JMGO’s N3 Ultimate projector is the new portable 4K champ

Sorry Anker: JMGO now makes my favorite flagship portable projector.

The N3 Ultimate is an excellent portable 4K projector that defeats moderate ambient light at severe placement angles and can rival more expensive home theater installations at night. After a few weeks of testing, I think the raw adaptability exhibited by the JMGO’s N3 Ultimate justifies its current $2,399 price ($500 off its $2,999 list).

Modern all-in-one projectors built around Google TV are already super accommodating when it comes to placement. Set one down on a living room table or campsite rock and it will begin searching for a screen or blank wall while avoiding obstacles to project a focused, color-corrected image that’s properly aligned. But these techniques typically resort to digital optimizations that degrade image brightness, resolution, and responsiveness. To avoid this, it’s always best to place a projector directly in front of the projection surface.

JMGO’s N3 Ultimate projector promises “lossless placement” by mounting it on a motorized gimbal that rotates horizontally and vertically. That, combined with optical zoom and generous lens shift, increases off-center placement flexibility without resorting to digital trickery. You can even drag the image Wiimote-style to the exact spot you want it using the included remote control. Handy!

The N3 Ultimate doesn’t live up to all of its marketing hype, however. It’s pitched as a 5800 ISO lumen projector that I found to be unwatchable in its brightest mode for reasons I will explain later. In modes you can actually use, you’re getting about 4,600 ISO lumens, which drops to 3,000 ISO lumens if you want more accurate colors — that’s noticeably brighter than Anker’s Nebula X1 flagship 4K portable running in comparable modes.

Even though the N3 Ultimate misses the advertised ceiling, its class-leading brightness and impressive picture could make this a television replacement for some.

The first spec I look at on portable projectors is the lumen rating. If the number is listed as anything other than ANSI or ISO, I just assume they are lying. JMGO isn’t exactly lying with its 5800 ISO lumen spec, but it’s not being completely transparent, either.

The N3 Ultimate only comes close to hitting that incredibly bright mark (I measured closer to 5,200 ISO lumens) when running in Dynamic mode, which skews the colors horribly green and causes the cooling fans to roar. The colors produced by this triple-laser RGB DLP projector are most accurate in Movie mode, but at almost half the advertised brightness.

Out of the box, I found the colors and tones produced by the N3 Ultimate’s factory tuning to be more true to life than many projectors in this class. Typically, I’d select Vivid during the day and then switch to Movie mode in darkened rooms. Sometimes I’d forget because the differences weren’t always obvious. The projector’s brightness allows its Dolby Vision support to meaningfully improve picture quality in both dark and not-so-dark rooms.

I tested the N3 Ultimate for an unhealthy number of hours on displays as large as 110 inches and as small as 32 inches; on painted walls, a glossy tabletop, a matte-white screen that increased the intensity, and a gray Ambient Light Rejecting (ALR) screen that boosted the contrast. It adapted admirably to each scenario with little intervention.

Typically the projector ran whisper quiet — I had to strain to hear it. In warmer rooms and with adaptive brightness turned on, I could hear the fans kick up a notch to about 30dB from their usual 26dB, at a distance of one meter. At max brightness, the fans peaked at a very distracting 50dB.

Optimizing image placement is a little tricky at first due to all the menu options and descriptions that aren’t exactly consumer friendly. Fortunately, there’s an optimization button right on the remote that removes the guesswork. Hold it down and you can drag the projected image around the room to center it wherever you want. Double-click the button and you’re presented with four menus that guide you through image-tuning options for Lossless Lens Shift, Gimbal Motion, Zoom, and Rotate. It’s very well done and makes the projector fast and easy to set up at new locations.

The sound is decent for a portable all-in-one of this size. It’s essentially an Anker Nebula X1 turned on its side, but lacking the optional satellite speakers that make Anker’s portable projector unbeatable for sound. Without those satellites, however, the Anker and JMGO sound roughly the same. The N3 Ultimate produced clear, detailed, room-filling sound with a respectable amount of bass. So, it’s a shame that JMGO doesn’t make it easy to quickly switch the projector into Bluetooth speaker mode from the shutdown screen like many portables — instead, you have to clumsily enable it through the settings menu.

The N3 Ultimate runs Netflix out of the box and menu navigation is snappy — two things you can’t take for granted with portable Google TV projectors. The one thing missing is an integrated handle, which makes this a two-handed portable. Fortunately, JMGO does ship the N3 Ultimate inside a reusable carrying case that came in handy when transporting it by car.

I also found the projector’s automatic eye protection feature to be wonky. Even at the default sensitivity, it can be triggered for no reason. Worse, it’s slow to respond when eyeballs are actually at risk from the laser optics. And besides an on / off button, the N3 Ultimate lacks on-device controls — don’t lose the remote!

“Ultimate” is a dangerously high bar to set when naming your projector, but JMGO gets close to the mark. If audio quality is your absolute highest priority, Anker’s bulkier Nebula X1 speaker bundle remains a tempting alternative — though it will cost you significantly more cash. But if you are looking for class-leading brightness and unmatched physical placement flexibility from a 4K all-in-one projector, the JMGO N3 Ultimate at $2,399 is the way to go.

Photography by Thomas Ricker / The Verge