AWOL Vision Aetherion Max RGB Laser UST Projector Review: A Top Buy

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Rating:

9/10

It takes a special home theater projector to get me to stick through a movie like Supergirl. Critics panned it for dark themes, and its visually dark tones make it literally tough to see. But when I used the AWOL Vision Aetherion Max to project it onto a 120-inch screen with Dolby Atmos sound blasting from every corner of my basement, the film looked stunning.

The Aetherion Max, with its precise picture-quality settings and sharp 4K clarity, provides an experience rivaling that of a movie theater. Supergirl might suffer from bad CGI and even worse dialog, but the projector's features, like Dark Detail and Enhanced Black Level, brought the film to life, making reds and blues pop with amazing vividness.

Priced at $4,499, this ultrashort throw model sits right next to the wall or projector screen. In some ways, it reminds me of the LG Micro RGB Evo television with highly adjustable picture-quality settings. Ultimately, though, I'm a fan of the Aetherion Max because it projects a breathtakingly colorful image.

An Engineering Marvel, Except for the Remote

Before taking stock of its powerhouse specs, I noticed the Aetherion Max's design. Shaped a bit like a Tesla Cybertruck, the silver projector has sharp edges that lend a modern look. The front of the machine (the side that faces you) has no buttons except a single white line that animates when you power it on—a detail I found to be distracting and then powered off. The other side (which faces the screen) is where you'll find three HDMI 2.1 ports (including one for eARC passthrough audio), a USB-A port for a local storage device, optical and 3.5mm audio-out ports, and a 1 GBps Ethernet port for wired streaming.

This model runs on Google TV, and that’s a relief because it meant setup only took a few minutes. Auto-keystoning with manual screen-size options worked just fine. There’s also a QR code you can use to automate keystone correction from your phone, but my room was too dark, and it didn't work for me. (AWOL Vision reps told me it should have worked fine even in a dark room like mine.)

The portable projector weighs 19.3 pounds—notably less than its 23-pound competitor Hisense XR10 Smart Projector (8/10, WIRED Recommends)—and I found it both easy to grip and move around between rooms. For wireless streaming, the Aetherion Max supports Wi-Fi 7, offering nice compatibility and speed. It also runs quite fast thanks to 8 GB of internal RAM and offers 128 GB of internal storage for storing content, though I relied mostly on streaming.

Unlike the highly rated Xgimi Titan Noir Max, the Aetherion Max's iris does not adjust dynamically as you watch content. But similar to the Hisense XR10, you can adjust picture-quality settings to match the room. For example, Dolby Vision Bright works best in a bright room, allowing the iris to let in more light.

For color accuracy, the projector hits 110 percent of the Rec. 2020 spec. That means if you watch a movie that meets that color spec, like Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 or Inside Out, you will see the entire color palette. AWOL Vision also lists the contrast ratio as 6,000:1 and lumens at 3,300 ISO, but—as I've learned from personal experience—those specs are not the final arbiter of picture quality. Many other factors come into play, including the darkness level of a room.

The weak spot here is the remote, which is functional if not impressive. I like its large Home button that’s centered and easy to find in the dark without looking. There’s also a button for Google Gemini and convenient shortcuts for apps like Netflix. My main issue is with the volume buttons, placed just above the shortcuts, but small and hard to find. Only the upper half of the remote is backlit, which uselessly doesn't extend to all of the buttons, including volume.

Don’t Fear the Bright Sunshine

The Aetherion Max's ability to work in a brightly lit room blew me away throughout testing. I watched the movie Mayday on Apple TV+ from start to finish in broad daylight, projecting the image on a wall that measures nearly 16 feet diagonally. I didn't notice any contrast problems and could see nighttime scenes just fine. The slight warping on my wall distorted the image a bit, but that's to be expected of ultrashort throw models.

In my windowless testing room, with a full surround-sound system that even includes height channel speakers in the ceiling, the Aetherion Max performed even better. To test a projector's contrast ratio and brightness, I typically play dark scenes in the movies Awake and The Creator, and I've never seen the scenes look as great as they did when rendered by the Aetherion Max. I didn’t even have to tweak the picture-quality settings (and generally when I test these specs, such is not the case).

Dark scenes in House of the Dragon, which I streamed using the HBO Max app, did require some user intervention, though. A beach scene in the moonlight involving a mysterious dragon would be hard to render even on high-end home cinema projectors, but once I enabled Dark Detail and Enhanced Black Level, I could suddenly see everything clearly, just as the TV show creators intended.

Indeed, every time I ran into a slight issue with picture quality, I found a matching setting that solved the problem. In a dark hallway scene during the movie The Batman, gun flashes looked bright red and clear, but some amber tones on Batman looked a shade too dark. Once I switched to Dolby Vision Bright, I could easily make out the grimaces and muscle flexes. Some projectors look a bit out of focus on the edges, but that's not true with the Aetherion Max; in Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu on Disney+, a snowy scene showcased the extreme pixel clarity all the way to the ends of the screen.

For games, I tested NBA 2K27 with the new Nvidia GeForce driver on an Alienware Aurora gaming laptop. The jaw-dropping graphics, which use realistic lighting and details, made a convincing case for Anthony Edwards of the Minnesota Timberwolves being in my testing room. When I tried Onimusha: Way of the Sword on PC, I was equally blown away by the crisp graphics. At this larger size, with ultra-clear pixel depth across the entire screen, every samurai slash seemed more realistic. Great for gaming, the projector uses extremely low latency—just 1 millisecond—for no lag, graphical stuttering, or delays, allowing for quick controller responses.

Sound is strong on the projector itself. When I watched the movies Civil War and Unbroken via an Onkyo TX-RZ50 AV receiver, I felt I was in a movie theater. A slight glitch was that the audio cut out when I used height channel speakers for 7.1.2 sound (AWOL Vision is investigating why).

The Aetherion Max also passed demo-reel benchmarks with flying colors—for the most part. While scenes with flowers, white mist over a snowy mountain, water in the deep blue ocean, and two horses in a field looked mesmerizing and realistic, it was tough to make out dark trees on a dark background. The skin-tone test also yielded unimpressive results. I’m not sure why, but two faces looked way too similar in a group shot, and a few other tests showed a lack of tonal variety. Adjusting settings didn’t help. However, this detail didn’t heavily factor into my overall takeaway of the projector, since it's a subtle color benchmark.

The AWOL Vision Aetherion Max is ultimately an amazing projector: a rock star of color accuracy, with crisp pixel clarity across the entire image and superior contrast. While the price is in line with other high-end models, this is one seriously capable home cinema model.

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