Wanbo is a Chinese projector manufacturer founded by Shenzhen Wanbo Technology Co., Ltd. in 2016. They released their first DLP projector in 2017 and have won a few awards in China with their projectors since then, but one of their projectors won the prestigious IF Design Award in 2021. These days, they aim to become a leader in the single LCD projector market.

The Vali 1 is a sturdy, capable projector with a promotional price of $239 and a list price of $338. It has 1080p resolution and can project an image of up to 130 inches. The 200-degree gimbal stand and auto setup features give it excellent placement flexibility. An Android 11.0 operating system and powerful dual 6-watt speakers round out the package.

The projector has a 900-lumen claim, but it measures less than half of that. Though that is a drawback, it doesn't mean the projector isn't one to consider. It means that, when comparing it against competitor products, it's up against a different class of projector than its specs would have you believe.

The Wanbo Vali 1 has a one-year warranty and lifetime support.

Features

The Wanbo Vali 1 is an LCD lifestyle projector with 1080p resolution. It has an impressively high-quality build for its low price, with a sturdy body and stand that measure 10 x 8.96 x 7.43 inches (WHD) at just 6.17 lbs. It features a 200-degree gimbal stand that delivers excellent placement flexibility, allowing you to adjust the projection angle drastically, even allowing you to project onto the ceiling for a relaxed viewing experience.

Additionally, the projector supports a variety of mounting options besides tabletop or setting on the ground: ceiling, wall, or floor-standing bracket. Its auto features make setup fast and easy, with optimized ASA3.0 intelligent image adjustment utilizing auto focus, auto keystone correction, auto screen fit, and obstacle avoidance upon launch. These settings can be disabled or enabled individually to initialize upon boot up or movement, which is a nice touch. It has a fixed focal length and can project an image from 40 inches up to 130 inches. Use our Throw Distance Calculator to help set the projector up in your space.

Wanbo claims 900 lumens and that the Vali 1 delivers a "shocking audio-visual experience at any time of the day." While the audio portion of that boast was spot on, unfortunately the promise 900 lumens fell way short of our ANSI lumen measurement. For the audio, the Vali 1 features two 6-watt speakers in a 500cc sound chamber with a DSP Digital Power Amplifier and offers six audio modes—one of which allows for full customization.

Of the audio modes, I found Music to be the best for all types of content, not just music. Movie mode is decent, but it is difficult to hear dialogue unless the volume is turned almost all the way up. You'd prefer it that high, but I don't think it should be this way. Music mode, however, delivers more spacious audio, with clear dialogue or vocals, clean music, and stellar sound effects. I used it for streaming TV, films, watching Blu-rays, playing video games, as well as listening to music.

I listened to a lot of Hauser (the cellist) as I was writing, and it sounded gorgeous. "Revolt" and "Uprising" by Muse also sounded good, as did "Burning Lines" by Austin Giorgio (gentlemen who are reading this, if you have bookish wives or girlfriends, recommend this artist to them and thank me later). The audio, I think, is the projector's best quality. Visually, it is quite nice in Soft mode for film and TV, and Standard for video games.

The Wanbo Vali 1 has a simple connectors panel. It features a single HDMI input, one USB port, and one 3.5mm audio jack. Though those of us who have more than one gaming console prefer to have an additional HDMI input, the Android 11.0 TV makes up for it somewhat. It's super easy to set up, too—faster than Google TV (by a bit), and the home screen is more simplified. There's a nice screen saver called Artistic Ambient Wall that has pretty photos of scenery when the projector is idle. The projector comes preloaded with Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, YouTube, and a few others, but I had to manually install Disney+ and Max. My viewing experience was overall pleasant with no hiccups.

I can't say the same for Chromecast. While it was easy to connect, a strange phenomenon occurred after using it for only a handful of minutes each time. I was casting my Perspective art class, reading this module's content and watching the videos—multi-tasking at its finest—and within five to ten minutes of either reading or watching the videos, the image appeared to fall out of focus. The projector was perfectly in focus, so this is entirely an issue with the Chromecast feature. Unengaging from the projector and recasting fixes it, but only for those five to ten minutes before it happens again. Never seen that before. But, there were no issues with audio/video syncing. This was for Mac. I tried it out with a PC and didn't get the same problem, but the audio was skippy at times. If you want to project with a computer, connecting with HDMI is your best bet.

The Vali 1 has Game Mode and PC Mode, which had a significant effect on latency. There aren't any input lag claims from Wanbo, only that Game Mode improves the projector's performance and reduces latency, which it does. Still, this is a projector for casual gamers, not serious gamers, with an input lag measurement of just over 50 ms. Games were enjoyable to play, though, and I didn't experience any issues during gameplay.

The remote control looks similar to the Google TV remotes I've been seeing lately for lifestyle projectors. It's a lightweight, matte black. The top section has the power and input buttons, then three buttons below for user profiles, Google Assistant, and settings. A circular navigation pad encloses the enter button below that. Underneath, there's a back button, the home button, and the menu button that brings up access to the picture menu, audio settings, etc. The volume +/- buttons are below that, the mute next to those, then buttons for manual focus. A group of buttons for quickly navigating to YouTube, Netflix, Prime Video, and Disney+ bring up the last set.

The stand has a groove to store the remote control, which is a nice touch. The power socket is also directly within the gimbal stand, and that helps with a few things. Firstly, it makes everything neater, not having the power cord coming out the back connectors panel. Secondly, sometimes these lifestyle projectors with gimbal stands can be knocked out of place when their power cable gets jostled, even a little bit. There was another projector that I reviewed that had this issue; it's minor, but the devil's in the details. Thirdly, that power cable is short, and having it off to the side like that gives it a little extra length.

The Wanbo Vali 1 comes with the projector and lens cover, the remote control (no batteries, you'll need your own AAA), its (short) power cable, a replacement air filter, and its instruction manual.

Performance

Color Modes. The Wanbo Vali 1 has four color modes: Standard, Vivid, Soft, and User. There is no color management system, and while you can do some customization in User mode, the only real changes to color lie in the Color Temperature options, of which there are also four. Those are Cool, Warm, Standard, and User.

Standard is the default and was used in the following observations. More information on how the color temperature settings affect the picture modes on content can be found in the 1080p/SDR Viewing section. Each mode was viewed projecting a color wheel with out-of-the-box settings.

Standard mode and User mode are the same mode in terms of color. They looked generally accurate, with some slight issues. The red leaned more toward burgundy. The green was a bit minty rather than the pure green it was supposed to be. Teal looked seafoam green. Whites looked clean and nicely bright. These modes worked well for TV, animated content, and video games. Standard mode is the projector's brightest mode, measuring 422 lumens—52% below Wanbo's 900-lumen claim (up to 25% below claim is considered acceptable)—and User measured 412 lumens.

Soft mode had virtually the same color tone as Standard and User, only each color was a few shades darker and about 25-30% more desaturated. This was the best mode for films or cinematic TV shows, giving good color and skin tone reproduction, and good black level performance. It measured 408 lumens.

Vivid mode was where things got interesting. Reds didn't have much differentiation. Pure red and the red/orange were extremely close in tone. The fuchsia and purple were within a few shades of each other but were essentially the same color (leaning much more toward pink than purple.) Green and lime green behaved in much the same way, with the darker green being only slightly more minty, but both were bright green. The dark blue had purple hues. In general, this mode was way oversaturated and essentially unusable. It measured 349 lumens.

The devices I used for reviewing content were the built-in Android 11.0 TV and a PlayStation 4.

1080p/SDR Viewing. In addition to their overstated 900-lumen rating, Wanbo makes a big claim that the Vali 1 can be watched during the day. Realistically, however, you can only watch it during the day with some precautions—blackout curtains being your best bet, completely shuttered blinds your second, and no direct lighting on the projection screen your third. That last one may deliver mixed results if you can't control your environment.

That being said, nighttime viewing is where the projector has stronger moments. I watched The Fellowship of the Ring (Extended Edition) on Max in Soft mode, which is the best mode for films and cinematic TV shows. Soft mode has a more desaturated look to it, and this paired well with the color grading of the film. Textures looked clear and sharp, like the rough spun of Gandalf's cloak, or the fabric of Frodo's trousers. In Soft mode, the Wanbo delivered decent black levels for a lifestyle projector, and especially for one at this price point. The dark shadow detail performance was varied—good in some cases, a little difficult to differentiate shapes within dark areas in other cases.

In Standard mode colors were more vibrant, which wasn't necessarily better, but some people may prefer it. This setting would better serve some animated content, sports, and some TV shows. Certainly, it works best for daytime viewing, as it is the brightest mode. The highlights seemed to be just on the edge of clipping. I tried Vivid just for funsies, but that was a hard no. I knew it would be for a film, but the result was quite humorous. It made Bilbo look like an Oompa-Loompa's cousin for one thing, and highlights were clipped.

Now for its performance in ambient light conditions... It's okay. You can watch some types of content in Standard mode (generally brighter shows or films), but the image will be washed out and, in some cases, you may not be able to see much of anything for a moment. It will depend on the scene. I had my blinds open and two dim lights on in my viewing space with light hitting the projection surface from the side and a bit in front. It was around 4 to 5 pm, and at that time, it is still quite bright. When watching Inventing Anna Season 1, Episode 1, it was washed out. Some of the brighter scenes did better, but still not what you would expect for a 900-lumen claim. It was exactly what I would expect for its actual measurements, however.

By the time I put on Black Sails, Season 2, Episode 2, it was 6 pm and the sun had moved. There was still ambient light, but it was much dimmer in my viewing space, so brighter scenes were nicely bright, such as any that took place on the beach—like when Billy Bones is found washed ashore. Dark scenes and dark shadow detail weren't clear, but if a person was well lit within a dark space, they stood out just fine. Skin tones looked natural, even in Standard mode.

Switching over to Blu-rays, I used my PlayStation 4 to test. When going from the Home screen to the Blu-ray disk (or back again), the screen blanked out, and a box that said, "No or Weak Signal" popped up before the image was restored. It's rare that I see that, and usually on projectors like this that are sub-$500. It's been a while, though. It doesn't affect the ability to play the content, only something to be aware of.

When you hook up a game console, the Vali 1 switches into PC Mode automatically, and it changed the picture mode to Standard. That suited Big Hero 6 well, as it is heavy on the reds, and Standard mode is as well. Though Standard mode had some trouble differentiating reds on the color wheel, this didn't affect its performance on Big Hero 6. The colors looked good, and nothing was over saturated, so the experience was quite pleasant. Textures in hair and clothing were sharp.

The color temperature for all these TV shows and films was set to Standard, but the other options might be more to your liking in some cases. For instance, Warm color temperature may improve color in some cinematic TV shows or films, and Cool may improve color in some animated content, as it provides cleaner whites. It's all a matter of preference.

Gaming. Input lag was measured using a Leo Bodnar 4K Lag Tester with PC Mode activated. PC Mode had a significant effect on latency. Measured in Standard mode, 1080p at 60Hz came in at 53.5 ms, which is good enough for casual gamers—such as those who play games on the Nintendo Switch, puzzle games, or platformers, and, in some cases, single-player RPGs—but competitive gamers will want to look elsewhere. With PC Mode inactivated, the input lag measured 203.3 ms. It is important to have keystone correction and other auto features disabled, or lag times will be higher.

Certain games can be played during the day, like brightly colored games. For instance, I played Spyro the Dragon, which is bright enough to be played during the day. Of course, it looks better at night. Other games like Crash Bandicoot: N'Sane Trilogy, or Nintendo Switch Games of the Mario variety would also be contenders for daytime gaming, no problem. Spyro the Dragon was a lot of fun to play when projected by the Wanbo Vali 1, and I didn't have any issues with lag. It looked best in Standard mode, as it was the truest to color. Vivid is just too oversaturated to use, ever, I think. Most will likely choose to use Standard for their gaming.

Horizon: Zero Dawn looked true to color in Standard mode. In fact, it looked excellent when it was daytime within the world of the game. I was scaling a mountain face, and there was a glitchy moment where the image sort of stuttered. It was very quick, and it didn't happen again. As night fell within the game, it became a little more difficult to see. Didn't help that there was a blizzard. When that cleared up and I got a bit more moonlight, there was more visibility, but only a little, which made fighting the incredibly powerful and challenging Stormbird on top of the mountain even more so.

Overall, playing games was enjoyable, but I would rate this for more casual gamers or kids, because there are better options for those who tend to game during the day or are competitive gamers.

Conclusion

The Wanbo Vali 1 is a decent lifestyle projector for the price. At its $239 promotional price ($348 list) it delivers some good audio and visual performance. The reason it didn't get a higher star rating is because of the company's claim of 900 lumens when it actually measured 422 in its brightest mode. As a 422-lumen projector, it's good. But when you're being promised 900 lumens, however, you expect to get way closer to that claim, and that's where I take issue with it.

The Vali 1 has good color, robust sound, a fun gaming experience with no latency issues (more so for bright games, but I did enjoy Horizon: Zero Dawn despite some visibility problems during nighttime within the game), and some great features. That smart TV works well. Signing into my favorite streaming apps was easy, and the content looked good from these platforms. If someone in my circle was looking for a low budget projector and didn't need to watch it during the day, I'd put this one on their short list—despite my grumblings about the lumens. It is among the better ones, visually and sound-wise, at this price point.

I would compare the Vali 1 most closely with another projector that I reviewed: the XGIMI Mogo 3 Pro lifestyle projector. Its spotlight design allows you to tilt up to 130 degrees and projects up to 200 inches. It claims 450 lumens, but measured 392 lumens in its Performance power mode, 330 in its Standard power mode, which is the one you'd want to use. Both measurements were for its Standard picture mode.

The XGIMI Mogo 3 Pro features dual 5-watt Harman Kardon speakers that sound fantastic and has a Bluetooth music mode with an ambient light function that is pretty sleek. This projector has a $424 street price, but you can find it on Amazon for $379. I reviewed the MoGo 3 Pro and found it to be an enjoyable viewing experience for nighttime viewing. This one has an internal battery, too, which the Vali 1 lacks, so it's a good choice if you're looking for something more portable for an outdoor movie or game night.

For more detailed specifications and connections, check out our Wanbo Vali 1 projector page.