Today we're checking out a wireless 120 inch laser projector that can fit in your pocket...assuming
you have decently large pockets. It's called the Nebula Capsule 3 and has
some substantial improvements over last year. This video is sponsored by Nebula,
however, I did not tell them I was going to take it apart. Besides just reviewing this
visually from the outside, you know, the image quality, we'll also be taking it apart to see
where those lasers actually come from. It should be interesting. Let's get started.
[Intro]
Let's start with the image quality since I'm sure that's the first question most people
will have. It does have automatic focusing and automatic keystone, which squares up
the image on the wall. The Capsule 3 laser projector is 1080p, however, since it's laser
and more luminously efficient than a regular projector, which we'll talk about more later,
it actually does look pretty phenomenal. My studio camera doesn't do it justice with the lights on,
but when the lights turn off it looks really, really solid. The video that's playing right
now of my off-road wheelchair company is about 60 inches in diagonal. And the projector is sitting
about 60 inches away from the wall. And even getting up close and far too personal with the
laser projected image, it's vibrant and far more crispy than I ever anticipated. With the lights
on the image is functional of course, but with the lights off it starts getting into actual TV
quality territory. Remember, the display is 60 inches, produced by a laser projector the size
of an energy drink. Nebula says the Capsule 3 can run for 2 ½ hours on its internal battery,
and produce a projected image up to 120 inches. So I backed up the projector a bit and was able
to hit about 90 on my wall before running out of room. And yeah, at that 90 we can start to see
pixels, but still, I'm very blown away with what this lazor can do. It gets a thumbs up from me.
Now that we've seen the outsides, let's see how the laser works from the inside. Of course
I'll leave the current pricing and everything for this laser down in the video description.
Inside the box we obviously have the cylindrical projector itself. At a tad
over 3 inches in diameter, it does not fit into a cup holder. I did try. But it's very, very close.
It comes with a remote control, a charging brick, and USB-C cable to power up the internal
batteries. Or, you know, if your video is longer than 2 ½ hours, you can always leave the projector
plugged in. We also have a headphone jack, USB-C port, and HDMI input. There are touch buttons
up at the top for complete operational control of the unit. The remote is not required, just easier.
Now I'm not going to lie, getting inside of this thing is not pretty. These projectors are
not meant to be opened up and after removing the rubber footpad, we find two little screws...and
this is where I make my first mistake. You're probably like, 'Wow, Jerry,
only two screws in and you've already made a mistake?' And I agree, I'm surprised as well.
I thought there were no more screws when indeed there were, just invisible. You'll
see what I mean soon enough. Instead of opening this up the easy way, we do it the hard way,
with what I call my own proprietary use-a-screwdriver-like-a-saw method
to bust through the perforated metal outer wall of the Capsule 3 Projector.
I'm not proud of this, but it did work,
and I didn't stab myself even though it was pretty close. I haven't realized my invisible
screw mistake just yet, but with the outer metal casing gone, we've exposed quite a few more screws
that can facilitate disassembly and hopefully give us access to
the internal batteries, and more importantly, the laser.
Eventually the Capsule unit separates into an upper half with the lens and laser, and lower half
with the batteries and circuit board. I'll remove a few more screws and pop out the speaker housing.
This is an 8 watt speaker and it gets the job done, but there's also that rear auxiliary port,
a headphone jack on the back next to the HDMI for connecting loudspeakers if you need something with
a little more umph. Now it was about here that I was surprised the lower plastics were still
not coming off, and I assumed it was somehow molded in place or permanently attached with
that center mounting screw. And I assumed that brute force would be required. I mean, brute
force is fun, don't get me wrong, but it also eliminates any probability that
the projector would function again if I reassemble things.
And of course, after getting it off, here's where we see the 4 additional
screws that would have allowed everything to be disassembled appropriately without any carnage.
They're just invisibly hidden under a black layer of tape. Now we know for next time.
With all the connectors removed from the motherboard,
we can pull it away from the projector.
It's got quite the heatsink on the back. I assume this is the board that handles all the HDMI and
image processing stuff. The batteries as well are down here in the bottom half. Turns out this unit
is powered by three 21700 cells for a total of 14,000 milliamp hours of juice and 2 ½ hours
of video playback. Or it can also run 10 hours just as a bluetooth speaker. These are the same
batteries inside of the Tesla Model Y, except for instead of 3 cells, the Model Y has over 4,000.
Let's find the laser. Once again there are screws all over the place so I'm not going to count
them since this guy's not going back together. We just want the laser and we'll go through whatever
motherboards it takes to find it. I'll pop out the glass lens which gives us access to the
remaining few screws that are holding the outer plastics to the Star Wars droid looking body.
A few more oddly placed screws holding the bottom cooling fan.
One thing I noticed in the 30 minutes that this projector was alive, is that the laser
does generate quite a bit of heat, and this hamster wheel of a fan helps push that heat
out and away from the capsule. The fan noise would easily be drowned out by some speakers, but yeah,
these lasers still run hot. On a traditional projector there is a bulb or light source of
some kind which also still gets hot. So heat and fans are very normal. If you remember on
the projector phone that I reviewed a few years ago, inside we found three different tiny lasers
to create the RGBs to generate an image. Here inside of the Nebula Capsule 3 though, it's
looking like we have one giant laser protected by a sticker that says my warranty is about to
be void. Personally, I think that ship sailed a long time ago, but I do appreciate the warning.
A laser projector is better than a traditional bulb laser for a few reasons.
One, lasers are more efficient than a normal bulb because it's more accurate with the light that
it emits. Less light needs to be filtered out to generate the colors. With less light being
lost to filtering, it means that a laser projector can produce a brighter image with the same amount
of electricity. Nebula says that they're capsule laser projector is 1.8x brighter than a similarly
sized LED projector. This also means the darks can get darker since there is much less wasted
light with the laser light source. The laser we're looking for is actually perpendicular to
the autofocusing lens, with a massive thin copper heatsink all of its own. Instead of
multiple lasers generating different colors, we have one laser that shines all of its light
into a rotating disk that spins really fast. The light gets reflected through that disc,
which I assume generates the red, green, and blue colors, before the pixels get organized
and focused through the lens system. I'm no expert in laser projectors, but I do think the
technology is super cool. And it takes some really smart people to think all this up.
Another huge perk of lasers is that they last way longer than typical full projectors. This
Nebula Capsule 3 has a projected lifespan of 30,000 hours...well, I mean, yours probably has
a projected lifespan of 30,000. Mine, well, mine's lifespan was about 30 minutes before
running into some extenuating circumstances. If you're looking for a 4K laser projector though,
Nebula does have one of those. We reviewed it last year and it's quite a bit larger than this
little dude. But yeah, I'm impressed. Thank you Nebula for this Capsule 3. I'll have to
get myself another one that's still in one piece. It's a full-size TV that fits in my pocket. Can't
beat that. As always, links are down in the description. If you've made it this far in
the video, let me know your current favorite movie down in the comments. And come hang
out with me on Instagram if you're bored. And thanks a ton for watching. I'll see you around.