Anker Nebula Capsule 3 Laser hands-on review: pocketable projector

There are three external ports at the bottom of the back panel: an auxiliary jack, a full-sized HDMI port and a USB-C port. The on/off and Bluetooth buttons are likewise located on the rear, whilst the rest of the controls (for navigating menus, adjusting volume and so on) are found on the round, flat top.

The circular base is rubberised and has a threaded hole in the centre for mounting the projector on a stand.

Alongside the projector itself, you’ll find an infrared remote, two AAA batteries, a charger, a USB-C cable measuring 90 cm long (or short) and a quick start guide in the box.

The Capsule 3 uses AndroidTV as its operating system. It is especially easy to navigate with the remote control. However, there is unfortunately a very noticeable lag between a button press on the remote and the option you want showing up on the screen. Sometimes, a user may even be tempted to press the same button twice because they are unsure whether the device has registered the initial button press. This happens especially when accessing the main menu. We also wish the remote had a mute button. 

Alternatively, you can use the buttons on the top to control the Nebula Capsule 3 Laser, but this is less convenient than using the remote.

The menu structure is otherwise clean and highly intuitive: all available options are well categorised and listed. It would have been useful to have an explanation of what each option does. Right now, users may sometimes have to refer to the quick start guide to get a brief explanation of the various settings.

Naturally, you can log in to your Google account, but this is not mandatory. YouTube, Prime Video and a few other apps are preinstalled on the device, and more apps can be downloaded and installed from the Play Store (login required). On the other hand, a workaround is needed if you want to install Netflix on the device.

Anker offers an app for its projectors: Nebula Connect. The Capsule 3 can be controlled via the app. One cool feature, for example, is the ability to enable mouse control in the app.

It would have been even cooler if users were able to not just control the projector, but also have quick access to all options and adjust them in the app. But because this is not the case, the app ends up being more like an alternative to the remote control. You still have to use the corresponding menu in the projector in order to access the options you want.

In daylight, the projector is still usable for watching bright scenes. Due to the rated brightness of 300 ANSI lumens, the viewing experience stops being enjoyable at the latest when you are watching visually dark films. The Capsule 3 can nevertheless deliver sufficient brightness once a room is darkened.

Finding a good location for the device is somewhat of an issue. The laser projector is typically placed in front of viewers and throws the image forwards and the sound backwards. Unfortunately, the lens directs the beam pretty much straight ahead. As a result, the projector should ideally be placed at eye level in order to get the best alignment. But this is expectedly going to disrupt the user’s view of the screen, which means the projector must be lowered and then tilted. Though the automatic keystone correction and autofocus are invaluable (the device corrects the image automatically after every larger movement), the slanted orientation essentially reduces image quality. That said, you won’t be able to perceive any difference unless you really try to. 

Another problem this causes is that the image has “varying” sharpness despite the autofocus. The lower edge looks very sharp, whilst the upper edge is less so because the light beam needs to travel a longer distance to reach the screen. This is hardly appreciable in Android’s interface due to the sufficiently large font. However, things are different when you connect a PC. On a Full HD desktop with no scaling, smaller fonts are practically illegible, especially at the screen's top edge.

On projectors that direct light forward, it would’ve been better to design the lens in such a way that it points the beam slightly upward by default and the resulting trapezoid is aligned visually (i.e. without loss of quality).

By contrast, colour reproduction is pretty good for such a small projector. Our test results were obtained with a laptop connected via HDMI, after we had created a calibrated ICC profile. The Delta E was slightly below 2 for greyscale. In ColorChecker, the projector had an average Delta E of 3.92 and more or less narrowly missed the target of below 3. But this is definitely good enough for streaming films.

It is practically to be expected that the pocket-size projector can’t reproduce the AdobeRGB gamut. But at least it is able to cover slightly more than 96% of the sRGB colour space. And around 70% coverage of Display P3 and AdobeRGB isn’t too shabby either.

The fans begin spinning as soon as the projector is switched on. The fan noise starts off barely audible and gets slightly louder over time, but never becomes excessive. From about 1 m (3.28 ft) away, we recorded a noise level of roughly 26.89 dB at first. This rose to 29.86 dB after around 5 to 10 minutes before peaking at about 31.5 dB nearly 30 minutes into the test.

Briefly pressing the power button puts the Capsule 3 into standby mode. In this state, the button will light up orange instead of blue, and the fans will continue running but do so as quietly as when the device is first powered on. However, our unit sometimes produces an unpleasant noise (after long periods of use, then in standby) that drowns out the fans and quickly makes us turn off the projector completely by pressing and holding the power button. This unpleasant noise is unfortunately also present when the projector is restarted and still warm. At least the speaker can overpower this beeping noise, but the sound is still by no means pleasant.

When looking at the device from the back, you can see that it becomes especially warm on its right side as well as its top and bottom. We measured temperatures of up to 44°C (111.2°F) at various hotspots after about 30 minutes of operation.

For our sound test, we connected the Capsule 3 to our source device via Bluetooth. Even though we turned off the projector's laser, the fans kept on spinning the entire time (at the lowest level). The resulting noise mainly interferes with the lower frequencies on our pink-noise diagram. This means it is crucial to put the supposedly good bass clearly into perspective. We also took two measurements. The figure on the left below shows the pink noise we measured at a distance of 1 m (light blue) compared with the ambient noise level (dark blue). The diagram on the right includes the measurement taken 15 cm away (pink) from the device, as this represents our typical laptop setup and provides a better comparison.

The built-in battery is what makes this pocket-size projector truly portable. The battery has a capacity of 52 Wh and has enough juice for 2.5 hours of video playback according to the manufacturer.

We managed to get 1.5 hours of battery life from the device at default settings and max brightness, with volume level turned all the way down. If you want the battery to last longer, it is necessary to live with some compromises. For instance, there is a “Battery Mode” that lets you extend the battery life to close to Nebula's claim. But this mode cuts brightness to just 40%, which is certainly going to be noticeable. Though the image still looks fine in a dark environment.