Lumio Arc 7 projector: The home theatre on the go you've been looking for?

Mint

5 days ago

Picking a reasonably-priced home projector in India hasn't been easy—you're either paying big bucks for the big brands, or scouring through a glut of low-cost, white-label imports with ageing software and a non-existent support setup. Ergo, many consumers forgo the big-screen, take-anywhere experience in favour of smaller-screened TVs.
After impressing with their snappy as heck Vision TV lineup, Lumio is back with the Arc series of home media projectors, packed with a refined set of features at a compelling price point, but is it enough to bring order to the wild west of the affordable projector market?
The Arc 7 ( ₹34,999) I have for review is the larger and more equipped of the two 1080p projectors in the portfolio, the other being the Arc 5 ( ₹19,999)—the Arc 7 gets brighter at 400 ANSI lumens (vs the 5's 200) and gets the louder dual 8-watt audio speakers with a massive passive radiator. The Arc series are designed in Bengaluru by Lumio and manufactured in Daman & Diu, so there's that going for the range.
Design and build
Pulling the projector out of its compact box, you'll notice two things pretty quickly. First, the Arc 7 looks rather well put together, with a sleek vertical design that takes up less space on a headboard or side table than a traditional horizontal form factor projector. Weighing in at 2.36kg, you could even call the Arc 7 'portable" enough to move from room to room or be carried along on vacations, although it does need to be plugged into a power source for operation. A built-in carry handle would have been a nice touch too, given that grabbing the device to carry it around leaves an array of fingerprints all over the matte finish body.
The other thing you immediately cotton onto is the small considerations made to the design to allow for a multitude of usage scenarios—starting with the sassily labelled 'UnderStand" kickstand which gives the Arc 7 an upward tilt towards a screen or an empty wall, to a standard screw-type tripod mount on the bottom for ceiling mounting or hoisting atop a stable projector.
As long as you're not way off center, the trapezoidal recalibration adjusts the image automatically using the dedicated Time-of-Flight (ToF) sensor to measure the distance to the wall/screen and the projection angle. Anytime you move the projector, the autofocus and auto-keystone correction kicks in, ensuring that the image is recalibrated for the new position, and there's even an obstacle avoidance feature, which detects obstructions like switchboards or photo frames and downsizes the image to avoid projecting on top of them.
Understandably, most of us might not have a 100-inch wall to spare, so an external screen comes highly recommended if you want to make the most of the setup. Just keep in mind that while Lumio has sealed off the lens to prevent dust from settling on the optical element, the external lens surface will gather dust—a lens cover, however simple, should have been included in the box, Lumio.
Setup and control
Setting up the Arc 7 is pretty much just a matter of plugging it in, finding a wall and switching it on, and the rest is akin to setting up any Google TV television, as the Arc 7 comes with Google TV on board, with official Netflix certification, no less. There's just the single button on the projector body, and the rest of the controls—including finetuning focusing around the corners occasionally, adjusting brightness etc—are via the Minion remote, with hotkeys for Netflix, Prime Video, YouTube and Lumio's own TLDR sports and music curation app. No backlight on the remote, though.
Aside from WiFi and Bluetooth, you can connect the projector to your soundbar or home theater system via Dolby Atmos passthrough via the HDMI ARC port or via a 3.5mm headphone jack, and there's provision to Google Cast your music directly to the projector and have the video projection switch off for audio-only consumption.
Performance
So, what does the ₹34,999 outlay get you with the Arc 7? This is a Full HD 1080p (1920×1080) resolution, with 400ANSI lumens brightness as measured on the screen (not at source) and HDR (HDR10 and HLG) support. What this translates to is an edge-to-edge sharp, vibrant image across a sizable 100-inch canvas (from about 9 feet away) that's bright enough for a room with some amount of ambient light. Dim the lights, switch to some HDR content, with the higher contrast levels and richer colors, and the Arc 7 shows off what it can do, with none of those tinting issues that plague HDR content on budget projectors. There's a unique pleasure in watching cinematic experiences such as Top Gun: Maverick on a larger-than-life screen, and I'm here for sensibly priced offerings that bring big-screen entertainment to the masses.
And while the brand suggests that a plain white wall would suffice, get that 120-inch 16:9-aspect ratio pull-down screen, you won't regret it. The Dolby Audio speaker setup is loud enough for a medium sized room, allowing you to carry the Arc 7 for meetings or vacations and not need a Bluetooth speaker for most content consumption. No 120Hz support, and while the Full HD resolution will work for most at this price point, I'm hoping for a competitively priced Lumio Arc (maybe a Lumio Arc 9?) somewhere in the future that offers a strong 4K projection experience.
The best part is that since it runs the Google TV platform natively and not a retrofitted version of Android, there's no issues with app compatibility, including full HD/HDR playback on Netflix, a rarity in most budget picks. Coming off the brand's Vision TVs, the Arc 7 doesn't feel quite as hyper-snappy—to be fair, neither does it claim projector speed records like the TVs do, but it does seem to have ensured there are no rough edges to the software experience.
Verdict
For its price, particularly if you can avail the introductory offers that bring the overall price down to ₹29,999, the Lumio Arc 7 checks off a few boxes solidly—a refined software experience including a bunch of automatic setup adjustments, good audio and a strong plug-and-play home media setup, backed by a network of 200+ service centers—all of which will undoubtedly encourage folks to take the plunge…or at least consider this strongly against an anchored-in-place 42-inch smart television.