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 ($600 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.

JMGO N3 Ultimate portable projector

Score: 9

Pros	Cons
Unbeatable physical placement options that preserve image quality Incredibly bright, daylight-ready output Excellent out-of-the-box color reproduction Very good sound for a portable Snappy menu navigation and native Netflix support	Horribly green and loud at max brightness Automatic eye protection is wonky and slow to react Clumsy menus required to swap into Bluetooth speaker mode It’s portable, so where’s the handle?

Where to Buy:

• $2999 $2399 at Amazon
• $2999 $2399 at JMGO

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

As an avid vanlifer, I have to carefully curate everything I carry in order to eke out every square inch of storage I can to support life off the grid for weeks at a time. That’s why I jumped at the chance to review DJI’s latest power station.

The DJI Power 1000 Mini is almost half the size of the original DJI Power 1000 released two years ago with the same 1kWh battery capacity. And from my calculations, it’s also the smallest 1kWh power station from the major brands that money can currently buy.

DJI’s little power station also has a few tricks up its sleeve, including a built-in retractable USB-C cable, a light that can be controlled remotely, an integrated MPPT controller that turns it into a solar generator, and the option to fast-charge off my van’s alternator when wired up to the starter battery. Hoozah!

I found myself using the little DJI power station far more than expected in my two months of testing, despite traveling with a giant 8kWh battery system. The Power 1000 Mini is so small that I don’t hesitate to grab it whenever I need to power a projector for an outdoor movie night, keep my Starlink Mini internet running in a field, or power an air compressor to inflate my tires after leaving a sandy beach.

The €579 / £449 Power 1000 Mini’s diminutive size does come with a few tradeoffs — dongles, ugh! — but I think DJI has struck an excellent balance between portability, versatility, and power.

Right now, it’s unclear if it’ll get approved for sale in the US because “the application for authorization is still pending,” according to DJI spokesperson Daisy Kong.

DJI Power 1000 Mini power station

Score: 8

Pros	Cons
The smallest 1kWh power station available Can fast-charge off car alternator Built-in solar MPPT controller Built-in retractable USB cable	Relatively weak AC output USB-C maxes out at 100W Dongles Unclear if it’ll get approved for US

Where to Buy:

• $607 at DJI (UK)

Most people still think of DJI as a drone company, but the Chinese tech giant has branched out into several product categories, where it’s introduced real innovation. For example, the incredibly small and powerful Avinox e-bike drive system it developed has radically transformed what mountain bikers expect in terms of performance.

Similarly, the DJI Power 1000 Mini resets expectations about how large a 1kWh power station should be. Just look at how it stacks up to the competition.

Despite shrinking the footprint, DJI couldn’t do much with the weight, but most of that can be attributed to the industry settling on long-lasting LFP batteries.

Some of DJI’s space savings are the result of using a less powerful inverter. On paper, DJI says the Power 1000 Mini can produce a continuous 800W of AC output (with a 1000W peak). That’s enough to power appliances like a small microwave or Instant Pot, but not a hair dryer set to max or power tools at a job site. For comparison, EcoFlow’s 1kWh Delta 2 and Anker’s Solix C1000 both offer 1800W of continuous output.

In my testing, the Power 1000 Mini could power my 800W water boiler and, surprisingly, even my Nespresso coffee machine, which can briefly pull as much as 1200W. But it can’t power them simultaneously unless the power station is plugged into an AC wall jack. Then its bypass mode kicks in to deliver as much as 2200W of output to my 240V European model, which drops to 1440W for 120V US models.

Whenever I exceeded its maximums, the Power 1000 Mini shut down gracefully with an “overload” message on the display, and a more detailed error report in the DJI Home app. It cleared with a simple on/off toggle of the power station.

DJI’s power station also saves space by relying upon an SDC (Smart DC) connector to add I/O to the unit. By plugging in a variety of dongles, the SDC port can transform into a 12V barrel jack output or an MC4 connector for up to 400W of solar panel input.

Uniquely, DJI also sells an SDC Power Car Battery Charging Cable that you can snake up to your car’s starter battery to charge the Power 1000 Mini at up to 400W while driving. That’s over three times faster than charging off your car’s 12V cigarette lighter socket, meaning you can take the Power 1000 Mini from empty to full in just over two hours of driving. I did not have an opportunity to test this.

Naturally, this DJI battery also offers several proprietary SDC adapters that will charge DJI’s drones faster than any other power station on the market. If you’re already big into DJI gear then getting one of their power stations is pretty much a no-brainer.

One of the best features of the Power 1000 Mini is the integrated 100W USB-C cable that retracts with a tug and magnetically folds into place. I like that it’s long enough to reach a table top when the power station is on the ground. I dislike that it, and the unit’s integrated USB-C jack, don’t support 140W like DJI’s original Power 1000. Fortunately, both USB-C jacks are bidirectional, so they can also be used to charge the mini DJI battery.

Power stations have had lights integrated since forever, and can be very useful at the end of an all-day shoot when you’re trying to pack up. I like that I can remotely trigger it from the app while I’m still in bed. That way I can illuminate the van just enough for a little late-night spelunking while my wife is asleep.

I gotta say, I wasn’t expecting a 1kWh battery to be so useful while traveling around southern Europe over the last several weeks. I’ve used many similarly specced power stations before, but their size never made it a grab-and-go device, causing me to carry a few smaller, but very capable, power banks instead. DJI’s Power 1000 Mini changes the equation for me, and anyone else that values portability and adaptability over raw power.

Photography by Thomas Ricker / The Verge