Projector Built in Google Android TV, Cibest 5G WiFi

 

We picked up this projector for the home theater we are constructing in our basement. We liked that it had the google TV module included.

We ended up returning it because it’s not quite what we’re looking for.

We had a couple of issues with the device. Most importantly, we could not get the screen to focus well at much over 90″.

There is some information that the manufacturers tend not to include that is very important for projectors. Namely, how far back the projector needs to be to get specific screen sizes.

Our room is 16 feet long. At 16′ the projector made a 150″ screen, which is as large as the room could reasonably hold. This gives you just under an 8 foot high image, which is about a standard ceiling height, so at this distance the screen went almost floor to ceiling in our standard height basement. This is more or less what we want. If we want to go down in size we can adjust the picture down with the scaling tool, which allows you to reduce the size by up to 50%, so we’re looking for the max size to take up the whole wall, and we’ll decide on size preference from there.

However, the screen was blurry at that range. You could adjust the keystone setting and make the screen oblong, and you could get either the top or the bottom clear, and the other side would be incredibly blurry. Or you could set the keystone accurately to have a square image and the whole thing was just a bit blurry. You can adjust the focus manually, but it still could not fix the slightly blurry image at that range.

Setting the projector closer fixes the problem. The manual states that the maximum distance for a crisp image is 8 feet. It would have been nice if they’d mentioned that in the product information. At 8 feet we got a nice crisp image, but the screen size at that distance was 90″, which is significantly smaller than we hoped for. At around 12-13 feet the screen size was 120″, and was still slightly blurry. At 16 feet the screen size was 150″ and blurry enough that you could barely make out text such as the time index on the screen.

The manufacturers say this goes up to 300″, and I’m sure it does at the appropriate distance from the screen, but you’re not going to get a crisp, clear image at that size. Honestly it would probably be fine for watching most movies, but if you need to read text it becomes a problem.

To sum that up, the projector needs to be 4-8 feet from the screen to get a clear image, and at 8 feet you’ll get about a 90″ screen.

Also, this projector does not have any 4K support. I fully understood that this was a 1080p projector, but the information says that it supports 4K video, just with a downgrade in quality. A quick glance through the instruction manual reveals that this is not the case. This projector does not support video files in a 4K format in any way. This isn’t a big deal for me, since I feel that 4K would probably be too taxing on the internal hardware anyways, but it was upsetting that they said that the thing supports 4K video formats, and it just doesn’t at all.

The screen was also not particularly bright. You really couldn’t see very well if you turned on even any ambient lighting in the room. This was our first attempt at a projector, so we didn’t know what to expect in terms of brightness. It’s fine when the room is dark. But we have a light set up with an ambient lighting set up, where it only shines a dim light up away from the room, and all you get is dim reflected light, and even this light washed out the screen to where you could barely see it. This would have probably been alright for us. You turn the lights off when watching a movie on a projector. That’s not unreasonable. Our main problem was the blurry screen. But again, just for reference, if you buy this, don’t expect to be able to use it with any light in the room. It’s not bright enough for that.

Other than that, the projector is pretty decent. It comes in a nice case for storage or if you want to take it places. It has a google tv box that is a separate module that you plug into an internal housing on the side of the projector. We’ve got other google TVs in the house, so we’re familiar with the interface. You can download aps from the play store, which gives you practically infinite functionality. If you have an android phone you can set it up just by telling your phone to set it up for you.

It has one HDMI port and one USB port in addition to the small cables that plug into the google tv box. It also has your standard stereo audio in and out ports so you could hook it up to a speaker system. I believe it also had Bluetooth capability for speakers, but I didn’t try that.

The remote has to be pointed directly at the projector to work, which is awkward, since the projector is often going to be behind you, and probably off to the side. The remote works from the front of back of the projector, but you have to be pointing the remote at the projector, and you can’t be too far to the side. I have some Visio TVs that the remote is way too sensitive and you can’t get it to not work. It’s too bad they didn’t create an over-sensitive remote like that for a projector of this sort.

This also does not have any horizontal keystone adjustment, so the projector must be directly perpendicular to the screen or you image will be skewed to the side. Vertical keystone adjustment is available, but it is manual adjustment that is done with a physical dial on the projector.