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

In this week’s Better Offline monologue, Ed talks about Anker’s Nebula X1, an expensive, excellent-looking and adaptable projector that can work just about anywhere. Better Offline listener deal: Get $15 Off Where's Your Ed At Premium! Deal goes until the end of August. https://edzitronswheresyouredatghostio.outpost.pub/public/promo-subscription/better-offline-discount https://edzitronswheresyouredatghostio.outpost.pub/public/promo-subscription/better-offline-discount Nebula X1 Projector: https://amzn.to/45645dR Nebula Wireless Satellite Speakers: https://amzn.to/45E2EmZ Nebula gimbal stand for projectors: https://amzn.to/47qi8wa Epson Duet 80” Projector Screen: https://amzn.to/45o5Odr YOU CAN NOW BUY BETTER OFFLINE MERCH! Go to https://cottonbureau.com/people/better-offline and use code FREE99 for free shipping on orders of $99 or more. BUY A LIMITED EDITION BETTER OFFLINE CHALLENGE COIN! https://cottonbureau.com/p/XSH74N/challenge-coin/better-offline-challenge-coin#/29269226/gold-metal-1.75in --- LINKS: https://www.tinyurl.com/betterofflinelinks Newsletter: https://www.wheresyoured.at/ Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/BetterOffline/ Discord: chat.wheresyoured.at https://discord.com/invite/QUUQUP9szv Ed's Socials: https://twitter.com/edzitron https://www.instagram.com/edzitron See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human. Empower is all about helping you invest well, so you can go out and live a little. And their Free Empower Personal Dashboard shows you your full financial life in one place. You'll be able to see your net worth, monitor budgets, analyze your portfolio, set retirement goals and more. Whether you're saving for something big, want to treat yourself, friends or family, or meet long-term goals, Empower helps you see where you stand. You've worked hard for your money and Empower can help you make the most of it. Download the Empower Personal Dashboard or visit empower.com. Not an Empower client paid or sponsored.

• 0:41Ed Zitron?

  Hello and welcome to this week's Better Offline Monologue. I'm your host, Ed Zitron.

• 0:52Ed Zitron?

  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, don't have to suspend it from a ceiling or sit perfectly in front of a screen. 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 pounds with a handle that pops up with a satisfying click. It 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.

• 1:36Ed Zitron?

  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. I 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 fifteen 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.

• 2:19Ed Zitron?

  I had a few bolts pop 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 gonna say ties. I don't think you really get door to door salesman of ties. Anyway. The X one 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, Boo Boo, Brungus and Funt, 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 X one chugs so much and I refuse to believe that there was no way of making it work well.

• 3:04Ed Zitron?

  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 gonna watch. I don't know if this is a Google problem or an anchor problem, but again, three thousand dollars. You need to get this right. I can forgive this though, because the X one 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 X one 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,

• 3:48Ed Zitron?

  had it project onto the surface. It looked awful, but with digital keystone and 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 voo voo. It's kind of cool. Genuinely. At a time when I bitch a lot about how bad technology has become, the X one genuinely is actually innovative. It's a cool piece of kit and it really just, 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.

• 4:30Ed Zitron?

  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, but 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. I 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.

• 5:11Ed Zitron?

  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. I will also say this is still the most 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 Anchor says. And I only harp on about this because Anchor's website says, and I quote, "Set up in 10 seconds",

• 5:55Ed Zitron?

  which is complete and utter bullshit. It's just nonsense. Anchor 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.

• 6:08Ed Zitron?

  That being said, once you've found a spot that works, the X1 does generally remember it. However, 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. Try these products. When I, I'm eventually going to get in

• 6:49Ed Zitron?

  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 the, 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, where you have to pay for them. And they truly do set up in seconds. The, once they, 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,

• 7:31Ed Zitron?

  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 found a consistent spot for the projector and 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. It'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.

• 8:15Ed Zitron?

  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 $3,000. Anyway, anyway, I know I've gone into a lot of negatives here, but I truly adore the X1. I do not recommend it for gaming as the input lag is bad, but for everything else, it's one. 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. As it's wet, like the kit is all nice, it's smooth surface. And the UI generally is great. And when you've set it up in the right place, it really is as turnkey as Anchor says. But that's a big if.

• 8:58Ed Zitron?

  And while I've been quite critical of the 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. They looked and sounded great. I even watched the Steven Seagal movie called A Good Man. It was a very bad movie, but if you wanna laugh, if you wanna really just laugh, laugh yourself silly, I recommend, I don't know, pirating it. You shouldn't give him any money. Anyway, it's also relatively portable, fourteen pounds, it's thirteen point seven based on their website. It has the lovely little handle. Everything runs off a single power adapter and Anchor sells a chunky carry case that fits both the X1 and speakers.

• 9:36Ed Zitron?

  I also recommend Anchor's gimbal, which is just a fancy way of saying thing you click it on to, which lets you tilt and turn it to make it even more adaptable. In 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 gonna take it with me on a little romantic trip, trip. I'm going on, going to the woods, gonna project onto the screen and with the Duo, you can 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.

• 10:19Ed Zitron?

  It's nice watching a company build something cool. Now, I haven't done too much of a deep dive on to Anchor, so I'm sure that there's some things someone won't like, but I've used a lot of their products. I like a lot of their products, 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 will email me saying they found something they don't, and of course, I do wanna hear about that, easyatbetteroffline.com. But I look forward to doing more hardware stuff in the future. Thanks for listening.

• 10:57Speaker 00

  Empower is all about helping you invest well so you can go out and live a little. And their Free Empower Personal Dashboard shows you your full financial life in one place. You'll be able to see your net worth, monitor budgets, analyze your portfolio, set retirement goals, and more. Whether you're saving for something big, want to treat yourself, friends, or family, or meet long-term goals, Empower helps you see where you stand. You've worked hard for your money, and Empower can help you make the most of it. Download the Empower Personal Dashboard or visit empower.com. Not an Empower client paid or sponsored.

• 11:29Speaker 02

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