Chinese brand Dangbei has finally launched its Freedo portable projector, aiming to take on a cluttered list of rivals including TCL, Yaber, Leica, Anker, JMGO, Optoma and Xiaomi for a piece of the mobile, big-screen picture pie.
The Dangbei Freedo was first shown off at IFA 2024 and weighs less than a laptop and is just a bit bigger than a tin can of beans, capable of delivering 1080p resolution images of between 40-inches and 80-inches, with up to 450 lumens of brightness and around 90% coverage of the DCI-P3 colour gamut. There’s an optional D65 colour temperature setting for those who want to try and improve the picture quality, too.
There’s an integrated 165-degree tilt stand for flexibility, enabling the Dangbei Fredoo to be tilted and swiveled around, so those images can be projected onto a wall or a ceiling and even angled surfaces, the company said.
In terms of set up, this will be made a lot easier thanks to the integrated InstantPro Image Setup technology, which takes care of things like keystone correction and autofocus, ensuring that the picture is immediately easy on the eye.
Then, to take care of the sound, there’s a 360-degree sound system built into the Freedo that’s said to support Dolby Audio surround sound. This allows the device to double as a Bluetooth speaker, by the way. As for connectivity, you’re getting HDMI 2.0 ARC and USB-A ports alongside Google Cast for streaming content from your smartphone.
The battery is pretty beefy by many portable projector standards. Most devices this size tend to max out at about two hours, but the Freedo provides enough juice for 2.5 hours of cable-free video playback, the company said. That’s plenty enough for most movies, and should also be good for perhaps two or free episodes of whatever you’re binge-watching on Netflix. Of course, the USB-C port means you can simply connect a power bank to extend that battery for a good few hours more.
As for the price, you can order directly from Dangbei and get it for a special launch rate of just $439 (around £340.69), or alternatively it’s listed on AliExpress’s U.K. site for £453.59 – quite a bit more, but still a significant discount on its recommended retail price of £604.79.
