The new generation - Xiaomi Wanbo T6 Max projector test

It has evolved at every point compared to its great predecessor.

Introductory

This article would not have been possible without Wanbo’s support because I didn’t exceptionally buy this projector but got it. I was very happy with it, as it is a piece with extremely good skills and a friendly price tag. Plus, the predecessors, the X1 and T2 Max did extremely well, I loved / love both.

Due to the history, of course, I was also very hopeful towards the T6 Max. All it took was for the manufacturer to blow up the market again, as great capabilities were listed in the specification, and the price was such that a one-time projector buyer could click with satisfaction.

Thanks to a lot of updated, enhanced capabilities, this price has been higher than its predecessor, but it has also reached a much higher shelf among projectors.

From this article, you can find out if it’s worth buying.

Packaging, accessories and exterior

Since Wanbo is loosely attached to Xiaomi, we can expect the packaging and accessories to be quality, of course. We don’t have to be disappointed in that, because everything is perfect.

The box is bigger than expected. I mean, I was expecting the size of the T2 Max from the pictures, but it turned out that the machine was a little bigger. Let's not say it's crazy, because the T2 Max is downright tiny.

Out of the box are the projector, an external power supply, a power cord and a remote control. Of the accessories, the latter, which is a bit interesting, the rest are standard. We don't get any cables, so if you need to, get ready in advance and buy a normal HDMI.

When it comes to the controller, it immediately becomes apparent that we are not getting the usual black color, it is white. It really suits me because I can find it among the growing number of remote controls (TV, amplifier, soundbar, CD player) right away.

The size is just right, the buttons are good too, so what can we expect for our money. In terms of its capabilities, perhaps the most important thing is that it also communicates with the projector via Bluetooth AND infrared, it makes sense to use a Bluetooth connection.

Let's see the projector!

The shape is very similar to the T2 Max, but like I said, the bigger it is. It is exactly 195 x 137 x 201 millimeters and weighs less than two pounds. So it seems to have managed to be quite livable among the projectors, and this is further enhanced by the fact that it is not the usual rectangular projector shape. It's more like a dice.

The quality of the plastic cover is first class, so is the design (I think). In front of the optics, below the fan grille, at the back of the exhaust air grille, above it are two USB ports, headphone jack and AV port, at the far right is an HDMI connector.

Interestingly, the machine also got a leather “ear” that we can easily carry. I like it, the structure has got a bit of a playful look from this ear. There’s another power button on the cover, I almost forgot about it because I remember I didn’t even press it once.

Overall, so far everything is okay, or rather very okay, let’s see what the manufacturer promises in terms of knowledge!

Paper form

In this chapter, as usual, I will describe what can be read from the factory data, and then how true this will be a chapter down. Now let's see the paper form first!

Familiarizing myself with the factory data, I felt like I had grabbed the foot of God, since getting a projector is so good as a gift, even if I have to do the test in return, it’s a really good thing.

Let’s start there to get a brightness of 550 ANSI lumens. Before you start tinkering, I will write again that lumen and ANSI lumen should not be mixed. Unfortunately, it even mixes in the finder, so the brightness of a projector is often undetectable. That is, it is exactly the flux of light, because the lumen is a unit of this.

What is the difference? In short, the lumen is the luminous flux measured at one point in the center of the display, in the brightest place, while for ANSI it is measured in several parts of the image and the measured values ​​are averaged. The center of the image is always lighter than the edge, sometimes much brighter, so normal lumen data is often quite deceptive. Thus, even cheap monitors can measure many thousands of lumens of luminous flux, while more expensive ones have an ANSI of less than 1000.

In the case of the Wanbo T6 Max, we also get the normal lumen value, in addition to ANSI, in this case it is 6000-7000 lumens.

Its predecessor, the Wanbo T2 Max 200 ANSI, knew the cheaper, “only” HD-resolution Wanbo X1 250 ANSI, and these were also great to use. Myself, I wouldn't have replaced the T2 Max I bought if I didn't come with the T6 Max. . This also had some drawbacks, but it will be a little later.

The 550 ANSI promises to give you plenty of viewable image quality, color and contrast, even in low light. Although, as I always describe, it is good to screen in the dark, it does not leave half of the lights on in the cinema.

There are two more things I need to highlight about projection capabilities. One is that Wanbo makes the entire lens system out of glass. Unfortunately, this is not common with cheaper projectors, and the plastic lens tends to deform and cloud over time. There is no chance of this with glass lenses. So that's a very big good point.

The other is that the projection system in the projector is completely closed. That is, the components used for projection, such as the LED, LCD, and everything else, are in a closed box, so there is no chance that the lens will become dusty on the inside. Another big red dot!

There are more interesting things in the description. One is that the focus adjustment is now completely electronic, meaning we don’t have to adjust it manually, we can do it using the buttons on the remote control. The other is to mention an automatic keystone setting. The third is that the keystone correction is four-way, of course, so you don't have to place the machine directly opposite the canvas. It can be to the right, left, down, or up from the center.

What else do we get? It has automatic low blue light adjustment, intelligent anti-glare (whatever that means). Colors are handled by the HDR10 +, it can receive and play 4K signals, and of course there is automatic color calibration and noise reduction.

I haven’t written so far, though it’s essential that the native resolution is FHD, i.e. 1920 x 1080 pixels. It is also important to note that the projected image can be between 40 and 120 inches in size. I also use the largest 3 meter diagonal. If you know you use it that way, it's a normal cinematic experience in the living room.

Two 5-watt speakers in the machine are responsible for the sound. Ventilation was entrusted to a relatively large, 8-centimeter, quiet fan that produced 36 decibels of noise, according to the manufacturer.

So far, everything is like a dream, let’s see the software and the iron underneath it!

My greatest pleasure is not getting a full-blown Android (as with the T2 Max), but a full-fledged Android TV system. I use this on my TV too, many people consider it low cost, but I think simplicity is the greatest virtue. We are looking for and watching a movie on the surface of the service providers anyway, it is completely unnecessary to make the way there.

Android also requires normal hardware, and quite a few projectors here bleed. Not so much the T6 Max, which is powered by the Amlogic T972’s quad-core procija, 2GB of memory and 16GB of storage.

Netflix will have no problem using HBO Go, Amazon Prime on this machine, but we'll also get Disney + pre-installed (which isn't available for us yet) and globolpay. So, we are equipped with streaming providers!

It is also important that the Hungarian language is available on the system, although the translation is not complete, we can find English texts here and there. I wouldn't say disturbing.

By the end, two more things. Of course, we also get Bluetooth and wifi, the latter also supports the 2,4 GHz band in addition to 5.

That's pretty much the paper form, now the experience can come!

Experiences

I’m going to start with the bad things, some of which are why I didn’t want to write the article. But to understand the root of the problem, I need to explain a little!

As I wrote above, the T6 Max can do four-way keystone correction. This means that you can use the remote control and software to correct page distortion when the projector is not facing the screen. This is called trapezoidal correction.

There are two possible solutions. One is hardware and the other is software. The hardware can operate by moving the LCD in the projector, removing some corners or approaching the light source and / or optics.

The software solution is simpler, this is what manufacturers usually use. In this case, the LCD is fixed, but the aspect ratio of the image displayed on it may be distorted, thus correcting the aspect ratio of the image displayed on the wall.

However, this method has drawbacks. One such disadvantage is that the more you position the projector, the more impossible it becomes to sharpen every part of the image. We have to choose between being sharp in the middle of the image or one of the edges. That’s not good, but the manufacturers don’t know what to do with it, and Wanbo doesn’t know either. This is a flaw in the technology that the manufacturer cannot do.

However, there is another thing I think they can do.

I wrote above that I have to report a little problem with brightness, well, this will be:

The problem occurs when the projector is not placed in front of the screen, in the middle, and the more confusing it is, the more it is projected from the wind.

Doing so will make the part of the projected image closer to the projector lower, while the more distant part will be higher because the screen is closer to the former and farther away from the projector. This distortion must be corrected by software!

What is the solution? On the simple LCD in the projector, the side of the image that is farther away from the projector needs to be compressed. In this case, the image on the LCD will be distorted, but the height of the two sides on the wall will look the same.

I hope this is understandable so far!

Okay, but if we squeeze the image on the LCD, what will we see where there is no content? Well, in a good case, nothing, blackness, because the pixels on those parts of the LCD will be black, so no light will pass through it. Like I said, that's right!

However, there’s no good case for the T6 Max, and I’m writing this for one thing, and that’s the high brightness. Due to the high brightness, the lamp also illuminates the areas of the LCD panel where there is no image, so you can see the entire image, which is not adjusted with keystone correction, essentially continuously.

I enclose a photo of this so you understand what it is about!

This is not at all disturbing when watching a movie, plus the events don’t happen in a dark tunnel. In this case, the projected bright part is nicely separated from the background. However, when the projected image is dark, in many cases it is not possible to decide how long the image will last and where the problem of the high-brightness LCD will begin. It’s a bit confusing, or rather annoying.

Next error. In the Android settings section, you get an automatic keystone correction button. Well, it doesn’t work something brightly, so I might even say it doesn’t work at all. Luckily, you can manually adjust keystone correction from the software, so the only question is why the automatic adjustment was included, if not good?

Another note. I received the projector very early, before it started distributing, so it is possible that software bugs will be fixed later.

Last mistake. As described for the projector, pressing and holding the mouse mode button on the remote control should bring up the settings menu. Well, it won't come out. In the case of the T2 Max, this is the case, you can adjust the contrast, brightness, etc., I thought it would be the same here, but I didn't manage to lure it out.

The bad things have lasted so far!

The test period lasted quite a long time, as I unpacked the projector and put it in the living room during the holidays. I thought I’d direct a little movie for my sons, don’t watch the tale on TV when the projector is there. The projected image is much less harmful to their eyes.

Well, the guys got so caught up in the thing that the projector stayed on, and once it was there, I started watching movies on it. Then I couldn't stop.

No wonder his picture is really good. My couple didn’t like me screening movies on T2 Max, he said it was too dark, he likes TV better. Well, in the case of the T6 Max, he no longer pulls his mouth in, but sneaks into the cinema next to me. I think this is the most important thing, an advantage over its predecessor. 😉

Not only did the richness of detail get better, but so did the colors. This is due not only to the high brightness, but also presumably to the LCD.

Such an improvement in the quality of the image is especially important for us, because the projected diagonal is more than three meters, and the wall element holding the canvas is not finished yet, so I project it on the painted wall. Feel free to say the thing is flawless!

Normally, the sound of the projector is also completely good. Normal should be understood as in fairy tales. The two 5-watt speakers are plentiful at a volume of roughly 20 to 25 percent. And for movies, there's Bluetooth, a soundbar in front of the TV, a subwoofer, and a cinematic effect.

Which is another huge advantage of the normal Android and Android TV system on the machine!

The hardware is strong enough, everything runs smoothly. The fact that the app of virtually every major streaming service provider available in Hungary runs on it is an unimportant advantage over devices with a wide range of Android devices.

I note here that after a software update, although HBO Go loads, movies do not start on it. I'm still investigating the cause, and if I find a solution, I'll update the article.

For the correct information, I have to describe that Netflix in 4K will not go because DRM only knows Level 3 security. It’s also important to add that I only know this from the fact that I watched it because of the test, as it didn’t show up during the screening of the movies. So I don't think you have to worry about it either.

Of course, YouTube is also available, but if someone prefers TED Talk, they can watch it too. For me, mirroring the phone image just wants to work with the YouTube TV code for now, but I haven’t really tried that much because it’s completely unnecessary because of the Android running on the projector, which I can access basically everything on.

There are two more important things about the software:

The first is that not all Android apps run under Android TV. Of course, the more important ones are what you need for media consumption, so VLC, Kodi and their peers are available.

The other is that there is a microphone in the remote control and you can also use voice commands using a Bluetooth connection. Most of this makes sense when searching for YouTube videos, where the machine also understands the titles spoken in Hungarian, so the search is simplified in a dirty way.

On the other hand, it is surprising that you have to press and hold the microphone button while talking on the remote control. This is not usually the case, but of course I would not call it a mistake.

Summary

In the case of a projector, in addition to the price, I tend to watch two things. The magnitude of the luminous flux and the operating system on it. The former I think is clear, the brighter the light, the more detailed the image. If the projector is good, it also comes with HDR (in this case HDR10 +), other image enhancement and eye-saving features like the Wanbo T6 Max with blue light reduction and we’re on-site.

But no matter how good the picture is, nowadays, projection (at least for me) isn’t just, it’s actually not about me watching a movie from the net and then watching a flash drive on the projector. I haven't downloaded anything in such a long time that I've been excluded from the biggest Hungarian torrent site for several years. I think that says it all.

So yes, in addition to the light, it is very important for me to have an evaluable operating system on the machine, because chances are I will no longer be solving my media consumption from warez. And if I have a good system, I can watch my YouTube channels, but even more so what streaming providers have to offer.

The only problem is that regular Android or Android TV is not very often put on projectors under 150 thousand forints. A refreshing exception was the Blitzwolf BW-VP9 (which is noisier than the Wanbo T6 Max anyway), but it's not available right now, and the Xiaomi Wanbo T6 Max, which is the subject of this article, is an exception. I don't know these.

So the point is. For me, during my many weeks of use, it turns out that while the problem with the Wanbo T6 Max isn’t gratifying, it’s not that dangerous. Especially not that in return we get outstandingly good capabilities, brightness, operating system. Plus, at this price level, not even a projector with similar capabilities is in the branded category.

For so much money, these stumbles became forgivable (to me) and even after the first turn on, a problem that seemed cardinal lost its relevance. Plus, this error is only a mistake if we don't project from the front, because if we can, it's still worth projecting on the screen from the front, from the middle, that's where the picture will get the best quality, and also already exists.

I'm sure this projector will stay with me for a while. Hopefully, before summer, I will be able to make my cinema in the attic (where I can test the projectors in the future), where I will then have the right quality image with the Wanbo T6 Max, hopefully with a screen diameter well above 3 meters. Push it!

If you decide to try the machine yourself, I will usually add the coupon code you have requested and received. With the code BGHU1520, instead of the original price of HUF 96, you can buy it from a European (Czech) warehouse for HUF 88 here:

Xiaomi Wanbo T6 Max projector

Other Wanbo tests:

• XIAOMI WANBO X1 PROJECTOR TEST - THE POWER OF SURPRISE
  (buy here (Chinese warehouse): Wanbo X1 projector - coupon code: BGNHZ594 - price: 31 219 Ft)

• XIAOMI WANBO T2 MAX - THE ALMOST PERFECT PROJECTOR
  (buy here (EU warehouse): Wanbo T2 Max projector - coupon code: BGZVS516 - price: 46 192 Ft)