Dangbei Projector F1C hands-on experience: a cost-effective home projector "small steel cannon"

As users' demand for large-screen picture quality increases, the home projector market has gradually become hot. In addition to the old manufacturers who continue to work hard, there are also new players. Earlier, there was Xiaomi, a mobile phone hardware manufacturer that crossed over, and later there was Dangbei, which started out in the TV application market. By launching projection products, all parties want to take the lead in the scene of large screens in the living room.

Compared with traditional TV products, projection products have more room for size and are portable. In recent years, projection products have also gained more favor among young people. However, major manufacturers have launched a wide variety of projector products, and it is difficult for users to make an easy choice after comprehensive comparison. The product I got today is the F1C projector product recently launched by Dangbei. If you are looking for a projection product with reasonable quality, you might as well take a look at this new product.

Exquisite appearance

As usual, let's start with the appearance. As a projector product, Dangbei F1C still inherits the genes of Dangbei's flagship product F1, and the two are not much different. Its body is mainly made of ABS plastic and mesh cloth. The bright surface style is tough, the cut surface is very finely polished, and the side is made of gray mesh cloth to blend. It can give people a sense of refinement and high-end in both hand feel and visual effect.

The front of Dangbei F1C is a projection lens (sapphire lens) and a lens module for realizing senseless auto focus, which is the main selling point of Dangbei F1C. Previously, most projector products used the focusing method of displaying a single image, and then the focusing motor continuously fine-tuned the focal length to achieve the clearest picture.

However, the solution adopted by Dangbei F1C this time is dual TOF+ camera shooting, which has higher focusing speed and accuracy. As a kind of depth camera, TOF (Time of Flight) has been fully used in mobile phones and other products before, and I believe users should be familiar with it. When the projector lens starts working, the side TOF lens module (the long strip area on the left) will automatically emit near-infrared light. When it touches the wall, the light will be reflected back to the receiver of the TOF module, so as to calculate the distance between the two through the reflection time.

After getting the accurate distance, the right lens module can focus accurately. From the process step point of view, this set may be quite cumbersome. But in actual experience, from the start of the lens to the completion of focusing, the time consumed will not exceed 1 second. Compared with repeatedly debugging the screen for focusing, this method is faster and allows users to easily complete the focus without "perception".

In addition to the seamless focusing experience, automatic keystone correction is also the main point of Dangbei F1C. While most manufacturers previously adopted digital keystone correction, Dangbei adopted the chip-level automatic keystone correction solution of Japan's i-Chips, which is more accurate than the digital interpolation algorithm. This time, Dangbei F1C continues this point to build its core competitiveness.

This whole system relies on sensors such as the front TOF+ camera lens module, so the depth information will undoubtedly be more capable of restoring the scene, and the built-in algorithm will also automatically correct it on this basis. However, perhaps because it is a beta version, the automatic keystone correction effect is fast and obvious, but it is not at the same height in some areas, so manual fine adjustments are still required. In this regard, Dangbei also stated that the algorithm is being debugged and updates and optimizations can be expected in the future.

Although the left and right sides of this projector are very similar, and it inexplicably gave me the charm of an "Apple grater", from the effect point of view, its left side is the speaker outlet, and the right side is the heat dissipation hole. When I first saw the sound output on one side, I thought its sound effect was just barely good, but after turning on the surround sound in actual experience, the audio-visual experience brought by the large screen quality is still shocking enough. It is worth mentioning that Dangbei F1C supports Bluetooth connection as a speaker, which means that you can use it directly to listen to music in your spare time, which is worthy of praise.

There is a large heat dissipation area on its left side, which mainly relies on copper tubes, heat sinks and fans. When it is actually running, the sound of Dangbei F1C is still relatively small and does not affect the normal audio-visual experience.

The upper left corner of the back of Dangbei F1C is the power button, and the startup logo will be surrounded by a red circle. The lower part is the external amplifier interface, LAN port, HDMI interface, two USB 3.0 interfaces and power interface. In terms of daily use, whether it is connecting a network cable, external storage, or switching signal sources, it can meet your requirements.

At a glance at the bottom, there are pads around it and a screw hole in the middle for installation.

The remote control that comes with Dangbei F1C supports voice button wake-up, which is very convenient in use. In addition, its side button supports auto focus by long pressing, and calls out settings by short pressing. In terms of daily debugging functions of the projector, Dangbei has basically integrated them into the remote control buttons, so there is no need to say more about its convenience.

Graphics

One of the core indicators of projection products is brightness, and this Dangbei F1C has 1300 ANSI lumens, which is officially claimed to be equivalent to 3600 lumens of light source brightness. Compared with the traditional measurement of light source brightness, lumens, projector products are more likely to use ANSI brightness, which achieves a more accurate measurement effect by calculating the average brightness of different measurement points. Among the current projector brands, in the 4000~5000 yuan price range, the ANSI brightness is roughly maintained at 1200~1400, and this Dangbei F1C is among them.

Without further ado, just look at the screen capture for the actual effect.

In the pure color image test, the color saturation is relatively high, and the brightness of the center and surrounding areas is relatively uniform.

The font details are still OK when viewed from a distance, and there is no blurring as is usually expected.

This time, Dangbei F1C is equipped with Mstar938 chip and storage specification is 3+32G. The projection resolution is 1080P and supports 2K and 4K content decoding, so you don’t have to worry about the problem that video resources cannot be played. In terms of the overall picture, Dangbei F1C has excellent performance. As far as the projector is concerned, it can bring users a good viewing experience in terms of color and details.

As a user who is used to the traditional large-screen TV, I am more attracted to the large size of projection products. Whether watching movies or playing games, the viewing experience brought by projection products is more impactful. However, this time, Dangbei F1C not only improved the picture effect, but also added the MEMC motion compensation function, which directly raised the picture experience to a new level. When playing online content, you can turn on motion compensation for the movie you are watching through the bottom menu, and insert frames to improve smoothness.

Starting as an application market, the system experience of Dangbei F1C is really user-friendly. Not only is the main interface very refreshing, but users can also freely add UI levels to suit their preferences. In terms of resources, Dangbei has built-in channel sources such as iQiyi, Mango TV, and PP Sports, which can basically cover the daily use of users. If you need to install third-party applications, there are thousands of TV applications in the Dangbei application market, which can be installed at will. Not only that, you can also install it by voice, which is convenient and fast.

If you feel that these resources are not enough to satisfy you, this projector also has a built-in LeTV projection function, which supports mobile phone projection operations. For example, using Apple Airplay, you can project videos to the big screen to maximize the content experience.

In addition to these traditional functions, Dangbei F1C also has built-in educational applications such as Dangbei literacy, remote search by remote control, and multi-round voice dialogue. Since the voice button is directly integrated on the remote control, you can directly call out the voice assistant, search for the corresponding video, and make the next selection. If you don’t like remote control, you can also use your mobile phone, which is also a way of playing that Dangbei users know, so I won’t go into details here.

As an extension of the Dangbei F1 series, the two major features of Dangbei F1C, senseless autofocus and keystone correction, are impressive. Compared with products of the same price, you can clearly see its advantages. But no matter how many selling points there are, the user experience, core image quality, and supporting functions will become the core of competition in the home projection market. As a new entrant in the home projection market, Dangbei will inevitably introduce its own advantages into its products. If you have certain needs for home projection and want simple operation and richer functions, then this Dangbei F1C will be a good choice.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.