Anker’s popular sub-brand Nebula has been gaining a reputation for making some excellent projectors, and today the company has added to its lineup with two new portable offerings. The soda-can-sized Capsule 3 and the slightly larger and more powerful Mars 3 Air will retail for $550 and $600, respectively, and will be available on November 20.
In a new development for Nebula, the two new projectors run on the Google TV platform instead of the older, similar and more common Android TV that many projectors have today. And surprisingly for a portable projector, they both come with Netflix built-in, with Nebula claiming they’re “the first pair of portable LED projectors to display high-resolution content from Netflix in full 1080p resolution.”
The Mars 3 Air is similar to Nebula’s Mars II Pro in appearance and features – it has a large, single lens on the front, physical controls on top, and a carrying strap on top – but with a few improvements under the hood. The Mars 3 Air is a DLP projector with 400 ANSI lumens of brightness, as well as Full HD 1080p resolution that can blow up an image up to 120 inches in size.
And like many of Nebula’s projectors, it has intelligent autofocus and automatic keystone adjustment that will adjust to plus or minus 40 degrees of vertical and horizontal angle correction. This means you can aim the Mars 3 Air at a wall or screen at some extremely unfavorable angles and the projector will straighten and flatten the image so you can see. There’s also automatic screen fit, as well as automatic object avoidance, which dims the projector to protect your eyes when someone walks in front of it.
Being larger than the Capsule 3″ means there’s room for a pair of 8-watt Dolby Digital-capable speakers, but you can also connect external speakers via the 3.5mm AUX port. The 3.75-pound projector can also be used as a Bluetooth speaker. It offers up to eight hours of playback time from its 64.8 watt-hour battery and up to 2.5 hours of movie playtime on a charge, which is three hours via a DC cable. Finally, there’s an HDMI port on the back for connecting other streaming devices like an Apple TV or Roku (should you prefer Google TV), a gaming console, a DVD player or even a computer. It also has USB-A ports if you have a thumb drive to connect.
On the other hand, the super-portable Nebula Capsule 3 has many of the same features as the Mars 3 Air, but in a 1.87-pound package. With a less-powerful 200 ANSI lumens, the Capsule 3 also displays at 1080p and features the same screen size, autofocus and automatic keystone specs, as well as screen-fit and object avoidance.
A single, 8-watt Dolby Digital speaker provides sound, which should be fine in smaller spaces, but there’s also an AUX output for connecting external speakers. The Capsule 3’s 52Wh battery also offers up to 2.5 hours of movie time and the same eight hours of Bluetooth music listening, but it uses USB-C to charge those same three hours. HDMI and USB-A ports are here too, and the Capsule 3 has a tripod screw on the bottom for easy mounting (the Mars 3 Air has this too).
- 1.
Back panel of Nebula Mars 3 Air - 2.
Top panel of Nebula Mars 3 Air - 3.
Back of Nebula Capsule 3 - 4.
Top of Nebula Capsule 3
The Nebula Mars 3 Air ($600) and Capsule 3 ($550) Google TV projectors will both be available in the US on November 20 from the Nebula website and Amazon.
