JMGO N3 Ultimate: The New Leader in Portable 4K Projector Technology

Apologies to Anker, but my top pick for a premium portable projector now belongs to JMGO.

The N3 Ultimate delivers an outstanding 4K viewing experience, easily handling moderate ambient light and challenging angles. It can even compete with high-end home theater setups when the sun goes down. After several weeks of testing, it’s clear that the N3 Ultimate’s impressive versatility justifies its current price of $2,399, a discount from its original $2,999.

Today’s all-in-one projectors, especially those with Google TV integration, offer remarkable flexibility in where you can place them. Whether on a coffee table or a rock in the wild, these projectors work to locate a suitable projection surface and dodge obstacles to deliver a sharp, color-accurate image. However, this often involves digital enhancements that can reduce image quality. For the best results, positioning the projector directly in front of the screen is ideal.

The N3 Ultimate from JMGO introduces a “lossless placement” feature thanks to a motorized gimbal that allows horizontal and vertical rotation. This, together with optical zoom and extensive lens shift, enables off-center placement without sacrificing image quality. The included remote control even lets you adjust the image placement with ease, much like using a Wiimote. It’s undeniably convenient!

However, the N3 Ultimate doesn’t fully deliver on all its promises. While advertised as a 5800 ISO lumen powerhouse, I found its brightest mode to be less than ideal, for reasons I’ll detail later. In practical use, the projector outputs around 4,600 ISO lumens, which further drops to 3,000 ISO lumens for more accurate color representation. This performance still outshines Anker’s Nebula X1 flagship 4K portable projector in comparable settings.

Despite not reaching its advertised brightness peak, the N3 Ultimate’s superior brightness and impressive image quality could make it a viable alternative to a traditional television for many users.

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