Nebula Capsule Air reviewed: pocketable entertainment

Most projectors aren’t portable, but the Nebula Capsule Air shines a light on portable entertainment in a clever way.

Not everyone has a cinema at home, but thanks to price drops and changes in technology, more people can see projectors in spaces. They’re not just for a small room in the house built to be a cinema, but rather any space that can hold them.

Laser TVs projectors work as a replacement for TVs in some rooms, and laser projectors work against darker walls in your home, maybe even a colour feature wall. These days, they’re the expensive kind, but we’re also seeing a new variety pop up: portable projectors.

Made to be small and able to carried between rooms of the house, portable projectors allow you to take your entertainment not just in between rooms, but to other people’s places. They’re a portable cinema experience and impromptu big screen TV when you go camping or visit the relatives, and a more immersive view than what looking on a tablet offers.

Portable projectors come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, but Anker’s Nebula brand might have the most compact take on projector portability yet.

The Nebula Capsule Air is so small you can practically pocket it, and provided it’s dark enough and you have an internet connection, get stuck into entertainment with no worries whatsoever.

What is the Capsule Air?

A compact projector inside packaging not much bigger than a can, you may as well call the Capsule Air pint-sized and portable entertainment, because that’s really what it is.

Tiny and weighing only 650 grams, the Air is basically as compact as projector as it gets without being a “pico projector”, which is to say it’s so compact, it may as well fit in your pocket or another device like a tablet.

Rather, the Nebula Capsule Air is that little bit bigger while still being compact, and isn’t much larger than a soft drink or beer can. Inside is a 150 lumens LED projection system capable of running at 720p and shining a screen size ranging between 30 and 80 inches.

The system has a small speaker inside, too, basically providing one 5 watt burst of sound, and there’s also a smart TV operating system running Google TV and a built-in battery good for up to two hours, but that can be easily charged using the included Type C USB port at the back alongside an HDMI port found there, as well.

Anker’s Capsule Air includes some automatic keystone correction and picture correction, thanks to some built-in tracking in the projector itself, while the top of the projector includes touchscreen controls, as well as a remote to use the hardware with.

If you have a phone — and let’s face it, you have a phone — you’ll be able to use the app with Bluetooth on iOS and Android to control the projector without the remote.

It also comes with an accessory that allows you to mount the Capsule Air on a small stand of sorts, which can be easily aimed a little higher or at an angle, or even held on a hook on the wall.

What does it do?

In what is literally a can of light, the Capsule Air can let you bring some media with you and shine it out on a wall in a darkened environment. Close the blinds and you have an instant little cinema, albeit one at a slightly soft 720p.

There’s 16GB of storage inside with 12GB available to you, so it’s not as if you’re going to carry heaps of videos with you.

Fortunately, it also has Google TV built into the projector, so you also don’t need to. Simply connect the Capsule Air to your WiFi — either at home or via the portable hotspot from your phone — as well as via your Google account, and then grab the apps and use your Google TV projector.

There are soft buttons on the top of the projector, largely to let you get around the interface when the remote isn’t nearby, though you can use your phone in a pinch, too.

Of course, there’s also the physical remote which has buttons for Amazon Prime, Netflix, and YouTube, plus the usual assortment of directional controls, and even a button to switch the Capsule into its auto-keystone adjustment tool. We found it works best when your projector is dead on facing a wall.

However, that might not be the case, and if you end up aiming the Capsule Air at an angle, you’ll find the automatic keystone correction is less useful.

In these situations, be thankful there’s a manual mode to let you override things, though it does tend to reset itself often, typically when the projector is moved. You can turn this feature off, so you might want to do that, otherwise keeping that remote handy for easy manual keystone adjustments becomes just part of the experience, too.

Does it do the job?

Thanks to a flat bottom on the can-like design, you can easily leave the Capsule Air aimed at a wall and get a projector experience anywhere. While it could do with more light, it’s a handy way to bring entertainment to more places.

Take the kids rooms for example: leave the projector on a shelf or change table, and you can have an instant compact cinema experience away from the main living spaces.

While we’re not going to advocate for leaving the kids in front of the telly, giving the kids their own impromptu cinema experience is a bit of a treat, and one that the Capsule Air delivers in spades. The sound could offer a little more depth, sure, but the experience is excellent and easy to make happen.

Interestingly, Anker and Nebula have actually given the Capsule Air almost a clever hidden superpower we didn’t expect it to have: support for eARC. The current updated technology for HDMI, Audio Return Channel or “ARC” means being able to plug in a soundbar over HDMI and have it work with better sound.

We plugged it into the Sonos Arc (no relation), and it improved the sound monumentally.

What does it need?

But what does the whole thing need? Power, both in the light department and on the Android TV side of things.

For instance, the 150 lumens maximum from the Capsule Air can be slightly dim dependent on how much light your room has. It also means that a decent amount of brightness is likely to come only when the projector is at point blank to the wall.

You’ll likely position the Capsule Air several metres back to give you a bigger picture, and that works, but it can need a little more light to work with. Sometimes it feels blurry even after directly sharpening, too, something that could be a result of the lack of power.

It’s a similar picture with the built-in battery, which maxes out at 1.5 hours and runs better if you bring a sizeable power pack. Grab a 27000mAh to keep the entertainment going for a few hours, which is what we did, pairing the sizeable Anker Prime to the Capsule Air. It made sense at the time.

The instance of Android could also be a little faster, and can be slow. But more than that, the apps can’t always be found. At least one instance of Netflix disappeared from the Google Play Store, and we’re not entirely sure why. It returned shortly after that all of a sudden.

Is it worth your money?

When all the stars align and the apps work well, the $799 price tag of the Capsule Air isn’t actually a bad price for what it is: pocketable entertainment you can take anywhere.

It’s a handy solution for the family when they’re staying somewhere else, such as at the relos, or even a handy way to keep them busy in their own room. Simply pull down the blinds, set up the projector, and turn their bed into a couch of sorts. Instant entertainment.

While $800 can seem like a lot to keep the kids busy, if you fancy a projector for the living space that can be used in more places than just one, the investment makes both sense and cents.

Yay or nay?

It’s nice to see projectors fall in price, making them that little bit easier to take home. Indeed, Anker’s Nebula brand has been helping to make that happen for a couple of years now, and the Capsule Air is probably its friendliest take yet.

Small, easy, and near pocketable, you’d probably look a little strange if you transported this projector in your pockets, but it’s doable all the same.

There are ways it could be improved, for sure, but the Capsule Air entertainment anywhere, which is the point. It’s pocketable entertainment made easy.