On Tuesday morning two of the oldest names on Amazon’s projector bestseller list cost exactly the same. The TMY V08 and the AuKing M8-F were both $69.99, both carried a 4.3-star average, and between them they had more than 37,000 ratings: 22,262 for the TMY and 15,018 for the AuKing. Both are single-panel LCD boxes with an LED light source and no built-in apps, and both are sold as 1080p projectors. Neither listing is a reliable guide to what is in the box, though they get that wrong in different ways.
The matching price is recent. Our own daily log of the bestseller list shows the TMY at $89.99 on August 10. It fell to $79.99 a week later and to $69.98 at the end of August, went back to $79.99 on September 12 and stayed there until it reappeared at $69.99 this week. The AuKing has barely moved. It was $54.98 on July 28 and has been $69.99 at every reading since August 1.
If you are deciding by price history, the TMY has a $10 swing it has shown three times since August. Wait a week and you may pay $79.99, or $69.98 again. The AuKing is predictable, and it is cheaper only if it returns to its July low.
On the list itself the TMY is clearly ahead. Amazon’s product page put it at No. 6 in Video Projectors on Tuesday, against No. 25 for the AuKing.
The TMY listing has changed under the same product code. In September the title began “TMY 1080P Mini Portable Projector.” By October 1 it read “TMY Native 1080P.” On October 2 the structured specification table, where Amazon lists fields like native resolution separately from the marketing text, said 1280 x 720. On Tuesday the same field said 1920 x 1080. The bullet points now mention an upgrade to “our latest LED light source” and native Full HD.
That could be a real hardware revision or a change in wording only, and the listing does not say which. When we added the V08 to our product database in August, the evidence pointed to a 720p panel that accepts a 1080p signal, and the product page still says so. What a buyer should take from this is that the 22,262 ratings were collected over several years and cover whatever versions TMY shipped during that time. They are not reviews of the projector the listing describes today.
Other parts of the TMY page disagree with each other too. The bullets say the light source is rated for 10,000 hours, while the spec table says 60,000. The bullets give a maximum image of 220 inches and the table says 300. The table also lists a 200-watt lamp and an item weight of 100 grams, which do not describe a mains-powered LED projector with a fan. The brightness field is the most believable figure on the page at 300 ANSI lumens, and the listing makes no attempt to market it.
AuKing’s title said “2026 Upgraded” in every reading we took from July through August. It now says “2024 Upgraded.” The product code, price and model number (M8-F) are unchanged, so this is a copy edit, but it shows how much weight to give the “upgraded” line on a $70 projector.
The brightness claims don’t agree either. The spec table lists 9,500 lumens. The second image in the gallery says 18,000. Neither is an ANSI figure, and both are far beyond what any LED projector at this price produces. The resolution wording is more careful. The bullets say “1080p Full HD resolution supported,” and a gallery image compares “1080P Support” against “Others 720P.” Supported means the projector accepts a 1080p signal. It does not mean the panel has 1080p pixels, even though the spec table’s native-resolution field says 1920 x 1080. We have left native resolution blank on our AuKing product page until there is better evidence.
The ports are where the AuKing stands out. It has HDMI, VGA, composite AV and USB, so an old laptop or DVD player connects without an adapter. The TMY has HDMI, USB and a 3.5mm output. AuKing’s listing does not mention Bluetooth, while TMY offers it both ways: the projector can send audio to a Bluetooth speaker, or work as a Bluetooth speaker for your phone. The AuKing’s zoom is listed as 50 to 100 percent, which on a projector at this price is digital shrinking that lowers resolution rather than optical zoom. AuKing also says plainly that it is not suited to slide presentations, which is honest for a home-entertainment box.
Amazon’s AI summaries of owner reviews are close to identical for the two. Owners of both like the compact size, and the TMY summary mentions it fitting on a shelf above a bed. For both, sound quality gets mixed reactions, a loud fan is a recurring complaint, and opinion on brightness is split between people who watch in a dark room and people who don’t. Both summaries also mention Bluetooth connection trouble. That is odd for the AuKing, since its listing doesn’t claim Bluetooth. Some owners may have tried to pair headphones with a version that didn’t support it.
Read together, the summaries describe one kind of product: a small LCD projector that works well enough in a dark bedroom, with a fan you will hear and a brightness spec you should ignore. In our LCD projector guide we place single-panel boxes like these as a first projector for a dark room, not a TV replacement.
For most people the TMY is the better $69.99. It includes an 80-inch foldable screen and an HDMI cable, so the price covers everything except something to watch. Its two-way Bluetooth makes a cheap soundbar or speaker easy to add, and that matters because both summaries describe the built-in sound as hit or miss. Its price also drops to the high $60s often enough that you rarely need to pay $79.99. Buy the AuKing if you need VGA or composite input, which the TMY lacks, or if you are connecting an older source that has only those outputs. Our side-by-side comparison page lists the specs we could verify for each.
Both have the same gap. Neither runs streaming apps, and the TMY listing warns that copy protection blocks screen mirroring from apps such as Prime Video and Hulu. In practice either one needs a streaming stick, which costs about $30 to $40, so the real price is closer to $105 to $110. Once you are spending that much, a projector with licensed streaming built in starts to make sense. The Dangbei N2 mini was $199 on Amazon on Tuesday. It runs Netflix natively instead of through a mirrored phone, focuses and corrects keystone automatically, and is quiet enough to sit near the bed where these two would be.
If $70 is the budget and a dark room is the setting, either box will put a large picture on the wall. Just read each listing’s resolution, brightness and model-year claims as advertising, not specifications.