LG announced o CineBeam Qube (model
HU710PB) laser projector yesterday: has a minimalistic appearance and size, weighing 3.28 pounds and measuring 135 mm square on one side and only 80 mm wide at the front. (For comparison, the iPhone 15 Pro is only 147 mm tall.) It also has an unspecified number of HDMI and eARC and USB-C ports and an integrated 3W mono speaker. Impressively, LG says it can project an image of up to 120 inches in full 4K resolution with a fairly standard projection rate of 1.2. Oh, and it has a handle!
There are some noticeable downsides to this tiny projector. For starters, it emits a relatively weak 500 ANSI lumens (compared to the 2,200 ANSI lumens of the larger Xgimi Horizon Pro we tested two years ago). This means that, although LG says this projector supports HDR 10, it will not appear the same way as the brightest HDR TVs outside of a very dark room. The Qube uses the company’s webOS, which is good as an operating system, but lacks the diversity of Google TV or Apple’s tvOS.
But none of this might matter if you just want a cool and useful little thing. It looks a bit like a cross between the CGI animated cartoon characters from the 90s, ReBoot, and the crank
8mm Bell & Howell camera that floated around my house as I grew up. And although I generally shy away from companies describing their devices with terms like “elegant interior accessory,” I have to admit that the Qube draws me in, as a person willing to forgive the flaws of quirky and square technology that has a handle—like the GameCube, for example. (Obviously, the GameCube, without flaws, is just a convenient example here.)
LG has not announced the price or release date of the Qube, nor does it say if it will support features from other LG projectors, such as AirPlay 2, smart voice control or really… anything about its features beyond the basics mentioned above.