2023 Ultimate Portable Projector Comparison

What is the best portable projector of 2023? I tested 11 portable projectors from Nebula, JMGO, BENQ, Samsung, LG, VAVA, and XGIMI to figure out which one is the best.

Best Ultra Portable: Nebula Mars 3

Best Home Portable: JMGO N1

Best Mini Projector: Wemax Go Advanced

Best Budget Portable Projector: Nebula Mars 2 Pro

Other Projectors Tested:

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00:00 Introduction
00:22 Brightness, Contrast, Keystone, Fan Noise
13:23 Brightness Graphs
13:47 Battery Life Tests
16:16 Side by Side Picture Quality Tests
21:43 Speaker Quality Tests
25:47 App Compatibility
26:25 Input Lag Tests
27:23 Conclusions

[TheHookUp]

All of my projector recommendation videos have been updated for 2023-2024:

[MrBartleby]

Has to be the first video of this kind where the presenter has actually bought, used and tested each machine to a professional degree. Hats off to you sir.

[caseymatlock]

Awesome job I was stuck watching fake reviews till I finally found what I was looking for. Appreciate all the time and effort you put into a real review and not like the other guys that aren’t doing hands on testing and comparison.

[AdamJarosi]

just wow.. when i searched for comparison i did not tought i find this quality of contect. THanks!

[brucesmith]

Rob,
I hope these videos are as enjoyable for you to produce as they are for us to watch.
I'm wasn't interested in buying a projector in this category, but I might consider one after watching your video. Great job. Thanks again.👍

[midamida]

I came to this channel years ago to get a portable projector and got the benq qv30, now I'm back for an updated one and deciding on the xgimi halo plus - cheers to being the only trusted source for this stuff on YouTube🙏 amazing work with the statistics

[XellosUAE]

An amazing review, you surprised us with your in depth review and method of rating and simplicity. I enjoyed this video so much, really appreciate your efforts. I can see clearly my best choice me for now.

I would have loved to see the new recently released Mars 3 Air in this video.

[drowley]

Wow... what a round up and test deep dive! This video has everything I wanted to know and more, and with no added video bloat! Seriously thank you for all your hard work and diligence with this, it could not have been easy and had to be very time consuming. Amazing work!

[Chrischin]

Not really in the market for this, but I'll still give it a watch cause of the effort you put into videos. Underrated channel

[Rampampulin]

Damn. I ordered the Mogo 2 Pro on Black Friday before there was a review from you. Other youtubers claimed the picture quality but they were all sponsored by Xgimi. Unfortunately most tech youtubers cannot be trusted anymore. You sir are a legend!
While I still like the XGIMI Mogo 2 Pro seeing it loose against older and sometimes cheaper projectors like the Wemax is a bummer. Should have gone with another projector like the Mars 3 Air or the Wemax. Too bad.

THanks again for your review

[WyomingMuleDeer]

Great video review, as usual!

Bear with me, this is a long message but has what I think for some may be helpful information regarding the N1. If you wrap a thin strip of clear silicon tape about 8" long and 2-4 mm wide around the joint spaces between the gimbal arms and the projector body, it will provide plenty of friction to keep the projector from angling up, even when an HDMI cable is connected, while still allowing the projector angle to be changed and not being very noticeable. The plates that are supposed to help provide friction for the gimbal arms screw into plastic holes which are almost immediately stripped if you try to adjust any of the plate screws. So IMO don't bother trying to adjust any screws, because the fix will be both inferior and temporary compared to wedging something between the gimbal arm and projector. If someone finds a better solution than a strip of silicone tape, please do share....I was thinking maybe a silicone split washer might work, but I'm not sure what dimensions would be optimal. With the silicone tape you could probably just wrap one side to provide enough friction, though I did both for a bulletproof solution. If you're changing the angle a lot (e.g. putting it in its case regularly) it might be better to do just one side.


I have the N1 and N1 Ultra. Despite the Ultra having better specs I prefer the N1. It's smaller which I like, is plenty bright, it doesn't have a dolly for me to accidentally rotate it when plugging something in, the loose gimbal issue can be easily fixed, and the sound is still quite good despite being half the speaker wattage in a 40% smaller projector body. And the N1 is about half the price. I also like to put videos and music on a USB flash drive to watch/listen to on the projector, and if I were to get 4k movies for the Ultra my 1TB flash drive would fill up quickly.

Also, in case it helps, there are recommendations on reddit and other forums to enable developer settings to disable animations, limit number of processes, and a few other things, in order to help speed up Android 11 for the N1. I did this and also disabled just about any bells and whistles that might negatively affect performance (turned off all notifications, uninstalled and disabled any dead weight stock apps I could without using ADB). The main apps I have installed on my projector are projectivity launcher (simple user interface without all the clutter of the android tv home screen), VLC, browser (the one with the red no -ing logo), and Poweramp for Android for listening to my music collection (it's a process to install--upload your music and the Poweramp .apk to a flash drive; get a license key from the Poweramp website [not Google Play store]; enable file access legacy mode and set the directory to the music folder on your flash drive; set up settings in a phone [can't change some settings in Android TV], export the settings to a .setting file and copy to your flash drive, import the .settings file using Cx File Explorer; maybe most importantly, avoid a full rescan or you will have to uninstall Poweramp and start all over).

Also, in case anyone else has this issue, when I first set up my projector the flash drive wasn't recognized and the projector would reboot instead of power off. I tried a few things to fix the issue, including reformatting the flash drive until the projector recognized it then slowly loading content onto it a little at a time, and clearing the cache for most apps. I think just letting the projector settle into a routine is what actually fixed these issues. So if you are experiencing these problems, have a little patience with the projector and experiment a little with possible solutions in the meanwhile. Both the N1 and N1 Ultra had the exact same issues for me, and I think something about how I am setting up my projectors, maybe a certain app I am installing or setting I am enabling/disabling, is contributing to the issues. But both projectors experienced what seemed like spontaneous remission from these technological illnesses and now work without any problems.

My philosophy with smart projectors and technology in general is the less bells and whistles, the less that can go wrong, and the less clutter the more efficient, streamlined, and consistent the experience. Keep things simple and problems will be less likely to crop up, OS is less likely to be laggy, and perhaps also the projector will last longer with the hardware being more efficiently used. If you made it to the end of this comment, congratulations. I am notorious for making long comments and messages but hopefully some of this is useful...

[runestone]

This is an excellent and in-depth review of the current portable projector offerings. Most of the other "review" channels are simply advertising with affiliate links and no critical analysis at all. Well done!

[skankhunt]

Dude, i'm so thankful for your work!
Your giving so much info, putting an amazing amount of effort and time in your videos (&$ oc), just awesome!
Thank you so much!
I'd be a hella lot blinder in my search, without you!
Keep it up, your reviews are sublime 💪🏽

[colonelccccc]

So much effort, quality, time, man you are terrific ! Thank you for your video, really appreciate it and it helped me buy my first portable projector.

[EverythingHomeTheater]

I sure love watching your videos. Really time-consuming to switch cables out and run these tests over and over and over on different projectors and then move on to the next test for the sound and then the lag and then the brightness. Thanks for all you do

[justinbeamon]

Samsung really making sure everyone knows they've given up on the projector market LOLLLL

[DannyDuclei]

Just watched your 22 comparison and glad to see a 2023 variant just being uploaded an hour ago!

[MarktplaatsKoopje]

The one and only channel I trust for comparisons. Thank you so much! Are you planning on a video for projectors 100-300 or 100-500 dollar?

[ck_]

Great review man! Do you have an opinion or any advice re: the new upcoming Mars 3 Air?

[tby]

Hey! Unfortunately I'm not very educated on projectors and don't really know what to get here:

My budget is about 500, 600 tops. I want the projector to be:

- 1080p
- able to run Netflix, Disney+, Youtube and Prime by itself
- able to easily project onto the ceiling and wall
- have good enough sound by itself, so I don't need any external audio

Could you throw me your recommendation? (: