It's no exaggeration to define 2022 as the first year of Genesis when 3-color laser projectors enter the home. Prior to this, only RGB commercial cinema projectors with a price of close to one million came out, and ordinary consumers could only experience the charm of 3-color laser color and picture in high-end theaters. Nowadays, China's projector companies take the lead in mass production of this display technology with the widest color gamut coverage of mankind, and as a home theater enthusiast, I will naturally not give up the opportunity to experience and compare my own projectors.
In June 2022, Vidda, a subsidiary of Hisense, released a 3-color laser projector with a brightness of 1350 lumens, but I did not have a particularly strong desire to study, because I knew that 1500lm ANSI or ISO lumens brightness is not enough to calmly display a quality picture with a certain sense of sunlight on a 150-inch white screen, not to mention the factory nominal 1350lm, calibrated to D65 color temperature white balance and calibrated color will be lower lumen output results. (Practical experience tells us that in order to get a good look and feel of a 150-inch 1.0 standard gain white screen, the projector needs to have a light output capacity of more than 2000lm after calibration)
In December 2022, Nut released its latest 3-color laser projectors, the N1 Pro and N1 Ultra, a technology-led, unique product launch that appealed to my appetite. 4000ANSI lumens brightness, color gamut equivalent area of 110% BT.2020, △E<1 High color accuracy and 95% uniformity, these heavy technical indicators have caught my eye. This time I realized that I had to test and experience it myself, in fact, I was a little bit competitive with the manufacturer: can the price of less than 10,000 yuan really be as good as the declared indicators? I'm a personal enthusiast, and I can't be so capricious as to throw money at a back test like those professional assessments, so I can only borrow an N1 Ultra by all means. The following is my assessment syllabus, so that you can read and grasp the key points, and there are a lot of pictures and texts.
Directory:
1. N1 Ultra appearance impression
2. Objective measurement of the main technical indicators of N1 Ultra
3. Subjective evaluation of projection screen quality
4. Summary of advantages and disadvantages
1. N1 Ultra appearance impression
When you open the logistics package, the first thing you see is a foam box.
For the aerial photography industry and most drone enthusiasts, this nut projection box is all too familiar: the same as the DJI Phantom 4 drone! It is not difficult to see that the two innovative companies also located in Shenzhen are bringing world-leading technology products to consumers. DJI's consumer-grade drones already occupy more than 70% of the world's market share, so nuts should have the same innovative spirit and combat effectiveness.
Opening the package, Nut N1's unique dual-axis gimbal design and rounded shape of aluminum-magnesium alloy with abs engineering plastics impresses.
An embedded Leica wide-angle lens with autofocus and a 2.2 aperture 12mm focal length follows the Leica Summicron series name. Friends who are familiar with photographic equipment know that this is a sub-flagship lens second only to the f1.4 large-aperture top series Summilux in the Leica camera lens, which shows that the nut material is real, large bowl, and sufficient.
The front panel is a minimalist design, there is only one sensor window layout outside the JMGO logo, and as I understand it, there is a pair of ultrasonic ranging sensors to handle autofocus, and the other is estimated to be a vision sensor for ambient light and automatic keystone correction sampling of the picture. Speaking of autofocus, I want to boast about nuts, this function is indeed convenient, the menu operation click the focus is accurate, compared to other projections to visually look at the screen manual adjustment is much more convenient.
The back panel is also very simple, with two HDMI ports (both supporting HDMI 2.1, one of which supports eARC), a USB data transfer port, and a headphone output jack under the large heat dissipation grille.
On the 2nd side is the 2*10W speaker in the machine, which is manufactured by Nut and the international top audio brand Dynart, which can emit the ultimate dive to 45Hz surging low frequency built-in sound system, which is really remarkable. I accidentally chose the in-camera speaker pronunciation when debugging, and the sound playback of the movie came out beyond my imagination, which is the best projector built-in sound I have heard now, and the overall purity and penetration of the sound quality are excellent. I realized that with it, when you are camping outdoors, or watching movies in the bedroom, or explaining PPT in the conference room and not convenient for external amplifier amplification, this built-in Dynaudio speaker can also be realistically restored, "real scene reproduction".
The Nut N1's remote control is simple, and I took a picture with the Epson projector remote.
2. Objective measurement of the main technical indicators of N1 Ultra
Objective technical index measurement is very important for the fairness and objectivity of the assessment. Unfortunately, the evaluations we have seen in the past, rarely introduce the measurement methods, measuring instruments, and the transparency and openness of the measurement process, basically directly say a conclusion, which is actually very confusing and irresponsible for consumers who want to understand the performance of the equipment through the evaluation. Who knows if your measurements are scientific and accurate? Who knows if you've fabricated fake data and created false conclusions? Therefore, as a home theater enthusiast with a science and engineering background who is keen on technology, I hope to be as open, fair and fair as possible in measurement, and try to use objective and real data to ensure the authority of the evaluation conclusion.
First, let's introduce the test environment and measurement equipment:
I tested the N1 Ultra in a 24-square-meter, pure black studio at home, projecting images on a 150-inch 1.0-gain white screen. I can project a complete 16:9 picture on a single camera on the screen, or a two-camera comparison live image. I used a RED 8k Helium digital cinema projector with a ZEISS otus 28mm f1.4 lens to shoot contrasting screen video to ensure sufficient image latitude and as little color difference as possible, and a Panasonic S5 or Canon R6 full-frame SLR camera to take screen photos.
Here are the measuring equipment and uses I used for this review:
Optical spectrum analyzer: German Instrument Systems CAS140CT+ standard light source integrating sphere calibration
(It is mainly used to provide accurate chromaticity coordinates, calibrate the measurement deviation of consumer colorimeters such as Red Spider or X-Rite, and also used for verification of final chromaticity coordinate data.) For laser projectors, especially machines with RGB pure color laser direct output, their color accurate measurement must rely on the optical version of the spectrometer with a bandwidth of less than 2nm after calibration, which involves the problem of metamerism, consumer colorimeter in the measurement of the bulb machine's broad spectrum light source is not a big problem, but encounter a very narrow bandwidth of pure color laser deviation. (In addition, projection is a device that is deeply associated with light, and through the optical spectrum analyzer, we can understand the various color spectral composition of the projection output, and then understand the performance of the projector from an optical point of view.) )
Lux meter: Gossen MAVOLUX 5032B, Germany
(It is mainly used to measure the maximum light output capability directly against the projection lens, and get rid of the interference problem of curtain gain)
Color brightness meter: Topcon BM5A
(Mainly used to measure extremely low brightness value, measure projector black level value (black bit, foreigners called black level) and switch contrast.)
Colorimeter: Red Spider X + X-Rite i1 display
(Connect color extreme and HCFR color calibration software for fast coarse adjustment of projected grayscale, gamma, CMS6 color balance)
Sound level meter: Hangzhou Aihua AWA560C (for measuring the working noise value of projection)
Color Calibration Software: Color Extreme 3
Projector measurements involve many indicators, including lumen output (brightness), contrast, screen uniformity, gamut coverage, color accuracy after color correction, and laser speckle problems unique to 3-color laser projection. They represent a hard indicator of the projector's picture quality, and the rest of the rich settings and optimization functions can be continuously experienced and optimized in daily use. These hard indicators are a bit like when users choose a car, they care about engine displacement, power, torque, fuel consumption, wheelbase, braking performance; The interior, the control of the comfort system in the car, automatic wipers, seat memory, these are details that can be considered behind the main performance indicators.
Color gamut coverage (measured 105.4% BT2020 area)
In the past, 3-color lasers were expensive, and the RGB cinema laser projectors made were close to one million dollars. Does the nut N1 projector with less than 10,000 yuan really use a 3-color laser as a light source? To get an accurate answer, I started measuring using a German 2.5nm optical half-bandwidth spectrometer.
The figure below shows the spectral measurement in full white in Leica standard mode. It can be seen that the white light is mixed by the three primary colors of red, green and blue, and the spectrum of the 3 primary colors is independent and narrow, which meets the spectrum emitted by the standard 3-color laser, which confirms that the light source of N1 Ultra is a genuine 3-color laser.
In the mode with the widest color gamut coverage, I used a colorimeter calibrated by the spectrometer color matrix and measured that the color gamut coverage area reached 105.4% of BT2020, and the red, green and blue colors exceeded the color gamut triangle vertex of BT2020, which was very close to the manufacturer's declared index of 110%.
Lumen output (measured 2040 lumens)
This is also a question that everyone is more concerned about, does the manufacturer have a false mark, and what is the real brightness of the machine? First of all, the measurement results, the lumen output is 2040LM, which is close to the manufacturer's latest CVIA standard of 2200 lumens.
I used the German Gossen MAVOLUX 5032B lux meter to measure the maximum light output capacity directly against the projection lens on the screen, getting rid of the interference problem of curtain gain, and the result should be more real and credible. The measurement did not follow ANSI lumens conditions, as projecting a 60-inch picture at 2.4 meters seemed a bit dogmatic. I used a measurement that was closer to the actual viewing effect, filling it directly on the 150-inch curtain and calculating the lumen result with a lux meter reading.
The lux meter can read up to 329 LUX, according to the size of the 150-inch curtain, 1.0 gain conversion, the actual lumen output is: 2040lm. It should be noted here that different lux meter measurements will have deviations due to spectral differences, such as the difference between visible light and LED and laser. In addition, the laser drive of the N1 Ultra outputs RGB light with a certain frequency, and the pulsation of this optical power will increase the measurement deviation.
Contrast ratio (1650:1)
Excellent contrast indicators indicate excellent light control of the projector, and common contrast tests include switching contrast and ANSI contrast. Among them, the switch contrast and the black bit of the projector are strictly related, and the screen brightness measured when the panel in the switch contrast is fully off is the black bit of the projector. When the highest brightness remains unchanged, the lower the black bit, the better the contrast of his switch, and the corresponding picture performance is able to present deep dark light scene content.
In order to measure accurately, I used two methods, one is to use the Topcon BM5 high-precision spot metering color brightness meter to directly measure the reflected light of the curtain; The second is to measure directly against the projection lens with a lux meter.
The contrast calculation results measured by the two methods are 1647:1 and 1664:1, respectively, within a reasonable and normal error interval, and mutual verification, which can fully confirm that the manufacturer's 1600:1 data is true and credible. Although the contrast ratio of 1600:1 is lower than that of the Japanese reflection night projector, it is 3 times higher than the contrast ratio of the LED or monochrome laser projector in the DLP camp, 50% higher than the popular 0.66DMD panel Otto 886, and close to the level of DLP movie projector 2000:1.
Screen uniformity
The N1 Ultra features a 400-zone four-layer compound eye homogenization system, which can achieve two-stage area splitting, and achieve fine homogenization of about 45,000 tiny areas through dual-stage homogenization of angle and plane, with uniformity of more than 95%, while improving brightness and color uniformity. What is the actual situation? It just so happens that I have an 8K RED digital camera, and his 48-megapixel sensor captures it.
I used the RED monitor's false color feature for monitoring exposure, and projected an all-white picture on the screen. The camera's ZEISS OTUS lens receives the aperture to f8 while only imaging the best quality position in the center of the lens to avoid vignetting. Let's take a look at the results:
In the inner frame part is our white screen image, the white of the large area is uniform light, and the surrounding green is the part of the lack of brightness. It can be seen that the limited size of the projection lens drags down, and the brightness in the corners of the picture is slightly reduced, but the overall performance is very good. This image is a testament to the excellent uniformity of the N1 Ultra's internal optical machine.
Color accuracy (unfortunately, the firmware of the N1 Ultra did not support color correction on the user side when I tested)
I used a spectrometer to measure the projector white point in standard mode and dazzle mode, which is 6600K and 8200K color temperature, respectively. The 6600K is close to the D65's 6500K standard color temperature, and the small deviation I think has something to do with the characteristics of my screen and the random discretization of the projector's laser tube. The random discretization of laser tubes refers to the fact that if you drive different laser tubes with the same current, the optical power obtained will be deviated to some extent.
This spectrogram also clearly shows that there are 6 laser tubes in different bands of light emitting, and the manufacturer's promotional pictures also confirm the measurement results: the nut uses a customized 6P laser of Nichia Corporation, the world's largest projection laser manufacturer, the model is NUMB12T, which increases optical efficiency by 10%, reduces volume by 40%, improves heat dissipation performance by 10%, and brings 110% BT.2020 (I measured 105%) color gamut performance.
The following figure is Leica's standard color gamut coverage, visible HDR coverage p3 color gamut is good, but SDR's color gamut management is problematic, beyond the rec709 a lot.
The color gamut coverage of Leica Vivid mode is shown below, HDR color gamut coverage is still good, but SDR mode is free and directly processed according to the DCI-P3 color gamut.
The color gamut of Leica Glitch mode is covered by the figure below, and this time the HDR color gamut and SDR color gamut range have reached the apex position of the 3-color laser.
In summary, the most accurate color temperature and color gamut management are Leica standard mode, it is recommended that you choose it when watching movies, which can most realistically restore the color standards of movies. Leica's vivid and dazzling modes have increased the color temperature and gamut to varying degrees, that is, to give the general audience more saturated colors and cooler color temperatures, which is said to be more suitable for the aesthetics of the general Asian public.
Nut officially claims that N1 can achieve high color accuracy of △E<1, but due to the random discretization of the laser, the color temperature reflection of the user-side curtain is different, and the actual situation is that the technology can definitely be calibrated to △E<1 results, but there is still a gap in direct use out of the box. Everyone understands that projection is not like the self-luminous self-closed-loop display of TV, which can be delivered to the user with factory color correction, and the projection is semi-open delivery, and it is also necessary to match different screens and projection conditions in the hands of users.
I also measured the gray scale in Leica standard mode, and I can see that the linearity of the 3-color laser is excellent, 10%-100% even if there is an offset, it maintains the same ratio, and once the color adjustment can be adjusted, it can be easily calibrated to the level of 3-wire coincidence. The high linearity of this optical machine is difficult to achieve in traditional monochrome phosphor laser projectors.
Tricolor laser speckle
Nut claims that the patented LSR dynamic spot dissipation technology can eliminate speckle problems caused by tricolor lasers in a targeted manner, and exceed the mainstream level of the industry, achieving more than 95% speckle removal. What is the actual situation? Let me first give the conclusion: on the 1.0 gain white screen, it is difficult to see the presence of speckles (frosted) with the naked eye!
Through the previous test of 3-color laser spectrogram analysis, it can be seen that the manufacturer only mentioned the LSR vibration dynamic dissipation spot patent technology in the speckle reduction technology, but did not mention the multi-wavelength 6p to reduce speckle, in fact, this is Nichia and cinema RGB projector similar multi-wavelength dissipation speckle technology, this model NUMB12T nut custom module also applies 3 different wavelengths of red light, 2 different wavelengths of green light and a blue light 6p configuration.
Different colored laser tubes represent different wavelengths of lasers
Therefore, Nut N1 uses 6p laser multi-wavelength and self-developed patented LSR double dissipation spot technology to deal with this problem. In the subjective evaluation of the picture quality later, I will also analyze the speckles again in combination with the real screen shot.
3. Subjective evaluation of projection screen quality
We continue the topic of speckle, and the following set of model characteristic card comparisons can intuitively disassemble the presentation style of speckle and whether it is serious and obvious. Let's take a look at the comparison between the original image and the HDR Leica standard mode.
We can see that the HDR tuning of the N1 original factory is very good, especially the details and textures of the model's black clothes are there, unlike the smearing and loss of details like some low-end machines. At the same time, you will not feel significantly matte, but the contrast ratio of 1600:1 makes the picture look more vivid than the original grayscale map.
Let's zoom in on the portrait part and the color card section separately to see what the difference between the 3 Leica color modes.
Since the highest color gamut of the camera can only go to Adobe RGB, which is much worse than REC2020, and our rendering clients such as mobile phones or computer displays only have P3 or lower than P3 color gamut coverage, such a comparison can only be shown, really to experience the wide color gamut of REC2020 also have to look at the projected screen on the spot.
Many times, the "speckle" we see may be the color noise of the material itself, because the color noise particles are relatively fine, exceeding the physical resolution of the projection, but our video processing circuit does not want to compromise to lose details, or strive to restore the color noise in the material. The result is still color particle reduction, but it will be larger than the original film, and it will look obvious on a specific high-gain screen, making everyone mistakenly think that it is scattered spots. The screen shots of the following set of cartoons can illustrate the problem. The production of cartoons is generally very clean colors, so the restored picture looks very pure.
N1 Ultra restores the oily feeling of the night highlights very realistically, the bright street lamps and dark shadows form a strong contrast, and the dark details are there! It is necessary to commend the nut engineers for their uncompromising pursuit of picture details.
Looking at the picture inside, the sunlight outside the window shines in, and the details of the shutters in the highlights are also preserved to the greatest extent, which is impressive.
Technically, looking at a grayscale chart, it can be well distinguished from all black to 1000nit, indicating that N1U's hdr mapping eotf curve is well processed. (A little reddish in the upper part of the screen is caused by taking pictures, and the scene looks normal)
By the way, I'll explain one of the technical limitations of single DLP. Although it is an RGB3 color laser, there is no color wheel assembly, because there is only one DMD relationship, the three colors of RGB need to be illuminated in turn, and then modulated by DMD reflection and projected on the screen, using the phenomenon of human eye visual persistence to obtain a complete 3 primary color light. However, this can cause a rainbow effect, and some people can see with a high visual refresh rate, which can also cause eye strain. This is not a pot of 3-color lasers, but the solid ill of all single DLP projections. So the high end goes up, and there is 3DLP projection and 3LCD and 3LCD projection. The photo below illustrates the problem with nut N1 single dlp. I shot white, and adjusting the camera shutter speed captures the rainbow.
Let's take a look at more screen shots that can illustrate the quality and performance of the N1u. This is a movie clip of the Soyuz 7 spacecraft, the sun's sunlight shines in the cabin, reflected on weightless water droplets and human faces, and the strong contrast and complex light environment test the ability of projection restoration.
The wrinkles on the old man's face, the depiction of colors, and the details of silver hair are all very challenging to restore the projection resolution.
Note that these high-contrast images have good detail in both the bright and dark parts!
More picture quality display.
The N1u is certainly not a decathlon champion, and contrast is his weakness compared to flagship home projections. Take a look at my epson LS10500, a 14000:1 contrast ratio of 3 reflective LCD projections and N1u on the same screen:
The N1u on the left has a noticeable gray background, and the black does not draw the projection on the right.
4. Summary of advantages and disadvantages
Advantages of the N1 Ultra tricolor laser:
- The true three-color laser light source far exceeds other projectors using LED and monochrome laser fluorescent light sources, bringing color reproduction with full coverage of the Bt2020 ultra-wide color gamut.
- The high native contrast ratio of 1600:1 is ahead of all current projectors in the 10,000 yuan range.
- Excellent color accuracy out of the box. Leica's standard mode wraps around the D65 white point and can watch blockbuster movies without calibration.
- The application of dual speckle dissipation technology of LSR dynamic dissipation speckle and 6p multi-wavelength laser light source brings the smallest speckle dissipation effect of 3-color laser projection on the market at present.
- The innovative structure of the dual-axis gimbal, as well as the functions of user-friendly autofocus and automatic screen keystone correction, bring the convenience of multi-scene mobile use.
- With the blessing of Dynaudio audio, the frequency response range supports 45Hz~20KHz, and the external sound is shocking and powerful.
- HDMI 2.1 48G bandwidth video specification, not only watch movies calmly, but also enjoy low latency when playing games.
- Screen uniformity of 95%, white balance consistency is very good at different brightness.
- HDR10+Dolby Audio certification
- 4G memory +64G storage and MT9669 SoC chip provide uncompromising image processing performance and image quality.
Where N1 Ultra falls short:
- It does not provide screen color correction function, which cannot well meet the needs of audiophiles to adjust and pursue more perfect color accuracy. However, the color calibration requirements of 3-color laser are very high, and a high-standard 2nm optical half-bandwidth spectrometer is required to calibrate the colorimeter, and the general enthusiast does not have such conditions, and it is better not to calibrate it indiscriminately, directly using the original factory preset.
- There is still a gap between the native contrast and the Japanese home flagship projector, and there is still room for improvement in the future. (Mainly to find a breakthrough in the technical route of 3LCOS reflected liquid crystal)
- The LSR dynamic dissipation speckle technique can also have a slight negative effect, causing a little random disturbance clutter at the bottom of the frame, but it is not noticeable at viewing distances of more than 2 meters.
- A fixed focal length projection lens is not conducive to the adjustment of the projection screen in the fixed installation environment of enthusiasts, and there will be a small amount of dispersion at the edge of the text in the close-up picture. It is recommended that future higher-grade models adopt zoom lenses and large-field aspherical ED lens groups to further reduce the uniformity and dispersion effects of lenses.
- The current single-chip DLP technology still has the problem of visual eye fatigue caused by rainbow effect and high-frequency flickering of PWM dimming, and it is recommended that future higher-level models adopt 3DLP architecture or 3LCOS architecture to improve.
What I expect:
Nut and domestic projector innovation enterprises have overtaken on a curve, breaking the situation that Japanese and Taiwan were the only ones in the field of home projectors in the past. In particular, the new N1 Ultra three-color laser projector of the nut has a comprehensive picture quality that has been better than the domestic home projector priced within 25,000 yuan. We sincerely hope that nuts will continue to work hard and continue to develop a higher level of 3-color laser projection models that meet the extreme performance requirements of enthusiasts. Chinese consumers will always stand with you. My specific technical expectations are: in the future, more professional models after the iteration of Nut technology can take the 3lcos or 3DLP route, providing true 4K, native contrast ratio of more than 10000:1, RGB laser light source, and output of brightness output of more than 2500CVIA lumens.
Come on! Nut technology and more Chinese nuts who are unremitting in exploring on the road of independent innovation!