Ankers Nebula P1 projector is the portable sound king

The Soundcore Nebula P1 from Anker isn’t the most portable Google TV projector I’ve ever reviewed, nor is it the brightest. It doesn’t even have a built-in battery. Instead it’s a decent video device that focuses on sound.

The Nebula P1’s standout feature is a pair of speakers that detach to create true left- and right-channel separation. It sounds much better than typical all-in-ones like the supremely portable TCL PlayCube, Xgimi MoGo, or Anker’s popular Capsule projectors.

I’ve been testing the $799 (currently on sale for $639) Nebula P1 as I travel around the European countryside in my van. It’s not my favorite portable projector, but I’ve grown quite fond of the P1 – just like cameras, sometimes the best projector is the one you have with you.

Anker’s been on a tear with innovative portable projectors that focus on superior sound, first with the $3,000 Nebula X1 and then with the absurdly massive X1 Pro. The Nebula P1 trims all that excess down from 72 pounds to 5.3 pounds to create a truly portable (and much less expensive and less capable) projector suited to vanlife or impromptu movie nights anywhere there’s a wall, sheet, or screen… and a power outlet or big USB-C battery.

In dark rooms, the P1 produces an enjoyable 1080p image which is still the standard for portable projectors in this class. Its LED light source, rated at a 650 ANSI Lumens, isn’t enough to defeat rooms filled with too much ambient light, but it still looks good inside my van during the day when tightly focused onto a nearby surface. But it’s the sound that makes the P1 really shine.

The detachable 10W speakers combine to produce a wide and pleasant soundscape. I’ve grown quite fond of the little speaker pair in my few weeks of testing. As a bonus, they magnetically attach to my van on either side of my projection screen for a clean outdoor movie setup. Putting the speakers up by the display really does help create a more immersive experience. Usually, you’re seated right next to the speakers integrated into portable projectors, which means the audio sounds like it’s coming from the side or your knees instead of where the action is taking place.

Overall the sound is decent, and about what you’d expect from speakers the size of soda cans. I also like that I can shut off the projector’s LED lamp and use the P1 as a Bluetooth speaker. The volume is loud enough to easily fill an RV or living room.

Madeleine Peyroux’s rendition of La Vie En Rose sounded fantastic, with individual string plucks of the violin coming out the left speaker, a strumming guitar from the right, and her dulcet vocals wrapped in a squeezebox oozing out the center. Bass-heavy tracks like Kendrick Lamar’s Not like Us sounded thin, however. Unlike Anker’s much larger Nebula X1 and X1 Pro projectors, there’s no subwoofer built into the base of the Nebula P1.

As a projector, the Nebula P1 is very quiet, measuring just 26dB from one meter away — barely noticeable above the din of my snoring dog. But I did all the testing on cool days so the fans never had a reason to really spin up. The speakers feature an IP54 resistance to dust and rain splashing onto them from all directions, while the projector’s more limited IP33 rating should protect it from light rain.

Anker says the P1’s speakers will last 20 hours before needing a recharge, which seems accurate based upon my testing so far. They snap together with magnets then mechanically dock to the top of the projector where they’ll charge when the Nebula P1 is plugged into a wall jack or a battery capable of 100W over USB-C. The speakers can also be charged directly over USB-C while in use, which is convenient when they flash a low-battery warning mid film.

The Nebula P1 boots into Google TV in about 50 seconds from a cold start, or about 5 seconds from sleep, where it consumes a near-constant 6W. The projector ate through 51Wh of battery capacity in one hour of Netflix streaming at maximum brightness. That means a typical 99Wh power bank won’t last long enough to view a two-and-a-half hour film like Pulp Fiction without taking a charging break.

Anker says that the Nebula P1 features Intelligent Environment Adaptation (IEA) 4.0, which means automatic focus, keystone correction, obstacle avoidance, and screen fitting. In my testing, however, it did a horrible job at detecting obstacles and my projector screen, though my screen lacks black borders which likely complicates matters. If I wanted to “automate” detection I had to resort to Anker’s clunky “VisionFit” tech. You launch the Nebula Connect app and take a photo of the surface where you’d like to project the image, and the P1 will use that input to avoid obstacles and find the screen. It’s dumb and cumbersome and I hate it.

Fortunately, the autofocus and intelligent keystone correction worked fine, with manual overrides so you can brute force the image into place when needed. Having the projector on a swivel also gives you more placement options without having to resort to a stack of books. You can also save settings into presets if you repeatedly use the projector from the same location.

In general, I don’t like portable projectors that lack a built-in battery because you have to plug a snaggy cable into a wall jack or carry an extra battery around. That’s very much the case with the Nebula P1.

While I enjoyed my time with it, I’d choose TCL’s $799.99 (on sale for $649.99) PlayCube when true portability is the priority. The PlayCube costs the same, is a little brighter, also tilts, and runs the same Google TV OS, but manages to fit a three-hour battery into a much smaller projector. It just can’t compete with the Nebula P1 on sound.

Photography by Thomas Ricker / The Verge