Projectors are a unique experience. They free the viewer from the confines of the screen and can give a far more cinematic experience. If there’s anything that’s always warned me off adopting one for myself, it’s been finding them slightly intimidating. My experience of the devices in the past was always users struggling to make them work.

It was, however, with an open mind that I approached Yaber’s Ace K1, a projector that promised handy features and a versatile set of device connections. Having tried it out, I might have been converted.

What's In The Box

Inside is everything you need to get started. There's the power cord and an HDMI cable. I was surprised to see there was even a composite cable in there, which I’ve not seen in a while. There is a cleaning cloth and a lens cap, both things you’ll want to keep the device in good working order.

The instruction booklet that comes with the projector is a short volume and keeps everything to the point. I didn’t have any issues following how to get things running. There was a handy diagram pointing each device to the corresponding port you need on the projector, which made it very easy to determine what you need. I wish most instruction books were this concise and easy to understand.

Along with this came a warranty card, and a cute little branding sticker. It’s altogether well-presented, and I wasn’t concerned about the projector coming to any harm.

Aesthetics and Build Quality

The Ace K1 is a fairly hefty piece of equipment. It’s not super heavy, I was able to pick it up with one hand, but it would be a stretch to call it small. It clocks in at 3.9 kilos, so it’s not the worst.

The housing is plastic, as you might expect, though it has a few aesthetic touches. The outside has a woven fabric covering, which looks quite nice and does help the device feel a bit more premium. The buttons on the body of the projector itself are touch controls and they seem to work fine. There are grippy rubberized feet on the bottom, which are quite handy as I found I was doing a bit of re-adjusting the device to orient the picture when I just started, and it wasn’t wildly sliding about.

The projector makes some noise when it’s running. I didn’t find it particularly obtrusive. It comes from its cooling system and sounds around the same volume as a PC’s fans. Once the audio is playing, either from the projector’s speakers or through your preferred audio source, it’s not very noticeable.

Spec And Special Features

The Ace K1 is obviously designed with some ease of use in mind. There are plenty of features that make it a lot more user-friendly than older projectors and might win over people intimidated by the idea of struggling with unwieldy devices.

One of the key features that it boasts is autofocus and keystone correction, eliminating the need to struggle with getting a focused image. You need to do remarkably little. When the projector is moved, it will automatically adjust its picture after a few seconds. I spent quite some time adjusting the device, even tilting it up or down, and it always managed to settle on a decent picture.

The projector runs a versatile range of connections. It had the capacity to just read video files or photos off a USB stick plugged into the back, but can be linked to various devices through the AV or HDMI cables.

The connection feature I ended up using most was the ability to connect mobile devices. In my case, I connected an Android phone via a miracast app. This was easy to set up and worked extremely well. It was this feature that I found I got the most use out of for gaming, as I was able to essentially use my phone’s touch screen as a controller and play small-screen games on a newly expanded image. Giant Vampire Survivors was my personal favourite, though I did try out some online games to check the viability of doing so. The delay wasn’t perceivable for me, and I was able to win a round of Brawl Stars over the projector without it hampering my performance at all. iOS users can also connect in a similar way.

What It Could Have Done Better

I had a lot of fun with the projector, however, there were a couple of hiccups worth mentioning.

I got a couple of instances of visual tearing while connecting my Android phone. These weren’t present in other tests, so this may have simply been a flaw of the app used.

The bundled cables, both for power and HDMI connection, were quite short and this made setting up a bit of a nerve-wracking experience. The projector needed to be oriented high but was plugged into an extension block on the floor, and I was terrified of catching the cable. Slightly longer cables on both of those would be great.

Verdict

The Ace K1 is a solid and easy-to-use projector. It needs minimal setup and has plenty of features that make it a stress-free experience to run, but it seems to have the power and longevity to provide a satisfactory experience. You can move it around easily, and change devices seamlessly, and while it’s not small, it’s compact enough that you can put it away when you’re done.

If you’re interested in getting into using a projector, but you have paused because of the potential struggle going into the setup, this might be exactly what you need.

The Yaber Ace K1 is available now and can be purchased via the Yaber website and on both Amazon US and Amazon UK.