NEBULAby Anker Mars II Pro 500 ANSI Lumen Portable Projector, Native 720P, 40-100 Inch Image TV Projector, Movie Projector with WiFi and Bluetooth, 3Hr Video Playtime, Watch Anywhere

We bought this to do backyard movies and television. We live in a garden home neighborhood, which means we're close to our neighbors and their lights and have plenty of streetlights and other light pollution. Even with all that, once the sun sets, this projector does a fabulous job. We often have the fire pit going or the lights on in the gazebo, and there's still a great clear picture. The only time you really need a truly dark environment is with shows or movies that have a very dark ambience-- for some episodes of the Mandalorian, for example, we needed to kill the gazebo lights to see it well. Finding Nemo did not need such considerations. We do typically run the projector in the brighter mode since we have the ability to run power to it in our backyard. We have tested it on battery power and got about 2 hours of viewing. Even on battery power, there's plenty of brightness in the picture if you're using it after dark.I highly recommend setting up all your accounts in the projector ahead of time. It makes it SO much easier to deal with logging into all the accounts and typing in your passwords if you're just shining it on the wall in your living room the night before movie night instead of trying to set everything up while everyone stares at you! Some of those apps are a pain to navigate, and there's a bit of a learning curve to using the remote and/or phone app. You get used to it, but it takes a minute.Our setup:We project onto a projector screen (just the 100" Amazon Basic one)-- we attached projector screen mounting brackets with to our house under the eaves and attached a set of carabiners rated for 75 pounds (extreme overkill) on each end of the projector screen. My husband can pull the screen out from the storage closet and clip the it onto the hooks in the mounting brackets in less than a minute. We have a set of ground anchors near the wall, and we use two bungee cords (I used a pair of pliers to widen the hooks a bit) so that they loop around the bottom ends of the projector screen and then connect to the anchors. They're long enough that they only have a tiny bit of tension on the screen-- just enough to keep the screen from blowing, twisting, and kinking if there's a breeze.When we're not using the screen, we disconnect the bungees and roll it up, where it's safely tucked away under the eaves. We leave it up during good weather but can easily unhook it and put it away if rain threatens.We paired our projector with a cheap tripod from Walmart and a couple orange traffic cones from Home Depot so that the kids don't run into the tripod in the dark. Like some others have commented, the tripod mounting hole is a little shallow, so it can make the projector feel unstable on a tripod mount. Thanks to those commenters, I anticipated having the same problem and was armed with supplies to solve it. We bought a couple neoprene washers from Home Depot and placed them between the projector and the tripod mount. That made it a snug fit and eliminated any wobble. We leave the tripod mount attached all the time and just store the whole unit in its bag. (It does NOT come with any kind of storage bag, by the way-- we ordered the Anker one off Amazon because I disliked having to put it back in the cardboard box each time we used it.)We often sit back a good ways from the projector, and while the built-in sound is fine for me, my husband is kind of hard of hearing. We pair the projector via Bluetooth with an Anker Soundcore Flare 2 speaker we already owned and sit the speaker right next to us. They play together fabulously. There's no sound lag at all, at least none I can discern. We did discover that it helps to turn the speaker on a few seconds before turning the projector on. They pair quicker and more easily when the speaker is turned on first. And as we already have an actual bluetooth speaker, we've never really tried to use our projector as a bluetooth speaker. The Soundcore Flare 2 is a lot cheaper and more durable if my kids get a little too crazy with their elementary dance parties.We've had this thing for going on three months and love it. I did a lot of research and agonized over which portable projector to buy, and I'm really happy with the choice I made for my family. If that changes, I'll update this review, but I don't suspect I'll need to.

I have to say. This projector has performed way above my expectations. It’s not perfect. I got it on sale for $400 after tax. Like I said though I was reading those reviews from another customer it got me kinda worried. So I lowered my expectations by the time I received my package thanks to that review. That review is partially true. This projector is running an older version of Android. Think of this projector kind of acting like an old android phone. So when I read that review I figured it’s not such a big problem because it has an HDMI port and I can just put a Roku stick or amazon fire stick in the back to stream all of my app needs. I have stuck with the projector solely so far. It supports the 5GHZ band of Wifi and 2.4GHZ band. I downloaded the nebula app that the projector suggested just in case but the remote is actually able to do everything I have needed it’s a basic remote. Android supports a large amount of how should I say, crappy stuff. So I browsed through the store. I found the Xfinity app, Hulu, YouTube, Plex and others and installed them all. There are two versions of YouTube on the store but the one that came with the projector is almost exactly the same. Plex is an older interface but that is ok because it still supports and shows/plays everything just fine. Netflix on the projector was the only downer. For Netflix, it says you have to use a mouse. There is a mouse button on the remote that changes the remote buttons from regular buttons to a four way quadrant left down up right type hand. It’s a little inconvenient but it still works and I was able to stream Netflix. And the Xfinity app can play regular live TV channels as long as you are a Comcast customer which I then tried Nick Jr in the screenshots. Like I said I could have always just put a $30 Roku stick on there. The projector is natively doing 720p but the picture quality/brightness was great. It’s a much smaller device then I thought it would be from the pictures. The Bluetooth speaker is OK. Not a room filler but that’s ok I have heard teeny tiny speaker audio from other projectors this projector actually sounds great compared to those. It also supports Bluetooth so I can pair huge speakers to it if I wanted. It’s more of a volume level you can get from a newer gen echo dot which is not all that bad. It has the battery built in stays on for a good while at full brightness. You will see it in the menu it’s 3hrs at full brightness. 4hrs if it’s dimmed for energy saver. The brightness is not adjustable. It only has these two settings. Full brightness and dimmed down for energy saver. But that’s not such a bad thing. I put it on energy saver pointing at my ceiling using a tripod while watching a movie and it was still bright with all of the lights off. It’s great though. My wife was watching TV she had the lights off, and I pointed the projector at the ceiling and Bluetooth paired my Powerbeats pro truly wireless headphones to it. I watched my show on the ceiling with headphones laying down while she watched her show on the TV. The screenshots above with the mostly green pic that’s 120-inches and it looked great. Don’t expect it to be perfect. It can’t compare to the thousand dollar priced major projectors. I would’ve paid more than $400 if I had known the quality I was getting. I’m going to be using this during the summer, I have a huge blank wall on my house on the side to host movie nights for the neighborhood. And I’ll be using it in my backyard pool area as well to watch sports games using the Xfinity app or whatever so the whole party can watch. I’m glad I bought it.