Monologue: The Anker Nebula X1 Is The Best Projector I've Ever Used

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0:47Hello and welcome to this week's Better Offline monologue. I'm your host, Ed Zitron.

0:55Better Offline. And today I'm talking about stuff I actually like, specifically the Anker Nebula X1 projector. For many years I've dreamed about a projector that you could just kind of sit down and project with. You don't have to fuck around with it too much, down to suspend it from a ceiling or sit perfectly in front of a screen. And in as much as possible you could just point it at a wall or a screen and it would work and you could just start watching stuff. And the X1 is about as close as I think we're ever going to get. It's fairly compact. It's maybe the size of a subwoofer or half the size of a carry-on suitcase, weighing in just under£14 with a handle that pops up with a satisfying click.

1:33It does 4K resolution, uses something called triple laser technology that Anker has a great deal of marketing material about that mostly just comes down to it looks very, very good. And it bloody well should, because the X1 costs just over$3 ,000 with the wireless speakers, which I'll get to in a little bit. And yes, I bought it with my own money. I don't really spend money on myself outside of Diet Coke and baseball tickets anyway. Really though, it looks really, really good. Like a very high-end 4K TV, though perhaps not as contrasty as a high-end OLED. It's clear, it's crisp, and looks that way if you're projecting onto a wall, or in my case, something called an Epson Duo 80-inch screen.

2:10I chose the Duo because I'm using this projector in a cramped New York apartment with no big wall to project onto, and the Duo literally clips onto a tripod and pulls open in 15 seconds. I'll link to it in the episode notes. I love this screen. It's just you put the tripod down, you slide the thing on, and you pull it open. I had a few bolts bop out on mine, but you can just screw them back on. It's very much a working presenter type thing. You can imagine some horrible salesman wheeling it around and trying to sell you, I was going to say, ties. I don't think you really get door-to-door salesmen of ties.

2:40Anyway, the X1, for the most part, just works. It runs on Google TV, meaning that it has all the apps you'd expect like Netflix, Hulu, Tubi, PooBoo, Brungus, and Font, of course. Though I will say that while playback is great, the user interface lags and chugs far too often for a projector that costs as much as a gaming laptop. I'm actually genuinely calling this out as bullshit. I have an Apple TV even five years ago that runs smoothly. I don't know why the X1 chugs so much, and I refuse to believe that there was no way of making it work well. They've crammed it full of crap. It's full of all of these classic Google TV, like random windows of stuff and recommending me stuff I'm never going to watch.

3:19I don't know if this is a Google problem or an Anker problem, but again,$3 ,000, you need to get this right. I can forgive this though, because the X1 also has several incredibly useful features like this built-in gimbal that allows you to move and adjust the image so that you can have the X1 shooting from the side of a room rather than directly onto a surface with the ability to digitally enhance, enlarge, and keystone, meaning you can kind of pull the corners of the image to make it look right on a particular surface to make it project just about anywhere. And it really does work. When I was first using it, I quite literally had it crammed in the corner of the room, had it project onto the surface.

3:56It looked awful, but with digital keystoning, you could just pull the corners on. So it looked like it was meant to be there. And when I say gimbal, I mean, it quite literally has the, the focus element inside it. The actual lenses you can hear it go. It's kind of cool. Genuinely, At a time when I bitch a lot about how bad technology has become, the X1 genuinely is actually innovative. It's a cool piece of kit, and it can go anywhere that you want it to for the most part. You don't have to have this perfect setup, this perfect amount of space. this is why I've generally not liked projectors because projectors require you to have even with a good screen exactly the right positioning if you're off even by a little it can kind of look like a dog's dinner I'm thinking of the various short throw projectors I've used where the whole thing is they say oh it just projects them below it yeah mate if it's not exactly the right height the exact distance even a small distance you don't have the right table you're screwed with The X1, I had it on some random coffee table in the corner.

4:56I didn't do nothing fancy like. It was great. I really enjoy it, which is why I'm immediately going to start complaining about something. Yes, the X1, and this is a marketing problem, has some automatic setup features. And seemingly, every single reviewer that I watched said they were excellent. But in my experience, they don't work. They just, they don't work. It's crazy. Everyone would show you this thing. And I think it's the, I'll get to the exact terms in a minute. but they would just point it, they'd click a button and it would know the exact screen size. This was not my experience. Perhaps it's that my projector screen is in front of two windows or maybe everybody else testing this did it in some sort of ideal scenario but these setup features are useful I find to get you close enough to something you can digitally adjust to fit your surface but they are not a cure-all thing.

5:45I will also say this is still the single most versatile projector I've ever used and I was able to project from the corner of my room where no other projector would have worked. It does work. It just does not work as easily as Anker says. And I only harp on about this because Anker's website says, and I quote, set up in 10 seconds, which is complete and utter bullshit. It's just nonsense. Anker massively overstates their AI spatial adaptation as one-click perfection. And other reviewers should have done a much better job making sure this was true. That being said, once you've found a spot that works, the X1 does generally remember it.

6:19However, if you adjust the screen or you adjust where the projector is even slightly, it doesn't. And yeah, you can physically move it. I'm being a little bit of a prick about this because this costs so much money. And Anchor's website repeatedly states that this is just something you click one button and it works. It does not do that. It does not. And all the other, if I don't know how any of the other reviewers who have reviewed this would hear this, but if you were one of them, you fucked up. You fucked up bad here. You really haven't sold people something dangerous. It's still a great product, but stop doing marketing for these companies.

6:52Try these products. I'm eventually going to get in to more regular hardware reviews. And when I do, I am going to try and set stuff up in the unideal space. We should not be trying to do these things, these reviews, in a space that exactly fits the marketing request. No, no, no, no, no. No. We need to be harder on these people, especially companies that claim one-click setups. But I should also be clear that compared to literally any other projector I've ever used, this is the easiest to set up and most adaptable projector I have ever seen. And you also get these wireless stereo speakers with it when you have to pay for them.

7:29And they truly do set up in seconds. Once they're, I think they even came paired, you just put them down in the corners. They have L and R on them. So if you're like me and you forget, they just have it in a big letter. and you hit a button and bang, they connect. And they create a really convincing surround sound environment combined with the speakers that are actually baked into the X1's body. They sound fantastic. And when you've found a consistent spot for the projector in the screen, yes, you can be up and running in 10 seconds. Also, here's another thing I'm going to harp on about. As an aside, Anker should absolutely be ashamed of themselves for keeping motion smoothing on.

8:04It's on by default. What year is this, Anker? Is it 2007? it is is it 2009 what are we doing it's motion smoothing nobody like who wants this tom cruise is going to get very angry when he hears this i assume tom cruise is a better offline listener anyway if you buy this thing and i do recommend it seriously it's called memc go into the settings it's in there i do not know why this feature is present it's so annoying it's so very annoying and again would not be this harsh if this was not three thousand dollars anyway anyway i know i've gone into a lot of negatives here, but I truly adore the X1.

8:42I do not recommend it for gaming, as the input lag is bad, but for everything else, it's one of the single coolest pieces of hardware I've ever used. It looks good. It works well. It's beautifully engineered. It feels nice and hefty. It's wet. The kit is all nice. It's smooth surface. The UI generally is great. When you've set it up in the right place, it really is as turnkey as Anker says, but that's a big if. And while I've been quite critical of the auto setup in general, the X1 will work in many, many more environments than any other projector. I've watched several films and TV show episodes on it.

9:14They looked and sounded great. I even watched the Steven Seagal movie called A Good Man. It was a very bad movie, but if you want to laugh, if you want to really just laugh, laugh yourself silly, I recommend, I don't know, pirating it. You shouldn't give them any money. Anyway, it's also relatively portable. £14. It's£13.7 based on their website. It has the lovely little handle, everything runs off a single power adapter, and Anker sells a chunky carry case that fits both the X1 and speakers. I also recommend Anker's gimbal, which is just a fancy way of saying thing you click it onto, which lets you tilt and turn it to make it even more adaptable.

9:50In my case, allowing me to project up from the floor rather than the table in the corner of my apartment. So I really do love the X1. I adore it. I'm so glad I bought it. It's great, great value for money. I know that sounds weird at the price point, but it just works. I'm going to take it with me on a little romantic trip. I'm going on, going to the woods, going to project onto the screen. And with the duo, you could just block it up there. I use it to watch all sorts of movies and TV. I really do like it. And especially at a time when tech has become so negative, when I spend so much of my time complaining about tech industry with good bloody reason, it's nice watching a company build something cool.

10:29Now, I haven't done too much of a deep dive into Anker, so I'm sure that there's something someone won't like, but I've used a lot of their products. I like a lot of their products. I have a bunch of their battery packs. In general, it's nice watching a company build things that actually help people and that people like. I'm sure people email me saying they found something they don't, and of course, I do want to hear about that, easy at betteroffline.com, but I look forward to doing more hardware stuff in the future. Thanks for listening.

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