Introduction
The Formovie Cube is a conveyable LED DLP projector, however not essentially within the type issue one would count on. Often, transportable projectors are usually far more “pocketable”, whereas models with the overall dimensions of the Cube are likely to counsel stationary operation.
The Cube chooses to stroll the unbeaten path. It packs some respectable optical and audio prowess alongside a battery inside what we’d name a cell bundle in regards to the dimension of a bookshelf speaker. Its major meant use appears to be a film night time, maybe even one outside, because it sacrifices among the portability within the title of multimedia high quality.
Unboxing
The Formovie Cube is available in a well-padded field with a carrying deal with. Two massive items of dense foam on the within hold the primary unit in place. It should not have any hassle in delivery.
Concerning equipment, you get a laptop-sized wall charger and the suitable cable for the EU or US. Beside that in a devoted compartment lies the distant. There’s additionally some documentation and a fast setup information for a pleasant general bundle.
{Hardware}
Let’s go over some specs and do a {hardware} overview of the Formovie Cube.
Formovie Cube at a look:
- Dimensions: 155x125x60mm, 2.2kg.
- Optical parameters: TI DLP LCD projector; 1080p (1920 x 1080 pixels) optical decision; 16:9 side ratio; 8-bit.
- Projection parameters: 700 ANSI lumens (marketed); 40~200-inch display diagonal; 1.2:1 throw ratio; 4-Channel RGB LED; 25,000 hours LED gentle supply life.
- Optical adjustment: Automated keystone correction; computerized focus.
- Audio: 2x5W audio system; Dolby + DTS licensed; Dolby Audio, DTS-HD codec help.
- I/O: 1xUSB Sort-A port for knowledge switch or ethernet; 1xHDMI 1.4 ports; 1x headphone 3.5mm port.
- Wi-fi connectivity: Wi-Fi 5 (ac); Bluetooth 4.0; IR distant management.
- Different options:Distant management in field; HDR10; Android TV 9.0 with Google Assistant and Google Chromecast help; 16GB inside storage; 16,000 mAh battery.
We already talked about the Cube form of matches contained in the footprint of a bookshelf speaker, it type of seems like one too. Formovie calls the unit’s shade “Mineral gray,” and it is a very formal and non-obtrusive darkish silver on a lot of the unit, barely darker on the edges with a flowery sample to them.
The included orange carrying deal with provides a splash of shade to the combo, which we personally like. Plus, the deal with is useful and really a lot essential since at 155x125x60mm, the Cube could be large, however weighing in at 2.2kg, it’s removed from gentle and would have in any other case been fairly awkward to deal with.
Let’s briefly tour the Cube to see what we’re working with. Beginning on the entrance, we now have a pretty big lens alongside a tiny digicam.
The latter is there to energy the autofocus function. The Cube lacks a lens cap for cover, which is a little bit of a disgrace.
The again facet of the unit has a big mesh within the high half. So far as we will inform, that is the place the interior cooling fan resides. It’s positively audible on a regular basis whereas utilizing the Cube. It is a pretty low-pitched noise that the interior audio system can simply drown out, however it’s nonetheless there on a regular basis.
The I/O on the Cube is tucked away in its personal area of interest on the very backside of the unit. We do not fairly get why Formovie determined to put your complete I/O panel in such a way because it positively makes plugging and unplugging issues tougher.
The choices will not be many too. Moreover the facility jack, you simply get a 3.5mm audio port, USB 2.0 port that can be utilized for knowledge, in addition to a USB to Ethernet adapter and an HDMI 1.4 port. That is it. We hoped to at the least see a few HDMI inputs from the Cube, however maybe that is simply us getting carryed away with our calls for from a conveyable projector.
The perimeters of the Cube function this cool mesh sample and are open, at the least to some extent. We consider that that is the place the 2 5W audio system reside – one on both sides. Plus, the wholes are possible serving to with air flow as properly.
The highest of the Formovie Cube is generally empty apart from a small “management strip”. It solely homes the facility button and a single LED indicating when the unit is powered on. We might have actually favored to see some navigation controls for the Cube and its built-in Android TV right here. That looks like a significant omission.
The Cube has 4 very grippy ft on the underside. It doesn’t slide or skid round in any respect, which is nice. Additionally, Formovie included a regular mounting level, so you possibly can put in on a tripod stand or, far much less possible for a conveyable product, mount it on a ceiling. A pleasant little contact.
The distant is pretty easy. It contains your primary navigational controls plus a again and residential button beneath. The button on the very far left is for the app drawer. You additionally get a Google Assistant button on the distant, however the voice pickup and recognition had been fairly imprecise in our testing.
Setup
Establishing the Formovie Cube may be very simple. Upon turning on the unit, it goes by way of the method of computerized keystone correction and autofocus. Each work moderately properly, although the keystone correction did battle with some surfaces. Autofocus was all the time spot on. In fact, you possibly can manually modify each focus and keystone if wanted.
Projector settings
When you can function the Android TV 9 setting with out logging right into a Google account, we advocate logging into one. It will probably both be carried out fully on the machine or with the assistance of your smartphone.
Talking of setup, it’s also vital to notice that the Formovie Cube helps each back and front projection modes and ceiling mounting the unit the other way up utilizing the included attachment level.
Operation
Working the Formovie Cube is straightforward sufficient. First off you will have the choice to, after all, plug in an exterior HDMI supply and use the projector that manner. The Cube helps HDMI CEC, which is nice to see, however there may be, sadly, no Audio Return Channel (ARC) for audio over HDMI.
CEC over HDMI help
You may as well do wi-fi casting to it through the built-in Chromecast. Many will definitely depend on the built-in Android TV 9 OS to get content material.
Enter choice
The pre-loaded Android TV launcher on the Formovie Cube is extraordinarily clear and user-friendly. There’s completely no bloat and nothing to distract from content material. You’re simply greeted with the default channels interface.
Android TV predominant interface
The settings menu is clear and well-organized as properly.
Settings menu
We already went by way of the projector settings menu so we go straight to image-related choices now. The Formovie Cube has three brightness modes – View, which is the default and brightest one, Eco, which, because the title suggests, lowers the utmost brightness and Workplace mode, which curiously appears to shift the colour palette of your complete projector somewhat than merely modify its brightness.
Picture settings and brightness
The Cube has fairly quite a few pre-defined shade profiles to mess around with. In our humble opinion, the default mode seems the most effective out of all of them. When you actually really feel like fine-tuning the image, you need to use the person mode. It presents you brightness, distinction, saturation, sharpness and hue sliders, in addition to shade temperature and a digital noise discount toggle.
Picture choices
Past these, the Formovie Cube has some basic preferences, as is the norm on any Android TV machine.
Gadget preferences
Efficiency
Let’s begin with picture high quality. The Formovie Cube produces a really sharp and clear picture. It has nice colours with no noticeable artifacts like shade fringing. It is extremely versatile by way of focus distance – in our testing, it managed to focus actually shut and produce a picture smaller than the marketed 40-inch minimal. As for the utmost, we managed to get a workable picture measuring round 160 inches in diagonal in a pitch-black room. Whereas the Cube was completely satisfied to focus a fair bigger picture, the brightness of the output is simply not sufficient to make that helpful in any manner.
Talking of brightness, the marketed 700 ANSI lumens determine appears about proper and is loads for a pitch-black room. If gentle is current the Cube is just good for informal viewing or maybe a fast presentation in a pinch and solely in a reasonably lit setting with a display dimension of not more than 50 or so inches.
Because of its native 1080p decision, the Cube has sufficient element to show reasonably small textual content. We would not precisely advocate it for workplace work, exterior of journey use, resulting from its restricted brightness, although.
Sadly, the Cube is not properly fitted to gaming. It has a number of enter latency – an excessive amount of for many video games to be playable. There is no such thing as a devoted gaming mode, so there is no such thing as a strategy to get latency down.
The stereo audio system on the Cube deserve loads of reward. These sound surprisingly wealthy and full given their dimension and might fill a room properly. We truthfully didn’t discover the necessity to hook up exterior audio system to the projector for lots of the content material we tried.
Concerning internals, the Formovie Cube is working on an undisclosed chipset with 4 Cortex-A53 cores, working at as much as 1.4GHz and with 2GB of RAM. Modest specs, by all accounts, however sufficient to run the Android TV 9 OS simply wonderful with no hiccups and stutters.
Formovie Cube {hardware} specs
Plus the included {hardware} multimedia decoder inside stated chipset appears to be fairly succesful.
We tried testing the streaming and native playback capabilities of the Cube and weren’t upset. In native playback, the projector managed to play each one of many jellyfish samples all the best way as much as 300 Mbps with out dropping frames. The Cube was additionally completely completely satisfied enjoying again 4K content material on YouTube and out max high quality private rips in 4K utilizing Plex.
Decoder capabilities
YouTube and Plex streaming
It’s price noting that Netflix was not obtainable for the Cube within the Google Play Retailer. As soon as we sideloaded the APK, although, it labored completely wonderful.
No Netflix app
Battery life
One of many highlight options of the Formovie Cube is the truth that it has a built-in 16,000 mAh battery. The thought being that an inside battery pack makes for a far more versatile product by way of use instances. That every one hinges on battery life, although, which on the Cube removed from wonderful.
Formovie claims that the Cube ought to have the ability to final about three hours on a cost. That quantity does try if you happen to use the Cube in Eco mode. When you change over to the utmost brightness mode, you possibly can count on one thing nearer to 2 hours at most with a film streaming by way of Wi-Fi and the audio system firing at about 30% quantity.
Two hours is a little bit of a precarious quantity, particularly when speaking about movie-watching. Many titles are going to be longer than that in runtime, and since there may be nothing worst than being interrupted halfway by way of the film for lack of battery, we’d most likely err on the facet of warning and stick with titles underneath an hour and a half of battery.
Sadly, resulting from using a proprietary barrel plug and non-standard energy enter of 19V@4.74A, the Cube cannot simply be charged from an influence financial institution. As a substitute, we’d have cherished to see a Sort-C enter and a regular 20V ranking. On a extra optimistic notice, at the least the Cube can cost and function whereas plugged in. Charging the battery, nevertheless, is sort of sluggish.
Closing ideas
All issues thought-about, there may be loads to love in regards to the Formovie Cube. It’s decently vivid for its dimension and produces a really sharp and detailed picture. Each its autofocus and computerized keystone correction work properly and are dependable. Its audio system are fairly good and might get very loud, due to its two 5W audio system. It’s fairly versatile with its Android TV OS too.
On the flip facet, we now have to surprise why Formovie would exit of their strategy to put a battery contained in the Cube and make it compact sufficient to be “luggable” solely to have stated battery final solely two hours. Maybe there’s a use case we’re not seeing right here, however it looks like the Formovie Cube is making an attempt onerous to be too many issues concurrently. That does not imply a sure subset of customers will not just like the type of versatility it presents.
We could get a fee from qualifying gross sales.
Introduction
The Formovie Cube is a conveyable LED DLP projector, however not essentially within the type issue one would count on. Often, transportable projectors are usually far more “pocketable”, whereas models with the overall dimensions of the Cube are likely to counsel stationary operation.
The Cube chooses to stroll the unbeaten path. It packs some respectable optical and audio prowess alongside a battery inside what we’d name a cell bundle in regards to the dimension of a bookshelf speaker. Its major meant use appears to be a film night time, maybe even one outside, because it sacrifices among the portability within the title of multimedia high quality.
Unboxing
The Formovie Cube is available in a well-padded field with a carrying deal with. Two massive items of dense foam on the within hold the primary unit in place. It should not have any hassle in delivery.
Concerning equipment, you get a laptop-sized wall charger and the suitable cable for the EU or US. Beside that in a devoted compartment lies the distant. There’s additionally some documentation and a fast setup information for a pleasant general bundle.
{Hardware}
Let’s go over some specs and do a {hardware} overview of the Formovie Cube.
Formovie Cube at a look:
- Dimensions: 155x125x60mm, 2.2kg.
- Optical parameters: TI DLP LCD projector; 1080p (1920 x 1080 pixels) optical decision; 16:9 side ratio; 8-bit.
- Projection parameters: 700 ANSI lumens (marketed); 40~200-inch display diagonal; 1.2:1 throw ratio; 4-Channel RGB LED; 25,000 hours LED gentle supply life.
- Optical adjustment: Automated keystone correction; computerized focus.
- Audio: 2x5W audio system; Dolby + DTS licensed; Dolby Audio, DTS-HD codec help.
- I/O: 1xUSB Sort-A port for knowledge switch or ethernet; 1xHDMI 1.4 ports; 1x headphone 3.5mm port.
- Wi-fi connectivity: Wi-Fi 5 (ac); Bluetooth 4.0; IR distant management.
- Different options:Distant management in field; HDR10; Android TV 9.0 with Google Assistant and Google Chromecast help; 16GB inside storage; 16,000 mAh battery.
We already talked about the Cube form of matches contained in the footprint of a bookshelf speaker, it type of seems like one too. Formovie calls the unit’s shade “Mineral gray,” and it is a very formal and non-obtrusive darkish silver on a lot of the unit, barely darker on the edges with a flowery sample to them.
The included orange carrying deal with provides a splash of shade to the combo, which we personally like. Plus, the deal with is useful and really a lot essential since at 155x125x60mm, the Cube could be large, however weighing in at 2.2kg, it’s removed from gentle and would have in any other case been fairly awkward to deal with.
Let’s briefly tour the Cube to see what we’re working with. Beginning on the entrance, we now have a pretty big lens alongside a tiny digicam.
The latter is there to energy the autofocus function. The Cube lacks a lens cap for cover, which is a little bit of a disgrace.
The again facet of the unit has a big mesh within the high half. So far as we will inform, that is the place the interior cooling fan resides. It’s positively audible on a regular basis whereas utilizing the Cube. It is a pretty low-pitched noise that the interior audio system can simply drown out, however it’s nonetheless there on a regular basis.
The I/O on the Cube is tucked away in its personal area of interest on the very backside of the unit. We do not fairly get why Formovie determined to put your complete I/O panel in such a way because it positively makes plugging and unplugging issues tougher.
The choices will not be many too. Moreover the facility jack, you simply get a 3.5mm audio port, USB 2.0 port that can be utilized for knowledge, in addition to a USB to Ethernet adapter and an HDMI 1.4 port. That is it. We hoped to at the least see a few HDMI inputs from the Cube, however maybe that is simply us getting carryed away with our calls for from a conveyable projector.
The perimeters of the Cube function this cool mesh sample and are open, at the least to some extent. We consider that that is the place the 2 5W audio system reside – one on both sides. Plus, the wholes are possible serving to with air flow as properly.
The highest of the Formovie Cube is generally empty apart from a small “management strip”. It solely homes the facility button and a single LED indicating when the unit is powered on. We might have actually favored to see some navigation controls for the Cube and its built-in Android TV right here. That looks like a significant omission.
The Cube has 4 very grippy ft on the underside. It doesn’t slide or skid round in any respect, which is nice. Additionally, Formovie included a regular mounting level, so you possibly can put in on a tripod stand or, far much less possible for a conveyable product, mount it on a ceiling. A pleasant little contact.
The distant is pretty easy. It contains your primary navigational controls plus a again and residential button beneath. The button on the very far left is for the app drawer. You additionally get a Google Assistant button on the distant, however the voice pickup and recognition had been fairly imprecise in our testing.
Setup
Establishing the Formovie Cube may be very simple. Upon turning on the unit, it goes by way of the method of computerized keystone correction and autofocus. Each work moderately properly, although the keystone correction did battle with some surfaces. Autofocus was all the time spot on. In fact, you possibly can manually modify each focus and keystone if wanted.
Projector settings
When you can function the Android TV 9 setting with out logging right into a Google account, we advocate logging into one. It will probably both be carried out fully on the machine or with the assistance of your smartphone.
Talking of setup, it’s also vital to notice that the Formovie Cube helps each back and front projection modes and ceiling mounting the unit the other way up utilizing the included attachment level.
Operation
Working the Formovie Cube is straightforward sufficient. First off you will have the choice to, after all, plug in an exterior HDMI supply and use the projector that manner. The Cube helps HDMI CEC, which is nice to see, however there may be, sadly, no Audio Return Channel (ARC) for audio over HDMI.
CEC over HDMI help
You may as well do wi-fi casting to it through the built-in Chromecast. Many will definitely depend on the built-in Android TV 9 OS to get content material.
Enter choice
The pre-loaded Android TV launcher on the Formovie Cube is extraordinarily clear and user-friendly. There’s completely no bloat and nothing to distract from content material. You’re simply greeted with the default channels interface.
Android TV predominant interface
The settings menu is clear and well-organized as properly.
Settings menu
We already went by way of the projector settings menu so we go straight to image-related choices now. The Formovie Cube has three brightness modes – View, which is the default and brightest one, Eco, which, because the title suggests, lowers the utmost brightness and Workplace mode, which curiously appears to shift the colour palette of your complete projector somewhat than merely modify its brightness.
Picture settings and brightness
The Cube has fairly quite a few pre-defined shade profiles to mess around with. In our humble opinion, the default mode seems the most effective out of all of them. When you actually really feel like fine-tuning the image, you need to use the person mode. It presents you brightness, distinction, saturation, sharpness and hue sliders, in addition to shade temperature and a digital noise discount toggle.
Picture choices
Past these, the Formovie Cube has some basic preferences, as is the norm on any Android TV machine.
Gadget preferences
Efficiency
Let’s begin with picture high quality. The Formovie Cube produces a really sharp and clear picture. It has nice colours with no noticeable artifacts like shade fringing. It is extremely versatile by way of focus distance – in our testing, it managed to focus actually shut and produce a picture smaller than the marketed 40-inch minimal. As for the utmost, we managed to get a workable picture measuring round 160 inches in diagonal in a pitch-black room. Whereas the Cube was completely satisfied to focus a fair bigger picture, the brightness of the output is simply not sufficient to make that helpful in any manner.
Talking of brightness, the marketed 700 ANSI lumens determine appears about proper and is loads for a pitch-black room. If gentle is current the Cube is just good for informal viewing or maybe a fast presentation in a pinch and solely in a reasonably lit setting with a display dimension of not more than 50 or so inches.
Because of its native 1080p decision, the Cube has sufficient element to show reasonably small textual content. We would not precisely advocate it for workplace work, exterior of journey use, resulting from its restricted brightness, although.
Sadly, the Cube is not properly fitted to gaming. It has a number of enter latency – an excessive amount of for many video games to be playable. There is no such thing as a devoted gaming mode, so there is no such thing as a strategy to get latency down.
The stereo audio system on the Cube deserve loads of reward. These sound surprisingly wealthy and full given their dimension and might fill a room properly. We truthfully didn’t discover the necessity to hook up exterior audio system to the projector for lots of the content material we tried.
Concerning internals, the Formovie Cube is working on an undisclosed chipset with 4 Cortex-A53 cores, working at as much as 1.4GHz and with 2GB of RAM. Modest specs, by all accounts, however sufficient to run the Android TV 9 OS simply wonderful with no hiccups and stutters.
Formovie Cube {hardware} specs
Plus the included {hardware} multimedia decoder inside stated chipset appears to be fairly succesful.
We tried testing the streaming and native playback capabilities of the Cube and weren’t upset. In native playback, the projector managed to play each one of many jellyfish samples all the best way as much as 300 Mbps with out dropping frames. The Cube was additionally completely completely satisfied enjoying again 4K content material on YouTube and out max high quality private rips in 4K utilizing Plex.
Decoder capabilities
YouTube and Plex streaming
It’s price noting that Netflix was not obtainable for the Cube within the Google Play Retailer. As soon as we sideloaded the APK, although, it labored completely wonderful.
No Netflix app
Battery life
One of many highlight options of the Formovie Cube is the truth that it has a built-in 16,000 mAh battery. The thought being that an inside battery pack makes for a far more versatile product by way of use instances. That every one hinges on battery life, although, which on the Cube removed from wonderful.
Formovie claims that the Cube ought to have the ability to final about three hours on a cost. That quantity does try if you happen to use the Cube in Eco mode. When you change over to the utmost brightness mode, you possibly can count on one thing nearer to 2 hours at most with a film streaming by way of Wi-Fi and the audio system firing at about 30% quantity.
Two hours is a little bit of a precarious quantity, particularly when speaking about movie-watching. Many titles are going to be longer than that in runtime, and since there may be nothing worst than being interrupted halfway by way of the film for lack of battery, we’d most likely err on the facet of warning and stick with titles underneath an hour and a half of battery.
Sadly, resulting from using a proprietary barrel plug and non-standard energy enter of 19V@4.74A, the Cube cannot simply be charged from an influence financial institution. As a substitute, we’d have cherished to see a Sort-C enter and a regular 20V ranking. On a extra optimistic notice, at the least the Cube can cost and function whereas plugged in. Charging the battery, nevertheless, is sort of sluggish.
Closing ideas
All issues thought-about, there may be loads to love in regards to the Formovie Cube. It’s decently vivid for its dimension and produces a really sharp and detailed picture. Each its autofocus and computerized keystone correction work properly and are dependable. Its audio system are fairly good and might get very loud, due to its two 5W audio system. It’s fairly versatile with its Android TV OS too.
On the flip facet, we now have to surprise why Formovie would exit of their strategy to put a battery contained in the Cube and make it compact sufficient to be “luggable” solely to have stated battery final solely two hours. Maybe there’s a use case we’re not seeing right here, however it looks like the Formovie Cube is making an attempt onerous to be too many issues concurrently. That does not imply a sure subset of customers will not just like the type of versatility it presents.
We could get a fee from qualifying gross sales.
