Scroll Amazon’s twenty-four best-selling projectors and the brand names run out fast. Magcubic, YGSKK, Alwtniet, Tecaki, ClokoWe, Sainyer, wowlink. Sitting at number twenty-two, between two of those, is an HP.
It is the MC400, it costs $125, and it holds a 4.7-star average across 520 ratings, the strongest score anywhere in the upper half of that list. For anyone who has spent twenty minutes trying to work out whether a $60 projector from a five-letter brand will still turn on in March, a familiar logo is worth something. The question is what is actually behind it, and whether the numbers on the listing survive a check against the company that makes the machine.
Whose projector this is
The seller is LYNCAST Store. Amazon’s manufacturer field reads “HP Projector by Hotack.” Neither of those is HP.
HP-branded projectors are a licensing arrangement, and the licensee says so on its own front page: GAC Technology Group describes itself as “the official licensee and manufacturer of HP® Projectors, under license from HP Inc.” It runs a catalogue of twelve models across portable, everyday, premium home and business lines, and the MC400 sits in the portable range with a full published specification. This is not a knock-off with a logo glued to it. It is a real licence, a real product page and a real spec sheet, which makes possible something you can almost never do with a projector at this price: compare the marketplace listing against the manufacturer’s own document.
They agree on the things that matter most. Both say single-panel LCD. Both say native 1280×720. Both say 150 ISO lumens, a modest and honest number and a pleasant change from the four-digit fantasies that fill this category. Both say a 0.9:1 throw ratio.
Six lines that do not match
| GAC (HP licensee) spec sheet | Amazon listing | |
|---|---|---|
| Light source life | LED, over 20,000 hours | 30,000 hours |
| Maximum image | Up to 90 inches | 40 to 100 inches |
| Wi-Fi | Dual-band 2.4/5GHz | Wi-Fi 6 |
| Bluetooth | 5.2 | 5.4 |
| Power bank | 45W USB-C PD compatible | Requires 65W or higher |
| Weight | Under 700g (1.5 lb) | 810g |
Most of that is the drift you expect when a listing is written by a sales channel rather than an engineering team. Bluetooth 5.2 becoming 5.4 and dual-band Wi-Fi becoming Wi-Fi 6 change nothing anyone will notice. A 20,000-hour LED becoming a 30,000-hour one is a fifty percent upgrade nobody will ever be in a position to test.
The power supply line is different, because that one costs money. The licensee’s page says the MC400 draws 40W over USB-C PD 3.0 and lists “Power Bank Support (45W USB-C PD Compatible)” among the model’s headline features. The Amazon listing says the opposite, in bold: “Requires 65W or Higher Power Bank. Power banks below 65W cannot provide sufficient power.” A 45W USB-C battery is a commodity most people already own. A 65W-plus one is a purchase. Read the listing and you buy a battery you may not need; read HP’s licensee, buy a 45W bank, and you may find out in a field at dusk that the listing was the accurate one.
A softer version of the same problem shows up in the software. GAC’s MC400 page describes a “built-in app store” and a “pre-loaded app store” and never names an operating system or a streaming service. The Amazon listing calls it Android TV OS, specifies Android 14, and names Netflix, Prime Video, YouTube, Disney+ and Tubi. Two of that listing’s own images show the home screen with the app row spelled out, and Netflix is in neither of them. Marketing renders are marketing renders and that proves nothing on its own, but Netflix on a projector is a licensing question rather than a download, and it is the single app that separates a certified platform from an app store with a Netflix-shaped hole in it.
The one $25 above it
Twelve places higher on the same list, at number ten, sits the Aurzen EAZZE D1R air at $149.99. Also a single-panel LCD portable, also powered over USB-C PD, also sold on the promise that no streaming stick is required.
What it does with the extra twenty-five dollars is not subtle. Native resolution is 1920×1080 rather than 1280×720. Brightness is rated at 300 ANSI lumens against the HP’s 150 ISO, and Aurzen’s own product page prints the figure as “SGS-Certified ANSI / ISO 21118” – a standard and a testing house, set next to the number. Contrast is quoted at 1000:1 against the HP’s 1500:1, the one line where the cheaper machine claims the better result. Sound comes from two 5W drivers built into the base rather than the body, which is a design decision rather than a spec-sheet flourish. The platform is Roku TV running natively, which does mean creating a free Roku account before the projector will do anything at all.
Aurzen’s page and Aurzen’s Amazon listing also say the same things. The 300 ANSI figure, the 1000:1, the 1080p panel, the 65W USB-C requirement all line up. Aurzen’s own store prices the machine at $239.99 with a 38 percent code that lands it within a dollar of the Amazon price, which is its own kind of theatre, but the specification does not move between the two. The two machines are set out line by line on our HP MC400 against Aurzen EAZZE D1R air comparison.
Naming the standard your brightness was measured to is a low bar. It is also one most of this shelf still fails: we have written before about two neighbouring best sellers whose lumen claims differed by a factor of five, neither of which would publish a figure on its own website.
Where each one earns its price
Owners of both machines describe the same ceiling in different words. Aurzen buyers keep circling back to ambient light: several report the picture holding up in a room with lamps on, at least one insists the room has to be genuinely dark before it is worth watching, and one works through the distinction carefully – fine under household lighting, hopeless against a window or in daylight. At 300 ANSI lumens on a large wall all of those can be true at once, depending on the wall. The HP is rated at half that light, so the same caution applies with less room to argue about it; its reviewers mostly write about how quickly it sets up and how easily it moves between rooms, and the ones who praise the picture tend to attach “at night” to the sentence.
The HP does have two things the Aurzen does not. The 0.9:1 throw ratio is the useful one: it fills 80 inches from about 1.6 metres, where the Aurzen needs roughly 3.6 feet to reach 40 inches and runs out to 13.6 feet at the top of its range. In a dorm room or a narrow apartment that difference decides whether a projector is usable at all. The second is mass, under a kilogram by its maker’s figure against 2.6 pounds for the Aurzen – though the HP’s weight is the one number here that three sources cannot agree on, with the listing’s own image claiming 1.11 lb against Amazon’s 810g and GAC’s sub-700g.
Both sit inside the bracket we keep track of in our sub-$200 list for 2026, and within that bracket the extra twenty-five dollars is well spent almost everywhere. Twice the pixels and twice the rated light for twenty percent more money is not a close call, and the Aurzen is the one that says where its brightness figure came from. The HP earns its place when the room is too small for anything with a longer throw, or when a recognised name on the warranty card is worth the trade – as long as you understand the warranty is GAC’s. And whichever page you believe about the rest of it, buy the 65W battery.
