Broadly speaking, most projectors can be classified into two categories: those that are easy to place and those with excellent picture quality. The former includes portable projectors with lighter designs than those with high-end picture quality because the latter require a bigger footprint to pack better hardware. In that sense, projectors in the $2,500 range demand a bit of compromise. You can either get excellent picture quality with a strict placement requirement, or something easier to set up that doesn’t quite match the performance of high-end models.
It is hard to combine flexible placement with top-notch picture quality. And that’s exactly where the JMGO N3 Ultimate excels. It isn’t a portable projector per se, but in my one month of use, it is the ease of use that has consistently stood out for me (alongside its picture quality).
I live in an apartment that doesn’t have space to place a projector at that perfect distance and angle required for the best possible picture quality. There’s one spot where I place them and then rely on their digital keystone correction to figure out the screen dynamics on the opposite wall. However, such electronically adjusted picture frames usually lower the resolution and at times affect the brightness too, resulting in keystone distortion.
The JMGO N3 Ultimate is designed to avoid such situations. It has what the company calls a “3-in-1 AI gimbal system,” which is a combination of optical zoom, lens shift, and a gimbal system. And it works surprisingly well to eliminate keystone distortion.
I’ve loved JMGO’s built-in gimbal system and wrote about it when I reviewed the N1 Ultra and N1S Ultimate. The company has upgraded it this year. This time around, you can rotate the projector head automatically (controlled via the remote) to point at a different wall or ceiling without touching the unit. So you don’t have to move from your comfortable seating position if you want to move the screen in a different direction.
This happens on top of the dual-direction lens shift, which allows you to move the image up, down, left, or right by up to 130% vertically and 53% horizontally. JMGO has also added its first-ever optical zoom, which covers a 0.88 to 1.7:1 throw ratio. It can give you a 100-inch screen from as close as seven feet or as far as fourteen feet.
The combination of these three features gives you more flexibility with the N3 Ultimate’s placement without affecting its image quality. I love how easy it is to get the screen size I need on the wall. I can simply press a button and it adjusts the screen size, triggers keystone correction, as well as obstacle detection.
Like the N1S Ultra, the JMGO N3 Ultimate uses a triple-laser RGB light source, which doesn’t require any lamp replacements. But it offers even better image quality in terms of colors and sharpness. While the resolution remains the same at 4K UHD, it is now brighter at 5,800 ISO Lumens and has a 20,000:1 contrast ratio in FOFO measurement (a standardized method where the contrast is measured in projection conditions instead of darkened test environments).
For context, XGIMI’s flagship Horizon 20 Max projector also has similar specs, including a triple-laser RGB light source, 20,000:1 contrast ratio, and a rated brightness of 5,700 ISO Lumens. I could comfortably watch movies during the daytime with curtains on my windows on both these projectors. It is the ease of use that puts JMGO ahead of its competition.
Like my XGIMI projector, I used the JMGO N3 Ultimate on my mildly off-white wall without a projection screen. Most of the time, I was watching movies on a 120-inch screen, but it can go up to 300 inches and down to 40 inches.
For my setting with a 120-inch screen, it offered sharp and bright picture quality. The colors looked vibrant, dark scenes had a good amount of detail, and HDR content looked immersive without any issues. You get several picture modes with varying presets, so you can fine-tune them to your liking. I did notice the rainbow effect in one of the scenes, but it isn’t a noticeable issue.
JMGO has also upgraded the audio from a 20W to a 25W stereo speaker system with support for Dolby Audio and DTS:X. It is loud enough for a living room, but I recommend adding a dedicated speaker or soundbar for a more enjoyable movie-watching experience.
As for the rest of the hardware, the N3 Ultimate is bigger and heavier than its predecessor. You get two HDMI 2.1 ports (one with eARC support for soundbars) and a USB 3.0 port on the back, whereas wireless connectivity includes support for Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.2.
The new JMGO projector features 4GB of RAM, 64GB of storage, and runs Google TV with native Netflix support. Its software is the weakest link in the otherwise flawless device. It isn’t bad, but Google TV remains slow to respond. This issue can be solved by adding an Apple TV box to the N3 Ultimate. You can also stream content via AirPlay and Google Cast or add a gaming console to play your favorite games on the big screen. It supports Variable Refresh Rate and up to a 240Hz refresh rate (at a lower resolution).
The JMGO N3 Ultimate was launched at $3,000, but it is now available for $2,399 on Amazon, which is cheaper than the $2,429 XGIMI Horizon 20 Max.
