Anker Nebula X1 projector Review

Versions

The projector is available as a barebones projector only for £2199, and you can buy the accessories (carry case, speakers and microphones) separately. Alternatively, for £499 you can buy the bundle that includes all the accessories.

Design

• Solidly built
• Good range of ports
• Useful optional carry case

A solid, chunky beast of a projector, the Anker Nebula X1 is a tough and rugged feeling box. At 6.2kg, it’s a heavy thing, too. While portable, this is definitely a projector that’s more at home being carried from room-to-room, or put into a car.

For local lifting, the Nebula X1 has a pop-up handle on top. It works like a pop-out cupholder in a car: click it down, and the handle slowly rises out of the top.

For storage or longer journeys, the Nebula X1 has an optional carry case, which looks a little like a beer cooler. A padded, well-designed bit of kit, this carry case has space for the projector, remote, power supply, plus the optional external speakers and wireless microphones.

It’s a worthy upgrade, particularly if you have the bundle of products, but some kind of carry case or protective box as standard would be nice, as you get with the JMGO N1S Ultimate 4K.

Once unboxed and ready to use, the Nebula X1 can be placed on a flat surface, although it also has a tripod mount underneath if you prefer. Rather than using a gimbal stand, as with the JMGO range, the Nebula X1 has an integrated micro gimbal, which uses an electric motor to tilt the lens up to 25°.

There’s also an optical zoom lens, giving more flexibility to fill a screen without having to turn to digital correction. Optical zoom is something that I haven’t seen outside of the XGIMI Horizon Ultra.

At the back, there are the inputs and outputs, with two HDMI 2.1 ports, one of which has eARC should you want to connect an external sound system. You also get one USB and USB-C, port, plus an optical output.

This projector uses a liquid cooling system to keep it quiet. There’s still a gentle fan noise, but as soon as you watch anything, the Nebula X1 is hard to hear.

A simple Bluetooth remote is provided in the box, which has all the basic keys you need, plus shortcut buttons for Netflix, Prime Video and YouTube, and a button that engages the auto-setup routines.

I quite like the remote. It’s small, responsive, and easy to use, plus it has a microphone for using the Google Assistant.

I’m pleased to say that the projector also has a full set of controls on it. A joystick at the back is handy for navigating menus, and then there are touch controls for volume, auto setup and back button. These are a great alternative to controlling the projector when you need to do something quickly and can’t find the remote.

Alternatively, the Nebula smartphone app gives you control via your phone, so there’s always a way to do what you want.

Although the projector has built-in speakers, there’s an optional pair of lossless wireless speakers, which have integrated batteries for up to eight hours of runtime. Once hooked up, the Nebula X1 acts as a subwoofer, with the speakers providing forward-facing, virtual rear, and upward-firing speakers for 4.1.2 audio.

The speakers can stand on their flip-out feet, although they also have tripod mounts underneath. Charging is handled via USB, with USB-C ports on the rear, covered by a waterproof flap.

I’ve often described smart projectors as a cinema in a box, but with the surround sound speakers here, the Nebula X1 is far closer to that description.

Features

• Dolby Vision support
• Smart auto setup
• Runs Google TV

As with the majority of smart projectors, the Nebula X1 runs Google TV. Using any smartphone and the Google Home app, the projector can automatically connect to Wi-Fi and your Google account, and even pre-install some streaming apps. That makes it fast to get going, and within 15 minutes, you can be sat at the home screen ready to go.

All of the major streaming apps are supported, including Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV+, Disney+, Netflix, and NOW. UK streaming services, including ITVX, Channel 4 and 5, are also available, but BBC iPlayer isn’t.

A licensing issue means that the BBC doesn’t let iPlayer work on the majority of smart projectors; if you want this service, you’ll need to stick a streaming stick into the back of the projector.

Getting the picture line up properly is easy with this projector, as it has a lot of auto-setup features. On startup, and via the button on the remote, the Nebula X1 will perform automatic keystone correction and focus.

Dive into the menu settings, and there are more options, automated and manual. Move & Zoom gives more flexibility in setting up the picture than many other projectors, with control over the optical zoom (this gives a throw ratio of between 0.9:1 and 1.5:1), so you can get a 100-inch screen from 2m away.

There’s also control over the micro gimbal, allowing the image to be tilted to point at a screen. It’s a neat control, although I should point out that using this requires keystone correction, and the gimbal is not a direct replacement for a lens shift option.

With Move & Zoom, there’s an option to move the image horizontally, too. To do this, you have to go down into the Digital Zoom, and then horizontal movement becomes a digital correction.

My advice, as always, is to get the projector lined up as straight-on to a projection surface as possible, then use any optical correction, and then use digital correction for final tweaking.

If you’re using a screen, the Screen Fit option will automatically adjust the image to fit the screen as best as possible. However, although the tech did a good job of getting it mostly right, I found that I needed to manually tweak the settings to get a perfect fit. I’ve not reviewed a projector that can do this perfectly yet.

Spatial Adaptation is good for more complex environments. It scans a surface automatically and then projects an image that’s correctly positioned and sized to avoid any obstacles.

With this projector, there’s an option to save and recall settings for different environments. It’s handy if you want to quickly switch between two common places, say inside and out. However, when I recalled my projector’s settings without moving it, I still had to use the on-screen controls to tweak the image to fill my 100-inch screen.

It’s good to see Wall Color Adaptation built in. If you have to project onto a non-white wall, then this option can automatically adjust colour balance to compensate.

Picture settings are available via a set of picture modes. NebulaMaster is a profile that uses image detection to adjust contrast dynamically to enhance an image, but there’s a standard range of modes based on use, such as Movie, Game and Sport, plus ISF Day and ISF Night modes.

Basic Contrast, Saturation and Hue controls are available, but there’s also a full colour tuner (hue, saturation, brightness, offset and gain), plus an 11-point white balance correction, if you want to better calibrate the image.

I found that some minor tweaks of brightness and contrast were needed to get the best picture.

Performance

• Very bright
• Excellent shadow detail

A single 1080p DMD DLP chip is used inside the Nebula X1, which is used with XPR technology to shift the lens four times per second to build up a 4K picture. We’re at the point where this technology is mature, and there’s sharpness to the picture, even when looking at smaller font sizes.

XPR locks the projector in at 60Hz, so a little bit of motion compensation does make sense, just to avoid any little bit of judder that you might otherwise get.

There’s a tri-laser backlight capable of 3500 ANSI Lumens, which is ultra-bright and similar to the light output of the JMGO N1S Ultimate 4K. Having this level of brightness is good for two reasons. First, you can watch this projector in a room with blinds open during the day (although darkening the room is something I recommend to get the best image quality), and second, it helps with highlights in HDR content.

This projector has a standard 5000:1 native contrast ratio via the 6-blade dynamic iris, although NebulaMaster can push this to a 56,000:1 dynamic contrast ratio.

It’s good to see Dolby Vision support. Dynamic metadata in this HDR format means that each scene is correctly rendered; with HDR10, the metadata is set for the entire film or TV show, so you miss out on some detail.

High brightness helps in a lot of scenes. Watch the funeral scene at the start of Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, and the fire shines brightly, popping out of the scene, while the apes in the foreground are clearly resolved.

Switch to a darker scene, and the contrast is spot on: clear ape faces, but a nice amount of shadow detail into the darkness.

That’s as true in the running wheel scene in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.3: there’s depth to the shadows in the room, while the wheel shines brightly. It’s a gorgeous picture.

Watch something much brighter, such as the Johnny Storm scene in Deadpool vs Wolverine, and the projector can open up, producing a super-bright and vivid picture that avoids over blowing the highlights.

Ditch streaming and go for a higher-quality input, such as the 4K versions of Lord of the Rings, and the picture is sumptuous. With the elves walking through the forest, for example, in Return of the King, and they take on an ethereal presence, while the forest sits green and lush around them. It’s hard to ask for more.

Sound Quality

• Good bass
• Wireless speakers add depth and width

With just the projector, you get 40W of audio output with two 15W woofers, two 5W tweeters, and two passive radiators. It’s a potent combination, and the Nebula X1 sounds better than any other smart projector that I’ve reviewed.

Thanks to its passive radiators and 15W woofers, there’s a good semblance of bass from this model, so gunshots and explosions hit with a bit of power when watching action films, and soundtracks have a warmth and depth that’s often missing.

I also found that surround sound is presented well. There’s not much in the way of positioning, but a degree of stereo separation works well, and surround sound doesn’t feel like it’s coming from the projector, sounding out in the room, even if the positioning isn’t as spot on as with discrete speakers.

The Nebula X1’s trick is that it can be paired with the two wireless speakers for 4.1.2 surround sound, with upward-firing speakers for surround sound, and 200W of output. Boy, do they make a difference.

Not just louder, they allow the projector’s speakers to focus on bass for a deeper effect, while the speakers themselves give proper stereo separation. That’s great when you get the full sweeping sounds of the bridge fight scene in Blank Panther: Wakanda Forever.

3D audio helps the sound fill a room, but the virtual rear positioning isn’t particularly convincing, and discrete speakers are still better.

However, as a complete portable home cinema system, the combination of the projector and wireless speakers is better than anything rivals can offer.

Should you buy it?