Review: Samsung Freestyle targets Gen Z, Millennials
Samsung’s freestyle projector may not be the best choice for your local cinema but could be a hit for projecting movies on the go.
Samsung’s natty new projector wouldn’t be a hit in your local cinema, or if you are needing serious screen resolution and brightness. But if you want a projector for on the go, to use while you’re camping when connected to a decent battery source, or to take to your friend’s place for a movie night, it’s a versatile full HD resolution projector weighing just 830 grams.
The Freestyle was announced this month at the Consumer Electronic Show in Las Vegas, and is about to hit Australian shores. It sits on a stand and looks more like a small searchlight than a conventional projector.
Samsung is targeting Millennials and Gen Z with this device. Hopefully they don’t regard Samsung’s depiction of them lying on the floor and watching movies on the ceiling as stereotypical, otherwise generational warfare could break out. Some of us oldies might quietly do this too.
You plug in a USB-C power connector, wait for it to warm up, and adjust the tilt so it projects onto your target screen, wall, ceiling or floor. Easy. It autofocuses and adjusts the dimensions to project a rectangular rather than angular view.
The Freestyle also has a manually selected autofocus that gives you a sharp image at short range. I found the brightness adequate at about 1.8 metres away in a darkened room during the day, but I had to place it 3 metres away to fill-up my projector screen, some 2 x 1.4 metres. This looks fine in a fully darkened room. The manual focus, keystone correction and position adjustments let you zoom out and move the image vertically and horizontally within limits.
The initial set-up is easy albeit lengthy, with Samsung and Amazon account details and home Wi-Fi details to fill in and terms and conditions to agree to before you finally get to the main menu. It’s like a smartphone. The Freestyle has a remote control, you can operate it with the SmartThings app on a Samsung phone and use Amazon Alexa or Samsung Bixby voice commands. I used Alexa to open apps of choice.
The main menu gives you access to apps available on Amazon Prime. They include Netflix, Prime Video, Disney+, Apple TV, Samsung TV Plus, YouTube, Binge and Kayo. There is an app store, but it doesn’t seem to take the choice a lot further. Local catch up services, ABC iView and SBS On Demand are not there. It would be great if Samsung added local apps.
The in-built 360-degree sound quality is surprisingly good for a small device, and there’s a far-field mic for your voice commands. You can disable the mic with the privacy switch. There’s a micro HDMI port so you can input video from another source such as your laptop or a set top box. You can also mirror content from a phone.
While it’s a plug in device, the Freestyle is compatible with power banks that support USB-PD and 50W/20V output. There is no internal battery.
You can use the Freestyle as a light. It offers mood lighting thanks to an ambient mode you select from the main menu. You can project birthday greetings or even a fake scene outside a fake window. You put on the device’s translucent lens cap to diffuse the light.
The Freestyle also doubles as a smart speaker.
I have an old Samsung TV so I tried linking it to the Freestyle using its mirroring function to watch free-to-air TV on the Freestyle but that didn’t work. However, I also own a Silicondust HD HomeRun, a little black box that takes your TV signal and streams it across your home Wi-Fi. I use it to watch TV on any device in any room of the house, mostly using a tablet computer. The HD HomeRun is one of the most underrated devices I have encountered.
As it turns out, the Freestyle recognised the HD HomeRun as an external device, so I was able to use the Freestyle to watch TV, in my case The Australian Open tennis.
There are a couple of annoyances, like having to dive out of my content to operate the manual focusing and image placement. It would be good if the remote had a dedicated settings button that lets you refocus without anyway affecting what you are watching.
Picture quality is reasonably good and you get up to 550 lumens of brightness. I found the colour vibrant, but on the vivid side, even with the standard colour setting. A larger, dedicated projector would do better, but of course would not be as portable, versatile and easy to use. In the end, the ability to carry this projector around and use it anywhere is its signature feature.
Finally there’s the cost, $1499 rrp. For that money you could buy an Epson projector with a 2700 lumen lamp, but it’s not as mobile. There are 720p portable projectors with brighter lamps that cost less. Some retailers are offering a discounted price of $1295 if you pre-order now. The Freestyle comes to market in mid February.
