a garden where you're not competing with much ambient noise.

We watched a film. We stayed out until midnight. My husband, who had been sceptical about the whole project, said it was one of the best evenings we'd had in years. I did not say "I told you so" out loud, but I thought it very clearly.

Three Months Later

The garden cinema has become a regular thing. We've used it on at least a dozen evenings since that first one — films, a live sporting event, one memorable evening where the children watched a nature documentary about deep sea creatures on a wall that was, in the dark, genuinely enormous and slightly terrifying.

We've also used it inside. The living room television situation hasn't changed, but now when someone wants to watch something on a bigger screen they take the projector upstairs and project onto the bedroom wall. My daughter has used it for a sleepover. My husband has used it for a work presentation. I've used it to watch something I wanted to watch without negotiating for the television.

The battery life is accurate. Two hours is enough for most films with a little to spare. For longer films I keep a power bank nearby, but I've only needed it twice. The AndroidTV interface is responsive and the app selection is complete — everything I want to watch is available without workarounds.

It is, without question, the most-used device we've bought in the last two years. More than the smart speaker. More than the tablet. More than anything else that arrived in a box and promised to improve our evenings.

Who This Is For

Anyone who wants a bigger screen without a bigger television. Anyone who wants an outdoor cinema without a permanent installation. Anyone who travels and wants to watch something properly in a hotel room. Anyone who has a spare wall and a warm evening and wants to do something memorable with both.

Browse the full range in our Multimedia Projectors collection, Projectors collection, Video collection, and Electronics collection — there's a full range of projection options worth exploring.

The Pico Genie Impact 4.0 Plus 1080p Portable Projector is available now. Find a wall. Point the projector at it. Stay out until midnight. You'll thank yourself.

Siobhan Rafferty-Oduya is a marketing manager, enthusiastic home cook, and now the person responsible for garden cinema evenings in her household. She lives in Guildford, has watched films on her shed wall at least a dozen times, and considers the projector one of the better decisions she has made this decade.