The RFV Milano costs so little that’s it’s practically an impulse buy, at least in comparison to most projectors. RFV’s Amazon store shows a $119.99 list price, but the Milano typically sells for $99.99, and recurring deals can drop the price even lower. As you might expect given price, the Milano doesn’t offer a ton of features. However, it delivers enough brightness to give you a highly watchable 50-inch image in dim lighting—which makes it ideal for a backyard movie night—and it adds surprisingly robust audio for such a small projector.
Just the Basics, and Just Enough
According to RFV, the Milano is built around a white LED light source and three 720p LCD chips. Despite the 720p native resolution, however, it behaves like a 1080p projector, automatically negotiating a 1080p connection with video sources and downconverting the 1080p input to show at 720p. The three-chip design ensures that it can’t show rainbow artifacts, which is always a concern for single-chip projectors such as the ViewSonic M1 mini and the Kodak Luma 150.
The Milano is similar in proportion to more expensive lamp-based designs, but smaller and lighter. It’s even tinier than the Vankyo Leisure 530W, at just 2.3 pounds and 3.2 by 8.0 by 5.8 inches. In keeping with its low-cost, minimalist design, the one side panel with connectors offers just three inputs: an HDMI port, a USB Type-A port for reading files from a USB memory key, and an AV port for the included AV adapter, which adds composite video along with left and right stereo inputs using RCA phono plugs. Note that RFV says the USB Type A port isn’t designed to provide enough power for a streaming stick.
One nice feature is that the Milano will mirror the screen of your phone or tablet through a wired connection. However, wireless mirroring isn’t supported.
Physical setup is typical for a projector without a battery or optical zoom: Plug in the power cord, connect to an image source, position the Milano for the right image size, and manually adjust focus. Unlike most small, inexpensive projectors, the Milano makes focusing easy, thanks to a large focus wheel that offers the right resistance for reliable control and changes focus only a little in response to gentle movements.
A 4W chamber speaker is responsible for the projector’s robust mono audio. The volume in my tests was easily high enough for a small to medium-size family room, and quality was good enough to be useful. If you want still better sound or stereo, you can connect to an external sound system using the 3.5mm audio out port. You may need the extra audio boost, because the projector’s fan noise is loud enough that I noticed it without listening for it. If you’re sensitive to fan sounds, you’ll likely find it annoying.
This isn’t designed to be a gaming projector, but the input lag is easily low enough for casual gaming. My Bodnar meter reported it as 33.3ms at 1080p and 60 Hz.
Be Prepared to Tweak the Settings
Image quality with default settings in my tests was acceptable for casual viewing by most standards, though not great, and it was easy to improve with a little tweaking. The menus offer three predefined color modes, none of which allows much customization, plus a User mode that adds settings for contrast, brightness, color saturation, and tint.
In User mode, after adjusting the brightness and contrast settings to their optimum level and then adjusting tint and color saturation to produce more natural-looking flesh tones, I wound up with an image that had good contrast, nicely saturated color, and satisfactory color accuracy. I didn’t see any colors in my tests that were obviously outside of a realistic range.
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After my adjustments, I found the Milano’s image to be bright enough for viewing comfortably for an extended time in a dark room at a 50-inch diagonal, 16:9 image size on my 1.0-gain white screen. That’s a touch smaller than the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) recommendation for the rated 200 ANSI lumens, but not by much. Just as important, I also found the image quite watchable at that size in dim to moderate ambient light, though colors were inevitably a little washed out with the lights on.
Note that for a 50-inch diagonal image, if you have 20/20 vision, you’d have to be sitting closer than about 10 feet from the screen to see any difference in detail between a 1080p image and the projector’s 720p resolution.
A Tempting Choice for the Price
The RFV Milano’s minimalist design leaves out a lot of features, like wireless mirroring and support for a streaming stick, but it delivers more than enough for the price, particularly when you consider that it comes with a one-year warranty that you can boost to three years just by taking the time to activate it.
If you need a smaller, more portable projector, take a look at the ViewSonic M1 mini or the Kodak Luma 150. If you want one designed to power a streaming stick, consider the Vankyo Leisure 530W or the Editors’ Choice–winning Miroir Synq M189. But if what you need is an entertainment projector that reads files from USB memory and lets you connect using HDMI, the RFV Milano will deliver a suitably watchable 720p picture for casual viewing at an extraordinarily low price.
