JmGo G1 review from Pcadvisor.co.uk By Marie Brewis
‘Gorgeous’ and ‘projector’ don’t often sit well together in a sentence, but that’s exactly what you get with the
JmGO G1 Smart Home Theater. We’ve never seen a
home projector oozing with so much style – this is something you want to keep on show, not mount out of the way.
But this isn’t just any home projector. Capable of projecting a full-HD
picture (upscaled from 720p), the JmGO G1 also supports Active 3D
(glasses are not supplied). It’s an Android TV and a Bluetooth speaker,
with HDMI, USB and AV inputs that could potentially accommodate a
digital TV tuner, a games console, a portable hard drive and more. And
it’s entirely silent in use, making it the perfect fit for any bedroom
or living room.
JmGO isn’t a brand we’ve encountered before, but you can pick up the G1 from
Maketheone.
We think it worth every penny, as you’ll discover below.
The JmGo G1 is a DLP projector with a DMD chip built into a circular
aluminium-magnesium alloy housing, with an incredibly small footprint
(219x60mm) and just 1.55kg in weight. A power button sits in the centre
of the polished metal top, glowing blue when the projector is in
operation and red in standby mode.
A metal grille wraps around the device’s middle, concealing four 5W
speakers with Dolby Digital Plus that are capable of producing stereo
sound so loud your neighbours may complain. The JmGO G1 also has a
S/PDIF/headphone jack should you need to quieten things down.
In standby mode Bluetooth 4.0 connectivity lets you take advantage of
that stereo sound and operate the JmGO G1 as a Bluetooth speaker.
Annoyingly you can’t use Bluetooth in projector mode to pair a wireless
keyboard or mouse, although there is a remote control supplied in the
box and two USB ports (1x USB 2.0, 1x USB 3.0) that you could use to
hook up a Bluetooth dongle and connect wireless peripherals this way.
The remote control has a unique design, a cylindrical device that
takes two AAA batteries (not supplied) and connects to the JmGO over the
2.4GHz frequency. Made from plastic it doesn’t feel as high in quality a
device as the projector itself, but this multifunctional remote can do
it all.
Twisting one end of the remote control adjusts the volume, while
pulling out the end and twisting lets you manually alter the focus.
There’s a power button at one end, and on the side four buttons for
back, home, options and entering mouse mode. A speaker button lets you
audibly control the G1, but currently in Chinese only. Just below this
sits a mute button.
Using the mouse mode can be a bit fiddly and takes some time to get
used to; it doesn’t help that the mouse is very sensitive and works best
when you point the controller directly at the projector. At times using
the mouse is the only way to access options within certain apps, but in
other cases we found it easier to use the small toggle that works like a
joystick. It?lets you scroll through web pages and apps, move up, down,
left and right through menus and push down to select.
Setting up the JmGO G1 couldn’t be easier. You point it a blank wall
or screen, plug it in and turn in on. The G1’s UI is based on Android
4.3 KitKat, and it’s preinstalled with various apps including Facebook,
Twitter, Netflix, XBMC, Gmail, Skype, Amazon and full access to Google
Play. These are found on the main screen, and you can hit left to change
the source to AV or HDMI, or right to access the device settings.
Within the image settings are options to alter the brightness,
contrast, image mode, aspect ratio and more. Digital zoom lets you
resize the display to match your screen or wall, while automatic- and
manual keystone correction adjust the angle of the display so you get a
great picture no matter where the projector is sited. You can also turn
the display upside down, should you want to mount the projector from a
ceiling (a bracket is supplied in the box).
You’ll also find options within this settings menu for managing
wireless, audio, language, time and date, recovery, apps and upgrading
the software.
We connected the G1 to our home network over Wi-Fi (an ethernet
connection is also available), then logged into our Google account and
set about downloading various apps including Google Chrome and our usual
Android benchmarking utilities. The only app we had trouble with was
NowTV – if you want to access Sky content you’ll need to physically plug
in a Sky- or Now TV box via the HDMI input (the apps will install but
report an error when you try to use them).
And that leads to our one major gripe with the JmGO G1 – there’s only
one HDMI port. We bought an HDMI splitter that turned the single port
into three, but of course that meant yet another remote control was
required to switch between them. Still, with our three-way HDMI splitter
in place we were able to connect a NowTV box, a Freeview box (which we
found easier to control than using an app such as TVCatchup) and a DVD
player.
It’s worth pointing out that the JmGo G1 also has a 3.5mm AV input
that you can alternatively use to plug in a digital TV tuner. (Contrary
to the Amazon UK listing there is not a digital TV tuner inside the G1.)
And there are those twin USB ports, which can be used for attaching
portable storage or peripherals.
With everything in place we were ready for the ultimate home theatre
experience. We didn’t have any Active glasses to test the 3D
functionality, but we were pleasantly impressed with the HD image
supplied by the G1, and wowed by the audio.
The G1 operates at 1500 Ansi Lumens. This is bright enough to see what
you’re doing when setting up the projector in daylight, but for best
results you really need a dark room. Dynamic contrast is 1000:1, and
JmGO claims a throw distance of between 20- and 300 inches.
Inside the G1 is a quad-core ARM Cortex A9 processor, Mali 450 MP4
graphics and 2GB of DDR3 RAM. The JmGO also has 16GB of flash storage
built in for your apps.
This hardware isn’t anything like as powerful as what may be built
into your phone or tablet, but it’s sufficient for navigating the G1 and
playing media.
In our real-world usage we found the G1 only
occassionally laggy when navigating menus, though we weren’t entirely
sure whether it was the box or the remote control at fault. Our only
real frustration was the over-sensitivity of the mouse mode.
We did run our usual Android benchmarks on the G1, and while they
don’t make for the best reading it’s worth pointing out that this is not
intended to be a high-performance Android PC. In Geekbench 3 we
recorded 346 points in the single-core test and 997 points multi-core.
In our GFXBench graphics test the JmGO G1 was capable of 7fps in
T-Rex, and it recorded a low 1732ms in SunSpider. None of these
benchmarks take away from the fact that as an Android TV the JmGO is
more than capable, and we think an excellent buy.
