Kernic

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Home Cinema on a Budget? The VOPLLS 18000L Reviewed

· by Kernic
Category: Reviews
Tags:#review, #hardware, #budget

A TV doesn't fit in our bedroom, but with a projector, we could project movies and shows onto the sloped ceiling. At least, that was the idea that came to me when I saw the Black Friday deal for the VOPLLS 18000L. Is the projector worth the 64 euros?

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I have to admit, I’ve never seriously looked into projectors before. You can spend a ton of money on these devices, depending on your requirements for resolution, brightness, distance, and so on. The VOPLLS 18000L was on sale for 64 euros; it’s currently priced at 130 euros. For that price, I wasn’t expecting much, and on paper, the specs aren’t outstanding either. The resolution of 1920x1080 pixels is standard Full HD, the brightness claim of 15,000 lumens is probably a massive exaggeration, and the housing is simple plastic. At least it has WiFi and Bluetooth on board. Projecting an image onto the sloped ceiling from two meters away in a dark room should be possible, right?

What’s in the Box

Inside the cardboard box, you’ll find the device itself, the power cable, a mini tripod, an HDMI cable, and a remote control. The projector itself is surprisingly small. It’s nothing like the huge bricks you know from school, university, and the office. It’s more like half a shoebox in size. Very nice, which makes the device space-saving and flexible to use. The included tripod helps with this, but it needs to be positioned correctly to be stable. The WiFi was set up quickly. However, I couldn’t find a use for it, as the system is too basic. Instead, we connected our FireTV stick to the HDMI port. Since the USB port doesn’t supply enough power, the stick had to be powered separately, but it works. This also makes the remote control obsolete.

The Projector in Action

Turn it on, and the image appears on the wall. Distorted and blurry. The latter is corrected by turning the lens, the trapezoidal shape with a dial on the back of the housing. This doesn’t work wonders, but you can compensate for an angle of 15° in both vertical directions. Up to a projection distance of two meters, the image could be made relatively sharp. It’s difficult for us to judge the sharpness, as we’re projecting the image onto woodchip wallpaper. But the picture is actually really good there.

What’s not good is the sound. It might be sufficient for a slideshow, but you won’t get any movie or TV show enjoyment out of it. Thanks to the 3.5mm jack and Bluetooth 5.1, you can connect external speakers. We did this via Bluetooth, which significantly improves the sound quality. Now, nothing stands in the way of our cinema experience. The picture is much larger than our TV, and the quality is okay with enough darkness.

Conclusion

Sure, the VOPLLS 18000L is definitely not a world-class projector. The 1080p resolution is on the low end, the 15,000 lumens are an absolute lie, and the speakers are functional at best. So no, you don’t get a high-quality home cinema for little money.

But you have to remember that the device cost less than 65 euros. For that price, I was even pleasantly surprised. You can get a pretty good picture and have a small projector that you can also take with you to family gatherings or on a camping trip. But you shouldn’t forget the speaker, otherwise the enjoyment will suffer significantly.