The best home cinema projectors for cosy nights in

When switched off, you’d mistake the Horizon Ultra for a boxy Bluetooth speaker, but power it up and the motorised cloth-covered cover slides effortlessly away. It’s a good-looking unit that’s small enough to disappear on a sideboard until needed. But crucially, it’s big enough to deserve the Oscar for best compact home projector.

This 4K design boasts a searingly bright 2,300 ISO lumen (equivalent to 2,875 ANSI lumens) output and we’ve yet to find a projector at this price point with such depth of colour and vibrancy.

It’s good with a bit of ambient light too, but shines when you close all the curtains and just concentrate on the content. If you’re replacing a TV, the 80-inch screen is beautiful even with the lights on, but for super-sized 200-inch displays, a dark room is best. It’s also one of the easiest Android projectors to set up, taking no more than 15 minutes. This is thanks in part to the automatic keystone correction and focus adjustments. It can even detect wall colours and adjust the image to compensate if you’re not projecting onto a screen, and tweak brightness levels if it detects ambient light.

Dolby Vision is also included, which, alongside great connections, and the Harman Kardon stereo speakers, ensures the sound keeps pace with the screen. It’s a little annoying that Netflix isn’t included as standard, but you can download it, although not the 4K version. If this is essential, we recommend adding a streaming device to the setup.

And finally, XGIMI has used a combination of laser and LED for the lens here, which will last up to 25,000 hours compared to 5,000 for a regular lamp. It’s a great value, long-lasting one-box home cinema.

We love the latest addition to Nebula’s lineup and think it’s a great pick for those after 4K quality in their home cinema. On test for our Nebula Cosmos 4K SE review, we found it strikes a good balance between performance, features, portability, and value. It will set you back £1,299 at full price, but it’s such a compelling choice because it packs in extras that you’d usually have to pay hundreds more to get.

Essentially, anyone looking to create a genuine cinema experience at home without overcomplicating things, will appreciate this. Its standout features include built-in streaming via Google TV, automatic picture adjustments, and Dolby Vision support.

Compared to the Cosmos Laser 4K, the SE makes clear improvements. The built-in Google TV eliminates the need for a dongle, simplifying setup and delivering compatibility with Netflix and other popular apps. Dolby Vision enhances the viewing experience with richer details and better contrast, while smart upgrades like automatic keystone correction, autofocus, and “Wall Colour Adaptation” make it super easy to get a great picture, no matter your room setup. It’s not only more versatile but more future-proof too.

Yes, brightness has been slightly reduced to 1,800 lumens, but unless you plan to watch in a very bright, sunlit room, you’ll never notice. Sound quality is solid too, with room-filling audio from the built-in speakers.

All in all, the Cosmos 4K SE is an ideal choice for movie nights, streaming, and even gaming. While the Laser 4K remains available, the SE now feels like the better buy, offering more features and convenience at a lower price.

As we discovered while testing the top battery-powered projectors, Nebula has nailed the brief when it comes to simple, intuitive and hugely entertaining portable projectors. The Cosmos Laser 4K is the brand’s largest and most powerful design, and while it lacks a battery, it does have 2,200 lumens of brightness, 4K resolution and brilliant automatic setup.

To get started, you need to plug the separate streaming stick into a hidden HDMI slot in the back, but once you’ve done this, and downloaded the Nebula Connect app, the projector does most of the work for you. The app makes inputting passwords for wifi and streaming platforms easy. Services such as Disney+ and Netflix are downloaded to the projector automatically.

The image quality is gorgeous, and while it’s most impressive in a dark room, with 2,200 lumens of brightness, we were able to enjoy it with the curtains open too. This also makes it a good option for garden movie nights, although you will need to run a mains cable from the house. Watching the all-action movie John Wick 4 we did notice it struggling to keep up smoothly with some of the fast movement, but this shouldn’t be a deal breaker and won’t be a problem when watching most shows and films.

The big-screen enjoyment is well supported by four great speakers that manage to make the most of the deep rumble of action sequences and whispered voices with ease. Sometimes we forgot that the sound was coming out of a single box!

Measuring no bigger than a generous box of chocolates, the Atom is an unfathomably small, yet impressively powerful laser projector, and remarkably, if you live in a mansion, you’ll be able to indulge in a huge 4-metre screen. Maximum resolution is 1080p Full HD, but given it’s almost half the price of many 4K equivalents, we don’t think many casual users will mind.

Sadly, we don’t live in a house with a spare four-metre wall, but we can confirm that our 100-inch (2.5-metre) display popped with vibrant colours. We were surprised by how good the display looked, and in the dark, it actually gave our 4K TV a run for its money.

Being such a small box, the sound quality is not as good as on, say, the Nebula Cosmos 4K, but it’s not terrible either, with enough presence for a medium-sized living room.

Setting everything up was also relatively painless – although be warned, the batteries for the remote aren’t included, and there are no buttons on the projector, so don’t lose it! The home screen is instantly familiar to Google users, and it has easy access to most streaming services including YouTube, Netflix, Apple TV+ and Prime Video.

Ultra-short throw projectors like this excellent Epson model can create an over 100-inch image when placed just centimetres from the wall. With superb brightness and 4K resolution, they offer a genuine alternative to a big-screen TV, especially if you don’t actually want a telly always on display in your home.

We positioned this attractive, cloth-fronted design on a sideboard and were able to project a 100-inch screen when just 58cm away from the wall, and an 80-inch picture from just 45cm, which is still huge compared to most TVs.

With the equivalent of 4,500 ANSI lumens, this laser design is also extremely bright, and combined with a contrast ratio of 2,500,000:1, it produces extremely lifelike images even with some ambient light leakage. As with all projectors, dark rooms look best, but we enjoyed using it for regular TV viewing with the main lights on.

It is expensive compared to even the biggest new OLED TV, but we enjoyed testing it, both as a TV and with the Xbox for gaming and Blu-ray viewing. That’s all thanks to the simple setup, familiar Android TV interface and excellent Yamaha speakers. Because they’re positioned in front of where you sit, dialogue is good and convincing, while the subwoofer helps bring action sequences to life.

With a mix of aluminium and teal-coloured plastic, there’s something retro about the C1’s cubic design. We like it but appreciate it may be a bit industrial for some design tastes. It’s quite similar in size, shape and features to the XGIMI Horizon Ultra, although the latter just pips it for image quality.

What’s undeniable, however, is just how simple the C1 is to set up. Turn it on and the projector lens will automatically adjust the picture to the surface it's being projected onto, ensuring it's straight and focused. There’s also obstacle avoidance – the projector will tweak the screen size to avoid your plants and pictures.

Hisense has its own user interface, VIDAA, which is fairly intuitive, although we prefer Android TV. Impressively, both the Netflix and BBC iPlayer apps are included, as well as Amazon Prime Video, Disney+ and Apple TV+, so all your streaming needs should sorted.

As for enjoying all this content, the image got to 100 inches in our dark test room and was super sharp and bursting with vibrant colours. At times, it felt almost a little bit too bold, but there are manual controls if you want to tweak them. And finally, the JBL speakers are a treat. We felt immersed in the content thanks to the quiet fan noise, which is rarely the case with compact projector designs.

For anyone after a quality projector at a sensible price, we recommend looking at the Xgimi MoGo 3 Pro. It’s compact and available either with or without its “PowerBase” stand, which doubles as battery to fuel 2.5 hours of watching. Even without the PowerBase, it works with USB-C power banks, so it is a versatile option.

We like how quick and easy it is to adjust the angle, and that the picture will automatically correct with speedy keystone, obstacle avoidance and autofocus that happen in seconds without you needing to tweak them. The built-in Google TV interface also means that every app you might need is available, so we found it easy to stream a film on Netflix, for example.

The MoGo 3 Pro is capable of beaming a 120-inch image, with the ability to connect devices via USB-C or Micro HDMI, and it has two 5W built-in speakers. This means it’s a decent for sound quality, but we do think it’s worth connecting a Bluetooth speaker to improve this. Its 400 ISO lumens isn’t as bright as the best, but it looks great in a dark room and has a 1080p Full HD resolution for a detailed picture.

We’re impressed by the quick setup and easy streaming, and there’s not much about the performance that disappointed us, especially at this price! The port selection is a bit limited, and it would be even more useful with a built-in battery, but we still love the compact size and how all the apps and most needed capabilities are available without you needing to connect a streaming device. If you just need a super portable and easy-to-position projector that’s fun to use, this is a top pick.

Billed as the world's first Google TV LCD projector with certified Netflix, the curvaceous Xming Page One from Chinese newcomer Formovie has plenty to offer without blowing the budget. If you’re looking for an occasional projector that takes up very little space but has enough power to produce a detailed image, it could be your ideal choice.

With 500 lumens, it has good brightness, especially in a dark room, and while a contrast ratio of 2000:1 isn’t high, we enjoyed the 1080p Full HD image quality on offer. Compared to the much bigger and costlier options here, the maximum screen size of 120 inches feels meagre, but as we mentioned, think of this as a fun alternative to TV viewing, and you won’t be disappointed.

As we’ve come to expect from this style of compact projector, there’s autofocus and keystone correction when you switch it on, and the decision to use Google TV is a smart one as it is supremely easy to set up and start watching in just a few minutes.

If you're after a simple projector that's easy to move from room to room, we're fans of the Elfin Flip from Xgimi. It has a neat flip-out design and folds down to about as thin as a chunky book for storage. It's ideal if you don't want something that takes up loads of space. This hinged stand design makes it ideal for a smaller room, for students, or for slipping into a backpack.

The Elfin Flip is one of Xgimi's most affordable projectors, at £339, and it delivers Full HD picture quality, decent sound from its built-in speakers, and 400 lumens of brightness. We've found it straightforward, with autofocus, automatic keystone correction and screen alignment, plus built-in apps for Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and YouTube.

It doesn't have other apps, though, or the ability to add more without the addition of a streaming device. If you're after an option with built-in access to ITV, Apple TV+ or BBC iPlayer, then it's worth looking at other options. Also, despite its portable size, it's worth noting that this doesn't run on battery power.

On test, we used it to watch a documentary on Netflix and several YouTube videos, and found the image quality and auto adjustments impressive. The Dolby audio support through its dual 3W speakers means it sounds good. But it does have noticeable fan noise and the built-in speakers of other projectors sound much better.

We like the minimal design, the remote control, and the hinge that gives you 150 degrees of height adjustment. It isn't the most capable projector and only has a handful of built-in apps, but the ability to connect other devices via the USB or HDMI ports is handy.