Okay, so the Samsung Freestyle. There was a lot of buzz surrounding this projector when it first came out and I can see why. It’s an innovative design that ideally, can be a very versatile portable projector. However, nothing in life is perfect – and this projector… well… let’s just say we’ll split this review into two big segments of what I like and what I dislike.
I’ve spent the long Raya holiday with the Freestyle and I have to say, there were good times and annoying times while using the Freestyle. I managed to balance the Freestyle on my bed’s headboard and watch Netflix shows on my ceiling, directly above my bed. That’s actually a very amazing thing to experience!
So, let’s start off with what I like about the Samsung Freestyle.
What I like about the Freestyle
There are 5 points that I truly like about the Freestyle. It looks fantastic and offers one of the best projection quality that I’ve seen from a projector so far, and it is also very smart to automatically calibrate itself to ensure the image is straight – no matter how tilted or crooked the Freestyle is.
1. This projector looks fantastic
It’s a tubular-shaped projector and it is very sleek yet functional at the same time. It has a free-spinning angle that rotates to a supremely large selection of angles thanks to how the Freestyle is designed.
I guess we can take out base if we want to? Just a couple of screws and we can separate the parts – so that we can use the other accessories that the Freestyle is designed to work with – like the socket adapter and the battery base. Both of which are “coming soon”, by the way.
We still do have another accessory available to us – and that is the skin. You see, all the Samsung Freestyles look the same – white. But, the white sleeve is actually removable. There are three colors to choose from – Pink, Green, or Coyote.
2. The “freestyle” base
You see, the Samsung Freestyle has a lot of sensors – both inside and outside. First, it can autorotate if it is upside down so you can pretty much use it at any angle you want.
Of course, that base is held on by just two screws on either side of the projector and we can easily unscrew it with a coin. I specifically said coin because it is a slot that fits a coin perfectly. Do not use a flathead screwdriver as it will damage the plastic screw.
Once you got the base off, you can use 2 other accessories that Samsung said are “coming soon” for the Freestyle – that is the Battery Base for 100% portable usage, and also the Socket Adapter for you to literally screw on what I assume to be an E27 light fixture to use it directly.
By the way, our unit of the Samsung Freestyle isn’t the retail unit and it comes with a few big differences – like the lack of connectors under the projector or the mounting holes. I know this because I watched some other retail unit unboxing videos.
3. Everything is automatic
Looking at the front of the Freestyle, we have two different sets of sensors on either side of the projector. It also has a smart feature whereby it’ll detect the color of your wall or wherever you’re projecting the image to – and it’ll “color correct” so that the image projected on the surface looks the best it can.
Even the focusing, keystoning, and angle straightening are done automatically for us too. Just plop the Freestyle on the table and it’ll do its magic for us in a jiffy.
Of course, it’s not perfect all the time but we can head into the settings menu to do some minor changes if we want to. More on that later.
4. The projected image is beautiful
After all its automatic calibrations, it’ll maximize the image projected – up to a 100-inch screen if your surface allows. That’s… amazing, honestly.
I also need to clarify that even though Samsung kept that the project is only capable of outputting 1080p resolution, it doesn’t actually matter since resolution count works differently for projectors.
5. Rather good built-in speakers
One amazing this is that no matter what orientation the Freestyle is placed, the sound quality coming out of it will still sound good. Watch our video at the top of this review to hear how the speakers sound.
What I don’t like about the Samsung Freestyle
And now, for the things that I don’t like. Granted, this is how I personally want to use the projector – so these complaints may or may not affect you.
1. The ports
I think the port selection is just horrible. I know that Samsung positioned the ports in this manner so that the Freestyle can be rotated without interfering with the cables. However, there are many other places to put a full-sized HDMI port instead of a micro HDMI port. Do you know what stings the most? The fact that Samsung didn’t even include a micro HDMI dongle in the box.
Also, there is no audio jack in the Freestyle. So we’ll have to either use external speakers through eARC – which again, we do not have any micro HDMI dongle in the box.
Or we can use Bluetooth speaker and introduce audio delay instead. Either way, it’s very inflexible in terms of audio outputs.
Not only that – the Freestyle doesn’t have any USB ports other than the Type-C port that is required for power. Without any extra USB ports – either Type-A or Type-C, that means I can’t copy any of my own videos to watch on the Freestyle. So… what am I supposed to watch if I’m out at a place with no internet connection?
And I can’t even use the USB-C port for any USB sticks too because the Freestyle doesn’t have any built-in battery inside, which brings us to the other problem.
2. Lack of a built-in battery
You see, see, that means the Freestyle will always require a cable connected to it because it needs power. Samsung even included a charger in the box and kept promoting that the Freestyle can be powered by a mere power bank – only if your power bank can output at least 50W, though.
That kind of defeats the point of being a portable projector, right? I can’t carry the projector to some other places like a campsite or a pool party? I guess?
3. That Freestyle carrying case is… weird
This carrying case can only carry the Freestyle alone- that means you can’t carry the remote control or the charger inside the carrying case. The only thing you can carry though… is the cable. Even that is more like a hack job rather than a dedicated slot because we can technically slot it in the gap between the base and also the bottom of the Freestyle.
By looking at what we have, I also think that we can’t use the Freestyle Battery Base with this carrying case? Whoops.
By the way, this case costs RM299, or USD $60.
4. Needs time to be optimized
So, this point is a bit of two points in one since they’re related. I think that the Samsung Freestyle still needs some time to be optimized some more.
Remember when we said the Freestyle doesn’t have any built-in battery? Each time I want to carry the Freestyle elsewhere, I have to turn it off and unplug it, then move to my next place and plug it back in to continue using the projector. And each time I have to do that, the boot up process takes a super long time.
If that’s not a problem for you, then let me present another issue that I encountered. Remember when we said that even though the projector technically automatically sets itself up but it might not be perfect? Yeah, I discovered this when I wanted to manually correct the focus – but it somehow lagged a lot? I have no idea why this happens. At least Netflix and YouTube ran fine
And it also has some sort of an… unoptimized UI? Look, it’s different from the interface on Samsung’s smart TVs. The Freestyle has a simpler home screen but for some reason, we can’t quickly access the entire list of installed apps from the home screen. I can’t even add shortcuts to the install apps! I have to go back to the app store, and search back the app just to add that app as a shortcut to the home screen. I’m really unsure why this is an issue, honestly.
5. The price
At the price of RM4,999, I just think that it is a very hefty price to pay for a projector like this.
Should you buy the Samsung Freestyle?
The price of this projector also leads us to our conclusion. I’m really on the fence about the Freestyle. It’s not exactly “free” in terms of freedom, but it does have a lot of style. The Freestyle still definitely a technological marvel on some fronts – like auto color correction, auto straightening, auto-rotation, and autofocusing. However, the lack of ports is my biggest gripe.
Granted, the Samsung Freestyle is still in its first generation and I think there is a lot of room to improve for the next generation of the Freestyle.
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