The first-person perspective used in F1: The Movie, makes for thrilling home cinema, particularly up close on a 100-inch screen, enveloped with accurate, spatial audio. Sinners was also engaging, although I was impressed by the sound effects more than the soundtrack, with music a little too bass-heavy in places. It’s a very minor grumble, though, considering that most portable projectors lack bass.
Photograph: Chris Haslam
It’s all impressive, and because I can slot the speakers away again and wheel the X1 Pro off into a corner, surprisingly practical. With none of the technical know-how or installation costs, or interior-design disruption of a dedicated cinema room to factor in. A clever negotiator could argue this makes the X1 Pro great value, if you’re lucky enough to have the space to hide it and a screen when not needed.
Liquid Cooled
Despite the beer fridge dimensions, the Nebula X1 Pro is remarkably quiet. This is thanks to a liquid cooling system—first used on the X1—that replaces a traditional fan. It’s brilliantly effective and means you don’t have to pump up the volume to mask the machinery.
The brand claims it lowers noise to just 26 decibels—most portable projectors are rated 30 to 35 decibels—which isn’t a huge difference, but trust me, the noise it does make isn’t nearly as distracting as a fan. There’s a small whirr as the lens settles itself, but even at a moderate—not movie night—volume, it is barely audible.
Why Do I Want One?
Creating a serious home cinema usually means precise projector positioning, power cables, speaker wires, measuring seating distances, setting channel levels, correcting lip-sync delays, adjusting keystone and focus, and juggling multiple remotes and inputs. Portable projectors offer a watered-down version of this, just without the effort.
Thanks to its wireless satellite speakers and rumbling subwoofer, the Nebula X1 Pro gets you tantalizingly close to the complete home cinema package folks work very hard to achieve. In just a few minutes, and with no technical know-how, you can be enjoying high-class Dolby Atmos sound and 4K image quality, all served via the simplicity of Google TV and your favorite streaming platform.
