Backwoods camping is great fun for those who don’t mind living in their own sweat for a few days or battling swarms of gnats. For others, the experience may pass muster only if it includes some home-style amenities like, say, a big-screen TV.

Well, it can, with the newest blow-away-your-friends devices: microprojectors (also known as pico projectors). These pocket-size gadgets take video on an iPhone (or a handful of other smartphones) and play it on any surface, turning your wall, ceiling or tent into a 60-inch screen.

The projectors first hit the market last year, with the debut of the Optoma Pico, which made a bit of a splash with the tech community. Now two competing models have been announced: the Cinemin Swivel, by WowWee Technologies and the 3M MPro120.

Both offer significant improvements on the Optoma in design and functionality. I found the image quality quite good with both devices, even though they use different technologies. And the fact that you can connect speakers to the Swivel, in particular, is a big step up for the category.

The Swivel came in handy on a sweltering afternoon last week, when we retreated to my son’s air-conditioned bedroom, connected my iPhone to the Cinemin Swivel, and voilà! An instant big-screen matinee of “Cars.”

Score big points for the Swivel’s simplicity, which easily trumped that of the MPro120. After more than a dozen troubleshooting interventions with a company representative, I was unable to get the MPro120 working with the iPhone. The company insists that it is a plug-and-play proposition, but I would approach that claim with some skepticism. I did, however, connect the MPro120 to a DVD recorder easily enough.

Much smaller tweaks were needed with the Swivel. The lamps on miniature projectors throw off only about 10 lumens of brightness, which is far dimmer than standard projectors, so we needed to darken the room completely to see the images in their full glory. Throwing a blanket over the shades did the trick.

Battery life was just enough. On a full charge, the Swivel lasts about two hours and 15 minutes, but when our unit started to fade on an incompletely charged battery, we just plugged it in and cruised through the end.

As with the Optoma, the Swivel’s speakers are so small they are essentially useless, at least for communal movie watching. But unlike the Optoma, the Swivel has an audio jack for connecting the device to external speakers. Another nice feature: the Swivel’s hinged design means you can flip the business end of the device upward, and the video plays on your ceiling.