TCL A1s Review: A Big-Screen Google TV Projector on a Budget

TV maker TCL now builds projectors too. Was anyone waiting for that? Perhaps — the smart TVs from the one-time budget brand have grown into genuine technical statement pieces while keeping prices low, so there is real hope of strong value from its new projectors as well. How TCL fares in unfamiliar beamer territory is what the published test of its smart projector, the A1s, set out to show. This review is based on that test, not on a hands-on trial of our own.

TCL seems unstoppable: after its full-scale assault on the TV market and a surprising new home-cinema sound system, the Chinese tech giant is now targeting the growing category of smart projectors, where compatriots Xgimi and Aurzen have already made names as specialists and the home-cinema old guard, from Epson to BenQ, is fighting back with unusually cheap lifestyle beamers. TCL enters with a clear plan: three models launching together, all compact and all in the three-figure price bracket. The A1s is one of them — so what sets it apart from the rest?

The A1s is very compact, but it is not a mini-beamer for the road — that role falls to the TCL PlayCube in the new line-up. The A1s is nimble yet tied to the mains. Solidly built, it arrives fully assembled in a handy reusable polystyrene carry-case, and it looks distinctly smarter and more upmarket than the cheapest of the trio, the pared-back budget C1. Its most striking feature is a glossy multifunction handle, which lets you carry the plastic block securely and prop it up when aiming it. Within the trio it sits above the stripped-back budget C1 and apart from the battery-toting, pocket-friendly PlayCube, as the mains-powered do-it-all option for the living room.

There is no assembly in the traditional sense: no screws, no fiddly parts, and no painstaking alignment to the screen. Unlike delicate older projectors, lifestyle beamers like the A1s are rugged little blocks whose LED light source shrugs off knocks, so you simply set it down where you are watching, plug in the power supply and it is ready to go. The spartan connection strip plays only a minor role, because the pre-installed Google TV interface turns the projector into a smart all-rounder — even if, for newcomers, nothing about it feels especially smart at first.

Anyone who knows Google TV as a smart-TV platform will find nothing new here: before the A1s grants access to the Google Play app store, you must sign in with a Google account. Without that link, use is heavily restricted, with only external media players working freely over HDMI or USB. Once you are signed in and have clicked through a few pages of annoyingly nested terms and conditions, it finally becomes properly smart, with all the usual streaming and TV apps available, controlled by the bundled remote or an app for iPhone and Android. The settings are a little harder to navigate than the menus.

Google TV tends to bury its picture settings, and the A1s is no exception, but happily they are rarely needed: an autofocus sharpens the projection and automatic keystone correction stops the image looking skewed, so no meticulous lining-up of the little LED beamer to the screen is required. What is less than ideal is the brightness, which stays capped. Even though the A1s performs strongly for its size at around 650 ANSI lumens, this compact TCL is not made for use in a fully lit room, let alone daylight. In the dark the Full HD image looks pleasant, colours included, though it does not show very deep or finely graded contrasts. Bigger news, though, is that the A1s brings the sound to match the picture.

Modern beamers are designed as all-rounders, which means they have to look after the film's audio as well. Here too the A1s puts in a tidy enough performance that no separate TV sound system or Bluetooth speaker needs to step in. It naturally does not fill the room the way the 150-inch image does — a picture roughly the size of nine mid-size televisions — but clear dialogue and a pleasantly warm tone for film music are certainly there.

At the time of writing the TCL A1s sells for £359 on Amazon UK. A mini-beamer it is not, except perhaps in price: for a manageable three-figure sum the A1s throws up a gigantic Full HD picture with decent sound to boot, and Google TV brings all the important streaming and TV apps along for free. What the compact projector does not deliver is high brightness, nuanced HDR or true surround sound. And, despite its very compact dimensions, there is no battery inside — anyone after a TCL beamer with a built-in one should look to the PlayCube instead.