82 March/April 2021
BEST PORTABLE
NEBULA CAPSULE 2
Price: $580 / Projection engine:
Single-chip DLP / Light source: LED
/ Resolution: 720p / ANSI lumens:
189 / Speaker: One 8-watt
About the size of a can of beer,
but a little more plump, Nebula’s
Capsule is a go-anywhere projec-
tor that, in our testing, is durable,
is easy to use, produces a nice
image (especially up close), and has
Android TV, which makes setup and
streaming painless. We got a little
less than three hours of battery life
during our test, which is good for
most movies but not long enough
to stream most sporting events. If
you’re doing that, though, you’re
probably within reach of an outlet
to plug it in anyway. With only 189
lumens, the image can get washed
by minimal amounts of ambient
light; best to use it in darker rooms
or outside at night.
EDITORS’ CHOICE
LG HU70LAPrice: $1,800 / Projection
engine: Single-chip DLP / Light
source: LED / Resolution: 4K-
capable, HDR10 / ANSI lumens:
952 / Speakers: Tw o 3 - w a t tThis is a great short-throw pro-
jector, especially when you
think of it as a replacement for
a large-screen TV. Mount it to
your ceiling or rest it on a coffee
table—it’s even compact enoughto move it from one room to
another. With smart controls
and good ambient-light perfor-
mance, it’s basically a 120-inch
flat-screen. Its image is crisp and
vibrant, though it lacks some
contrast of more expensive
models. LG’s smart controls are
the same simple-to-navigate
options as on its TVs, and the
company’s smart remote has a
digital pointer that appears on
the screen to make choosing
between them even easier. The
thin and hollow 3-watt speakers
are the only real disappointment.BEST COMPACT
EPSON EPIQVISION
MINI EF12Price: $1,000 / Projection
engine: Three-chip LCD /
Light source: Laser / Reso-
lution: 1080p HD (but can
display 4K, HDR10) / ANSI
lumens: 816 / Speakers:
Tw o 5 - w a t tWe love everything about
this boxy little projector,
except the image quality.
That’s not to say it’s bad; it’s
actually quite good. But at
this price, some other pro-
jectors are brighter or have
more contrast. However,
none offer so much in such
a user-friendly package.
The autofocus produces a
sharp image in less than a
second, two 5-watt Yamahaspeakers produce a deep
sound with surprisingly
good bass, and the built-in
Android TV gives you quick
access to streaming plat-
forms and other media. The
box shape makes it hard to
stuff this projector into a
backpack, but otherwise
this one’s easy to move
around the house or carry
with you when you venture
from home.While many projectors display in 4K and ultrahigh definition, very few
actually produce images in true 4K resolution (or 3,820 x 2,160 pixels).
That’s because, unlike the large screen of a TV, these devices have to
cram their pixels onto tiny chips, which are then projected onto the
screen. There’s no room for the 8 million or so pixels that you’d find on
a good TV. Instead, projectors use processing tricks to increase the relative number of
pixels. Some pass the projected light through multiple chips, each with a few million
pixels, increasing the total number on screen. Others shift the pixels that are displayed
by single chip back and forth (or in all four directions) at speeds the human eye can’t
detect, effectively multiplying the number of them on the projected image. What you
do see is a high-def image that looks every bit (and every pixel) as sharp as true 4K.PIXEL
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