Hands on: ZTE Spro Plus review

Is it a bird? No. Is it a plane? No. In fact, we're not entirely sure what the ZTE Spro Plus actually is, but this tablet/projector hybrid is certainly a bit different.

At first glance you might arrive at the conclusion that the Spro Plus is the world's bulkiest tablet - looking more like a hardback book than the slender glossy magazine stylings and thickness of a modern slate.

But, to be fair, there's a reason for that. The Spro Plus has a laser projector that projects 500 lumen which is, and we're going on the company's assertion here, "the ideal luminescence for either broad daylight of dark rooms."

Charged

That projector is built into a unit that is fronted by an 8.4 inch AMOLED touch screen with a 2K resolution and a whopping 1200mAH battery, running a modified Android OS.

It also boasts a vertical and horizontal keystone correction system that allows it to be used in the wild without a constantly distorted image.

ZTE do have form in projectors - this is not the first entry in the Spro range, and they are very much aimed at business presentations.

Despite its bulk, this is an interesting device - in truth portable projectors have never truly broken into the mainstream, despite hovering around for several years. The Spro Plus is not exactly going to make it into your pocket, but it is certainly portable.

Price wise - there's no announcement but we're pegging this as a non-cheap option.

But, as is so often the case, it needs to prove once and for all that it can avoid falling between several stools - is it a good enough presentation tool to genuinely replace the tried and tested 'stick on the television that every meeting room is likely to have' for instance?

Do you need your tablet to have a 2K screen or a battery the size of a Stephen King novel?

In the meantime - this curate's egg of a device is definitely not a bird, probably not a plane and we can't honestly say that it's that super, man.