On December 28, while releasing the Xiaomi Mi 12 series, Xiaomi also updated the screen projector product line and released an upgrade - the Xiaomi Paipai 4K HD screen projector.
In this set of devices, this appearance uses a part that resembles the streamlined design of the spaceship in Star Wars, which is the sending end in the screendropper. The most significant design in addition to the shape is the indicator button on both sides, when the indicator light on the fuselage changes from flashing to a stable and constant display state, just press any of the buttons to project the screen to the receiving end.
Although the transmitter does not need external power supply, Xiaomi still designed a USB-C input interface for its side that can be used to power the device itself, which is quite practical for devices with only one USB-C interface such as iPad Pro: at least let these devices that are originally quite tight on the interface can no longer worry about the battery life of the device itself while casting the screen.
The appearance of the receiver is quite simple, much like a TV box with an integrated independent system: in fact, the mold used in this receiver is the same as the Mi TV Stick 4K TV box that Xiaomi recently launched to the international market. However, the latter is a standalone TV box with a complete Android TV operating system, and the Xiaomi Paipai 4K HD screen projector is an independent hardware device that focuses on the use of screen projection.
Perhaps it is precisely for this reason that the Xiaomi Paipai 4K HD screen projector receiver uses the same Micro USB interface as the Mi TV Stick 4K to meet the power supply needs, which is a bit inconvenient at the moment when USB-C is popular today: in the author's actual experience, I encountered the disappearance of the cable itself, and found a circle of oolong events that did not find other Micro USB data lines that can be replaced.
However, the receiver only needs the basic power supply of 5V1A, and most of the USB-A interfaces that come with 4K monitors/smart TVs can output this power, so charging the receiver will not be too troublesome. But here still hope that Xiaomi in the next generation of products "keep pace with the times", for the receiving end is also replaced by a USB-C interface, so that at any time to take it down and go out to use, at least the wire material problem part will not have too many concerns.
There's also a tip: If your TV/monitor doesn't have enough space to accommodate the receiver host, such as the following:
Fortunately, Xiaomi thought of this problem, and there is also an HDMI extension cable included in the package, so that you can easily cope with this situation. It is a compromise solution to avoid embarrassment and at the same time improve the scalability of the screen projection.
As mentioned earlier, Xiaomi Paipai 4K screen projector is actually a twin product TV box for sale overseas, Xiaomi Paipai 4K HD screendropper is not a TV box, but still built-in independent codec chip, with the help of MiPlay's own protocol, to achieve no drive and no authorization projection screen, the use of 5G frequency band to achieve screen transmission to increase transmission rate / reduce fluctuations.
In the actual experience, the Xiaomi Pat 4K screen projector has obvious advantages over the projection of the 4K30Hz picture delay and picture shake over the pure software protocol; you can even complete simple drawing/typing in the 4K screen projection screen and other operations that require high input delay, although the stability is still not comparable to the wired 4K picture transmission, but it is still a convenient and reliable picture transmission scheme.
In the compatibility test, because the transmitter itself is also equipped with a USB-C interface, basically compatible with mainstream mobile smart devices including mobile phones, tablets, notebooks, etc., in the author's actual test, including some Android smartphones, iPad Pro and MacBook Pro can be used normally, directly inserted into the sender to wait for the matching to be completed, you can project the current screen content.
Other experience details, Android phones according to different brands, the screen projection compatibility is also different; switch game consoles may not be supported due to insufficient power supply; and Windows/macOS laptops can choose the mirror screen / display mode as a secondary display in the system after casting the picture.
In addition, the Xiaomi Pat 4K HD screendropper supports up to four transmitters at the same time, which is convenient for quickly switching screen projection content between multiple devices. This function will be more suitable for business scenarios such as multi-person meetings. However, this geek's choice is only a single transmitter + receiver package version for the time being, so the actual experience of this part is not possible for the time being.
At the moment when smart TVs are blooming everywhere and most smart TVs have built-in universal screen projection functions, if you want to make screen projection such a "software-realized function" in the eyes of most people into a hardware, you can see that the xiaomi pat 4K hd screen projector is not the mainstream audio-visual users, but aims at the use needs of enterprise-level users to design. Xiaomi also released this new product at the same time as introducing the MIUI TV enterprise mode update for smart TV products, as a "combination fist" of soft and hardware.
To sum up, it can be said that the Xiaomi Paipai 4K HD screendropper is a "productivity tool" suitable for office/conference scenarios: allowing users to minimize the time and learning cost of 4K screen projection through a simple "take a shot". The price of the 499 is relatively competitive enough for the 4K screendropper, and it is believed that it will also be suitable for more users who have high requirements for screen projection.