AWOL Vision Aetherion Max review: a UST for gamers first

Game Mode, and nothing else. PCMag's Bodnar tester needed only that setting to read 9.8 milliseconds at 1080p/60Hz from the AWOL Vision Aetherion Max, and PCMag says it is the first projector it has seen reach that class of lag without further tuning. For a console on a living room wall, the rest of this review is detail around that number.

Most of that detail is good. Some of it is a setting you should leave off and a feature you should not buy it for. We read AWOL's manual, spec table and support articles, and four independent reviews: ProjectorCentral and PCMag, both instrumented, plus ProjectorReviews and RTINGS. In the YouTube comments, seven people are backers or pre-orderers and two say they have or bought one. As a UST projector for gaming it holds the gaming slot on our ultra short throw projector picks, and it replaces the LTV-3500 Pro, per ProjectorCentral. The Aetherion Pro is the same chassis at 2600 ISO lumens against the Max's 3300.

Input lag and the HDMI 2.1 ports

PCMag measured 9.8 ms at 1080p/60Hz, 9.6ms at 4K/60Hz and 3.2ms at 1080p/240Hz. ProjectorCentral, in PC/Game mode and at the center of the screen, read 13ms standard at 1080p/60 and 10ms with FreeSync on, 7ms at 4K/120, and 3ms at 1080p/240 with High Refresh on. AWOL's own figure is 1ms at 1080P@240Hz. ProjectorCentral thinks that is "likely achievable under certain conditions": it measured at screen center, and suspects a reading nearer the top could come in lower.

All three HDMI ports are 2.1, with HDCP 2.3 and 48Gbps per ProjectorCentral, and VRR and ALLM are both supported. Most UST projectors do not have that. The manual's own spec table gives the resolution as 4K@60Hz, while ProjectorCentral measured lag at 4K/120 and PCMag lists 4K at 120Hz as supported. Check that your console is set to what your unit accepts.

Throw ratio and distance for 100 inches

A 0.2:1 throw. AWOL puts the back of the projector about 6.2 inches from the wall for 100 inches, 14.3 inches for 150 and 22.3 inches for 200, and PCMag adds that 80 inches is the minimum, from not quite 3 inches away. There is no optical zoom and no lens shift, so the picture's size and position come from where the cabinet sits. RTINGS notes the auto keystone still needs your phone.

The cabinet is 22.1 x 12.7 x 5.5 inches and 19.3 lb, which PCMag calls light for a UST meant to stay put.

Brightness, in ISO and in practice

AWOL rates it at 3300 ISO lumens. ProjectorCentral measured 3,031 ANSI lumens in Vivid, "8.15% below AWOL Vision's listed specification", and says it behaves like a 2,200 to 2,900 ANSI lumen projector in the modes you would actually watch. PCMag found its darker modes "easily bright enough with lights off" for a 110 inch screen, and expects you to switch to a brighter mode on a bright day with windows.

So the 200 inch figure gets the same verdict from ProjectorCentral: "not bright enough to realistically support that size". It suggests 120 to 130 inches as the ideal. If the wall gets sun, the same hub's bright room pick is the Epson LS800, and the Hisense L9Q that leads it is brighter still.

ProjectorReviews read 3,803 lumens, but with Brightness Enhancement on High in Sports mode, a setting ProjectorCentral says is not meant for long-term use, so we follow ProjectorCentral's figure. ProjectorReviews also thinks the Max has the range for a 200 inch screen with the blinds open; ProjectorCentral's measured ANSI figure is why we do not.

Light source: three lasers, fewer rainbows

A triple laser UST projector: red, green and blue lasers with no color wheel, rated for 25,000 hours. On a single chip DLP that still means rainbow artifacts for the people who see them, and AWOL's anti-RBE reduces them without ending them. PCMag, who sees them easily, saw fewer with the feature on, found it turns on only at the Warm-1 color temperature, and put the result between an LCD projector, which shows none, and almost any other DLP model, which shows more. ProjectorCentral saw rainbows only rarely, and ProjectorReviews lists "The anti-RBE emits an electronic whine" among its cons. PCMag's advice for anyone unsure is to buy from a seller with easy returns and judge it yourself, and the same goes for a panel check: ProjectorCentral's first engineering sample arrived with about 56 dead pixels, and its replacement had none.

Laser speckle, the other RGB laser artifact, was minimal on ProjectorCentral's screen, mostly in solid reds and greens.

Native resolution

A 0.47 inch DMD that is natively 1080p, shifted to 3840 x 2160. ProjectorCentral thinks "most users would be hard-pressed to notice that it is not native 4K", and PCMag found the image sharp from edge to edge. None of the five projectors on our hub is native 4K; every one of them pixel shifts.

Contrast on the AWOL Vision Aetherion Max, and the setting to leave off

AWOL quotes 6000:1 native with the iris and 60000:1 with Enhanced Black Level. ProjectorReviews measured 3,076:1 native and about 25,000:1 dynamic, and ProjectorCentral measured full on, full off contrast from about 9,575:1 up to 22,000:1 depending on the iris and EBL, and says the 60,000:1 figure "was not achievable in any of the tests I performed".

EBL is also the setting that costs you. In HDR it blew out highlights on a face in Zero Dark Thirty and on a feather in Puss in Boots. With EBL off the first disappeared and the second was much less noticeable. "In my experience, clipping is the biggest issue with the Aetherion Max", ProjectorCentral writes, noting AWOL is working on it, and the reviewer's own choice was EBL off with the iris at Cinema 2. ProjectorReviews saw milder clipping and some brightness pumping. RTINGS finds bright scenes "notably flatter" than dark ones, and the image warm until calibrated.

Before calibration ProjectorCentral found average to higher errors in Filmmaker mode. After it, grayscale averaged 0.8dE. ProjectorCentral's unit was an engineering sample, and it expects improvements before final release, so read its clipping, lag and brightness figures as pre-release ones.

3D is the one thing it does badly

PCMag saw "more obvious crosstalk than I've ever seen in any other projector", says it is "far too distracting for watching anything", and reports that AWOL expects a firmware fix. Until then, switching to another 3D mode and back sometimes clears it. One owner in the comments who says they are into 3D Blu-ray says the picture is great, and says nothing about crosstalk.

Audio out and the ports

Two 25W full range drivers and two 20W tweeters, with Dolby Atmos and DTS:X. ProjectorCentral calls the sound "full and generally quite good" and still expects most buyers to add a sound system. eARC sits on HDMI 2, so a receiver takes one of the three 2.1 inputs, and there is optical on the back, a 3.5mm output on the side, and Bluetooth as well. Paired with AWOL's ThunderBeat speakers it can act as the center channel.

The rest is unusually complete: a USB-C port that takes DisplayPort, a composite adapter in the box, RS-232, Gigabit Ethernet and Wi-Fi 7, plus a micro USB trigger that raises and lowers a motorized screen with the projector. Fan noise is rated at 30 dB. ProjectorCentral measured 34.9 to 35.6 dBA at 3 feet against a 33.3 dBA room, and RTINGS calls it audible in a quiet room.

The screen it needs

None comes with this listing. AWOL sells the Max direct in bundles with its own ambient light rejecting screens, and says an ALR screen that "blocks up to 90% of ambient light" is what keeps the picture clear in a bright living room. ProjectorCentral reviewed it on a 0.6 gain Elite Screens CLR screen. The owner who likes 3D runs a 132 inch ALR, and another buyer asked for the fully extended height of what they bought, which they read on AWOL's page as 122 inches, against a 105 inch ceiling.

Size the screen to the light, not to the wall. ProjectorCentral's 120 to 130 inches is the range to plan on, and the console end needs the same care, since the port spec and the reviews disagree on 4K/120. If rainbows rule it out for someone in the house, the Epson LS800 review covers the 3LCD projector that cannot show them, and the full shelf sits on the ultra short throw projectors page.