Technology
March 17, 2025
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While Formovie’s flagship Cinema Edge Theater UST projector debuted a decade later with an upgraded Theatre Premium model, and the more affordable baseline Cinema Edge, they represent the progress that’s been made in the home entertainment market.
For the past month, I’ve been testing the Formovie Cinema Edge
Formovie’s Cinema Edge follows the traditional UST projector design. Its flat, boxy form factor is common among USTs, and this one is fairly sleek and compact, weighing just over 15 pounds and measuring 18 x 12 x 3.6 inches. Its innards and capabilities, though, are in a different class than any television peripheral made two decades ago.
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The remote control has dedicated buttons for Netflix and YouTube, and a Google Assistant button for voice commands using its Google TV platform. Disappointingly, Formovie did not include AAA batteries in the box, and the remote does not come with a solar panel for infinite charging.
At the lab, my protocol is to achieve the largest and clearest projection possible. While testing, I found the sweet spot to be 25 inches from lens to screen to project a 150-inch image (at the resting height of a typical coffee table). Note that I said “lens to screen.” The lens is situated at the front of the unit, which means the back of it (nearest to your screen) may be as close as 15 inches.
Adam Breeden/ZDNET
This is all to say: setting the Cinema Edge — or any UST — within a foot from your wall surface to get a clear 16:9 image of that size is about as good as it gets.
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I should also note the unit emitted very little fan noise whilst setting it up. And its auto-shut off sensor, which dims the laser when something interrupts the path of its photons, spared me from being blinded at least twice.
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The Cinema Edge’s light source is an ALPD (advanced laser phosphor display), driven by a DLP (digital light processing) microchip equipped with XPR fast-switch pixel shifting. All these technical initialisms translate into 4K HD resolution with a color gamut rating of 110% of Rec.709 and a contrast ratio of 3000:1. Formovie rates the Cinema Edge as putting out 2,100 lumens, although most measurements reach about 1,900. It’s certainly not the brightest 4K projector available, but it’s plenty bright for a UST costing under $2,000.
Adam Breeden/ZDNET
While I cycled through my usual testing of picture modes and myriad slider settings, I eventually landed back at the defaults. This is partly because the default settings were already balanced just fine on our ALR screen, and partly because fiddling with the various sliders and options became highly convoluted.
Every adjustment I made yielded decent contrast and ample color saturation. Where shadow detail felt lacking, I increased Adaptive Luma (a “dynamic” contrast setting) without touching other contrast controls to get a deeper black with stronger highlights. I didn’t mind the slight soap opera effect of the default settings, but frame interpolation can be deactivated through the MJC (motion judder cancellation) setting.
The Cinema Edge’s power plug port is on the rear left side. The backside also has its array of two HDMI ports, an eARC port, two USB ports, a 3.5mm line-out jack, an S/PDIF, and an ethernet port. Its façade has a soft aesthetic that resembles a speaker grill — which it is.
Behind that are two 15-watt speakers with Dolby Audio and DTS-HD, a setup that provided ample volume for our sound-dampened testing room. In a larger, more acoustic viewing area, the audio quality might leave you cold, although that can be easily remedied with the attachment of a soundbar.
It has no 3D support, no Dolby Vision, no VRR, and is limited to a 60Hz framerate. This latter spec makes it fine for enjoying beautiful scenery, dramatic moviescapes, and casual gaming — although it does feature ALLM (auto low latency mode) to mitigate input lag.
Ultimately, the Cinema Edge, a triple laser projector, at $2,799. Even stretching your budget to that extreme, you’ll still be paying a little over half the price of a triple-laser like the Hisense LQ9.
