Soundcore Nebula X1 Pro Dolby Atmos Projector Review: Big, Brilliant

Superb representation that’s adjacent decent with the curtains open. Immense 400-watt Dolby Atmos dependable with convincing spatial effects. Google TV onboard. Automatic calibration makes setup simple. Karaoke!

Impractically big. Hugely costly compared to astir different portable projectors.

The erstwhile tiny portable projector marketplace is expected to astir treble from $1.69 cardinal (2022) to $3.2 cardinal by 2030. It has rapidly moved from specializer AV instrumentality into mainstream location entertainment, with an detonation of portable, affordable and, crucially, foolproof designs bringing the large surface to the masses.

Anker's Nebula enactment has fueled this growth, with a big of brilliantly compact, highly awesome projectors packed with the latest streaming tech you tin instrumentality conscionable astir anywhere. They’re not the lone ones, and WIRED has tested dozens of projectors implicit the past fewer years, watching arsenic the surface brightness and solution has improved to the constituent wherever immoderate are bully capable to vie with your TV.

And past there’s the Anker Nebula X1 Pro, sold nether the marque sanction Soundcore. Weighing successful astatine a hefty 72.3 pounds, it boasts a large 400-watt Dolby Atmos 7.1.4 dependable strategy for the latest spatial cinematic audio, and a triple-laser pixel-shifted 4K show (no much bulbs!) that boasts a agleam 3,500 ANSI lumens.

It’s a preposterously almighty all-in-one projector that blurs the lines betwixt superior location cinema and a spot of backyard streaming fun. It’s mad, impractical, and wildly expensive. It's perfectly brilliant.

Movie Theater successful a Box

The X1 Pro is simply a super-sized mentation of the fantabulous Nebula X1. It shares the aforesaid triple-laser DLP system, the aforesaid resolution, and aforesaid wide brightness rating. It supports Dolby Vision, HDR10, and HLG for precocious dynamic scope contented with modern colors. Reading these stats, I knew it would look good, beryllium casual to install, and conscionable each my streaming needs. What I wasn’t prepared for was the interaction the situation dependable strategy would have.

When I tested the Nebula X1, Anker supplied maine with a brace of $700 wireless stereo speakers that elevated the acquisition exponentially. These aforesaid speakers are present onboard the X1 Pro, and widen retired connected motorized arms astatine the interaction of a fastener similar small antennas.

At the backmost of the main assemblage you’ll besides find 2 pop-out multidirectional-firing wireless stereo speakers, that, erstwhile combined with the ample subwoofer built into the chassis, completes a due 400-watt Dolby Atmos 7.1.4 system. It's similar thing retired of a sci-fi movie. Each talker has sturdy small pop-out legs, and erstwhile positioned correctly they transformed my surviving country into a mini, but mighty multiplex.

Anker has dipped its toed present before, with past year’s $800 Nebula P1 Portable, the “world’s archetypal projector with detachable speakers.” With conscionable 650 ANSI lumens, it’s not agleam enough, and visually incomparable to the X1 Pro (although astatine 5.2 pounds, it’s a full batch much portable).

Audio transmission uses a proprietary 5.8-GHz wireless nexus alternatively of Bluetooth to minimize latency and compression, and each outer runs a respectable 8 hours connected battery. Crucially, the speakers automatically calibrate utilizing onboard microphones. Place them astir a country and the projector maps the listening presumption and balances channels without maine lifting a finger.

The X1 Pro runs a afloat Google TV level with entree to each the large services, including Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+, Apple TV+, YouTube, HBO Max, and Hulu, but if you privation to link an outer source, there’s besides HDMI, USB-C, and wireless casting.

As good arsenic the 4 hidden situation dependable speakers, the apical of the portion lifts to uncover 2 wireless karaoke microphones and a afloat distant control. I’ve tested these mics earlier with the X1 and astatine slightest 2 radical successful my location were delighted to spot them back.

Setup

The X1 Pro is enormous, and contempt having built-in wheels and a retractable luggage-style handle, it is an unwieldy lump of technology. Once manhandled into position, each the exertion feels worthwhile, due to the fact that it is genuinely a futuristic imagination to setup and use.

As with different Nebula projectors, the process is heavy automated. Focus, keystone correction (where it adjusts the signifier of the surface to beryllium perfectly rectangular), alignment, and obstacle avoidance tally automatically, and a motorized optical strategy remembers placement betwixt sessions. I did person to tweak the presumption of the surface connected 1 occasion, but it’s a elemental capable task, utilizing the distant oregon the Nebula Connect app.

During 3 weeks of testing—encompassing 2 karaoke nights, aggregate movie marathons, Winter Olympics screenings, and a full-on tween Galentine’s Day party—I tried the X1 Pro successful a bid of locations and surface sizes, from a humble 70 inches onto the fireplace to a whopping 100 inches onto a dedicated projector screen. Each time, the setup was friction-free, with lone the niggling request for streaming level downloads and passwords holding up our entertainment.

Sound and Color

3,500 ANSI lumens is earnestly bright, and I could happily ticker contented with the blinds up. This makes a existent quality erstwhile you're considering a projector against a ample TV, and with the X1 and X1 Pro, Anker has pushed what’s imaginable with, ahem, “portable” projectors. There’s not overmuch contention here, and the X1 Pro sits astatine the crossroads of superior AV installation and casual viewing. There are lone a smattering of alternatives too, including the 4,000-lumen short-throw Epson EpiqVision Ultra LS800 and the intriguing 3,300-lumen JMGO N1S Ultimate.

Picture is inactive not arsenic bully arsenic a large ample television; blacks are coagulated though, springiness oregon instrumentality a small washing-out, question is smooth, and the sharpness of the representation and vibrancy of colors makes for a hugely enjoyable watch.

The champion portion of this full strategy is simply however casual it is to use, comparative to however bully it looks and sounds. I've had my trousers flapped and thorax thumped by immoderate of the world’s astir costly location cinema systems astatine different people's places. But erstwhile it comes to my ain home, recreating adjacent a vague approximation of this has ever been excessively overmuch of a faff, oregon ended successful disappointment. With the X1 Pro, I was capable to beryllium afloat immersed successful the onscreen action, with genuinely weighty bass rumbles, the 7 horizontal and 4 overhead tallness channels making the astir of spatial audio and Dolby Atmos.

The first-person position utilized successful F1: The Movie, makes for thrilling location cinema, peculiarly up adjacent connected a 100-inch screen, enveloped with accurate, spatial audio. Sinners was besides engaging, though I was impressed by the dependable effects much than the soundtrack, with euphony a small excessively bass-heavy successful places. It’s a precise insignificant grumble, though, considering that astir portable projectors deficiency bass.

It’s each impressive, and due to the fact that I tin slot the speakers distant again and instrumentality the X1 Pro disconnected into a corner, amazingly practical. With nary of the method know-how oregon installation costs, oregon interior-design disruption of a dedicated cinema country to origin in. A clever negotiator could reason this makes the X1 Pro large value, if you’re fortunate capable to person the abstraction to fell it and a surface erstwhile not needed.

Liquid Cooled

Despite the brew fridge dimensions, the Nebula X1 Pro is remarkably quiet. This is acknowledgment to a liquid cooling system—first utilized connected the X1—that replaces a accepted fan. It's brilliantly effectual and means you don't person to pump up the measurement to disguise the machinery.

The marque claims it lowers sound to conscionable 26 decibels—most portable projectors are rated 30 to 35 decibels—which isn't a immense difference, but spot me, the sound it does marque isn't astir arsenic distracting arsenic a fan. There’s a tiny whirr arsenic the lens settles itself, but adjacent astatine a moderate—not movie night—volume, it is hardly audible.

Why Do I Want One?

Creating a superior location cinema usually means precise projector positioning, powerfulness cables, talker wires, measuring seating distances, mounting transmission levels, correcting lip-sync delays, adjusting keystone and focus, and juggling aggregate remotes and inputs. Portable projectors connection a watered-down mentation of this, conscionable without the effort.

Thanks to its wireless outer speakers and rumbling subwoofer, the Nebula X1 Pro gets you tantalizingly adjacent to the implicit location cinema bundle folks enactment precise hard to achieve. In conscionable a fewer minutes, and with nary method know-how, you tin beryllium enjoying high-class Dolby Atmos dependable and 4K representation quality, each served via the simplicity of Google TV and your favourite streaming platform.

And don’t hide the karaoke! Cinephiles mightiness rotation their eyes, but my rendition of Barry White’s “Never, Never Gonna Give Ya Up” deserves the afloat subwoofer treatment.

Still, astatine $5,000, who’s the X1 Pro truly for? It’s doubly the terms of the champion OLED TVs, and you’ll inactive get alteration if you adhd successful a flagship Dolby Atmos soundbar. I’m not definite it volition crook the heads of those looking for a imperishable location cinema solution, though it does regenerate aggregate AV components and requires nary method cognition oregon installation costs.

It’s besides doubly the terms of its smaller sibling, the fantabulous Anker Nebula X1, which is presently being shipped with a escaped brace of $700 stereo speakers. For the size of my house, my paycheck, and my request for “true” situation sound, this is the realistic buy.

Yet there’s nary getting mode from the information that the X1 Pro is the astir awesome all-in-one location cinema strategy disposable close now. It stands caput and shoulders supra the competition, and delivers a due cinematic acquisition astatine home.

If you’ve got the currency to splash, the abstraction to store it, and muscles to determination it, you won’t beryllium disappointed by this thing. It's a real, existent theatre successful a box.