AWOL Vision Aetherion Max review

AWOL Vision might have only been around for six years (the blink of an eye by AV standards), but it’s already managed to cram an awful lot of progress into its short life.

As early as 2024, the brand was impressing us – without quite blowing our minds – with its LTV-3500 Pro ultra short throw model. And now, just two years later, the brand has massively upped the ante with the Aetherion Max.

This is another UST model, but the similarities with the LTV-3500 Pro pretty much end there. From its design through to its features and, most importantly, its picture and sound quality, it truly elevates AWOL Vision into the big leagues – all for a fraction of the price of its predecessor.

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Price

Its steep price was arguably the Achilles heel of the LTV-3500 Pro, so it’s great to find the Aetherion Max selling for thousands of pounds (or dollars) less than that model – despite boasting a better design and an improved set of specifications and features.

There are, of course, UST models out there that cost much less than the Aetherion Max’s £3499 / $4499 / AU$6299 asking price – including the excellent Hisense PX3-Pro, which is now being discounted to as little as £1599 at some UK retailers.

If you’re able to afford £3499 for a projector, though, the Aetherion Max not only comfortably earns its extra cost but actually ends up feeling like a bargain.

Design

The Aetherion Max looks like a cross between an alien spaceship and a Robot Wars winner – in a good way.

At heart, it’s the usual UST projector low-slung rectangular shape with a recessed slit in the top where the light gets out, but that core design is embellished with a lovely metallic silver finish, a Battlestar Galactica Cylon-like blue illuminated strip running across the front edge that also sports a fetchingly designed speaker grille, and a host of false corners and angled panels that all catch the light differently, creating a strikingly futuristic, exaggerated 3D effect.

Eye-catching though the Aetherion Max is, its UST design means it’s still far less impactful on your room than a king-sized TV would be. We strongly suggest that such a premium projector be partnered with a good quality screen, but you can make this ‘disappear’ when you’re not watching it if you go for a retractable model that can roll back into its housing when you’re not using it.

As if by commercial magic, AWOL Vision actually sells its own impressive 100- and 120-inch ambient light rejecting motorised floor rising screens, with some dealers offering aggressively priced projector-plus-rising-screen package deals.

Having been sent a 120-inch screen with our Aetherion Max test sample, we can confirm that these are remarkably well built and effective screens for their money. They help images look substantially punchier and richer in bright rooms, while the screen’s black level performance holds up startlingly well in dark room set-ups too.

AV purists should note, though, that AWOL Vision’s screens use a 1.3 gain level, which is slightly higher than the neutral or 1.0 figures usually recommended for accurate dark room viewing.

The Aetherion Max is joined by a neatly designed remote control, complete with attractive and tactile metallic highlight elements, a clean and ergonomic button layout, and effective backlighting.

Features

AWOL Vision has equipped the Aetherion Max with a seriously impressive collection of facts and figures for its price.

Its DLP optics are illuminated by a triple laser lighting system, for starters, and this optical system is claimed to pump out both 3300 lumens of brightness and a colour range capable of covering the full BT.2020 spectrum.

That colour range is seldom really relevant to today’s content, though, which typically works within the smaller DCI-P3 range. Needless to say, 100 per cent coverage of the DCI-P3 gamut is promised, too.

A 7-level iris and an advanced black level enhancer algorithm are provided to try and maintain good contrast despite how bright the projector is, while owners of 3D Blu-ray discs will be pleased to hear that AWOL Vision’s latest projector supports 3D playback.

The Aetherion Max’s lens arrangement features so-called Sapphire glass elements that are made using an ultra-low dispersion design for enhanced sharpness, and coated with a Rare Earth material using a premium ‘planetary’ ultra-even coating process that’s claimed to boost light transmission, contrast and colour accuracy.

Backing up these hardware features is a PixelLock software solution that works to prevent pixel drift, where projected images can gradually lose focus over time due to changes in the projector’s optics or lens.

Unlike many of today’s ultra short throw and ‘lifestyle’ projectors, the Aetherion Max doesn’t carry a sophisticated automatic image installation system. The set-up features provided, though, are extensive and calibrated finely enough to make it possible to achieve perfect focus, geometry and corner-to-corner sharpness without having to work too hard.

The Aetherion Max joins the recently reviewed Valerion VisionMaster Pro 2 in sporting a new anti-rainbow effect technology. This manipulates the image’s refresh rate to reduce DLP projectors’ potential for red, green and blue stripes to flit over stand-out bright objects. The Aetherion Max’s Anti-RBE system works for 3D as well as 2D.

Gamers are extremely well supported by the Aetherion Max. Its HDMI ports support VRR and can stretch to 240Hz with Full HD (but not 4K) sources. We measure input lag at an excellent 9.7ms with 1080p/60Hz sources when the projector is set to its Game/PC preset, which drops to only just over 3ms at 240Hz.

These are fantastic results for a projector – though we should add that the refresh rate increases slightly to 12.0ms if you activate the projector’s AMD FreeSync VRR feature, and also increases to 15ms with 60Hz content if you forget to turn off the high frame rate feature you strangely have to manually activate to unlock higher frame rates.

The Aetherion Max carries three HDMIs – one more than many of its competitors – along with a USB-C DisplayPort you can use for connecting tablets or laptops, an S/PDIF digital audio output, an RS-232C control port, and a 3.5mm AV input.

ALLM support means the projector can automatically switch to its Game mode when a game source is detected, and its low-latency mode remains in play when you’re playing in Dolby Vision.

The only significant gaming limitation seems to be that using the AMD FreeSync version of VRR causes the Xbox Series X to default down to Full HD and SDR rather than 4K HDR.

We mentioned Dolby Vision HDR back there, but impressively the Aetherion Max also supports the rival HDR10+ format which, like Dolby Vision, passes extra signal information compatible displays can use to deliver more accurate picture results.

It’s still unusual for a projector to support even one of these advanced HDR formats, never mind both, so the Aetherion Max deserves major props for being able to play the best version of any content you feed it.

In fact, it even carries IMAX Enhanced certification, meaning it’s been deemed capable of getting the best from IMAX’s special mastering system.

As we’d expect to find with a UST projector, the Aetherion Max carries a built-in smart system. And as usual with projectors, that smart system comes courtesy of Google TV, accompanied by AirPlay 2, Chromecast and Miracast content sharing capabilities. As usual, though, the use of Google TV means there’s no BBC iPlayer support.

The Aetherion Max’s built-in sound system, finally, is impressively able to handle both the premium Dolby Atmos and DTS:X formats – and it does so with much more power at its disposal than your average projector. The two 25W full-range drivers and a pair of tweeters are driven by 25 and 20 watts of amplification, respectively.

Picture quality

The Aetherion Max’s picture quality isn’t just a big improvement over the already more than decent LTV-3500 that marks our only previous interaction with an AWOL Vision projector; it’s actually arguably the best picture quality we’ve ever seen from any UST projector. Or, at least, a UST projector selling for anything like as little as the Aetherion Max does.

Looking at it first in the relatively dynamic and bold presets (HDR Standard and Dolby Vision Bright) that showcase its more extreme capabilities, the projector delivers a fantastically vibrant, bright but also contrast-rich image that punches confidently through daytime living room levels of ambient light.

This is especially true if you’re using the optional AWOL Vision ALR screen mentioned earlier, but it still out-punches most UST rivals even using an essentially neutral screen.

While this bright room capability is likely to be very welcome to anyone in the market for a specifically UST projector, what really tips the Aetherion Max into outstanding territory is how well its picture charms hold up in a dark room setting. Colours look even more vibrant, and brightness for both full-screen and peak highlight image elements looks fantastically intense.

Crucially, though, the enhanced intensity the AWOL Vision delivers in dark rooms isn’t just eye-catching; it’s also endlessly watchable and immersive thanks to the way colours still look natural, balanced and full of subtle nuances and blends despite their vibrancy; the way the brightness doesn’t lead colours to start looking washed out; and the way the projector’s black colours and dark scenes still look compelling and convincing despite the brightness and colour punch they’re appearing alongside.

We need to dwell on this black level point more. After all, unlike premium TVs, the Aetherion Max doesn’t have any true hardware-based local light controls to draw on. Yet its image management is so impressive in its HDR Standard mode that it somehow manages to deliver some of the deepest, most convincing blacks we’ve seen from any 3000-nit or brighter projector, despite its price being far from outrageous by premium projector standards.

These impressive black levels are achieved naturally enough, too, to ensure the Aetherion Max can render stand-out bright objects without either dimming them down to maintain consistent black levels, or black levels slipping into heavy greyness to accommodate the bright object’s intensity.

As well as helping dark images look convincing, this sort of contrast consistency really helps you get lost in what you’re watching – something that should always be the ultimate goal of any display, regardless of how eye-poppingly extreme its on-paper specifications might be.

AWOL Vision’s HDR tone mapping is remarkably good for such an affordable high-spec projector. It consistently shows an excellent knack for delivering an unusually bold HDR image experience by projector standards without leaving the image looking strained or full of distracting over-exaggerations or imbalances.

While the Aetherion Max’s Standard mode imagery is so alluring that it may well become the only setting most households need, we’re very happy to discover that AWOL Vision’s projector seals its status as our UST projector of choice by also managing to turn its hand to accurate dark-room playback.

Whether you’re using the HDR Filmmaker Mode or Dolby Vision Dark settings, the projector does an excellent job of reining in its more extreme tendencies to deliver images that track creators’ intent without looking remotely lifeless and flat like they can on all too many rival projectors running in similar picture modes.

Images still look quite bright by projector Filmmaker Mode standards, for starters, and black levels look, if anything, slightly deeper without crushing out subtle shadow detailing or exposing noise in near-dark areas.

Colours still look balanced and nuanced too, even if saturations are slightly toned down for the most part, and detail levels are high without starting to look forensic or overly gritty.

Skin tones look even more nuanced and believable than they do in the HDR Standard and Dolby Vision Bright modes too, while motion avoids looking excessively juddery even with 24p sources without any potentially distracting side effects from the available multi-strength motion processing.

The Aetherion Max carries all the tools needed for a full ISF calibration if you’re willing to spend money to optimise the projector’s performance for your specific surroundings. AWOL Vision has shown such a fine understanding of both HDR and SDR images with its Filmmaker Mode and Dolby Vision Dark settings, though, that we really don’t think many owners will feel the need to go the extra ISF mile.

That’s not to say, though, that the Aetherion Max is perfect or doesn’t benefit from any intervention. For instance, bright highlights of HDR images can clip (lose shading and colour subtleties) quite strongly in Filmmaker Mode unless you turn off the Enhance Black Level feature. Yet doing that can cause black levels to look a little greyer.

The anti-rainbow-effect technology can cause the projector to output an extra whining sound, and at the time of writing is applied automatically to many of the projector’s presets. If the noise bothers you, you may find you need to turn to a setting that doesn’t have the feature active – so it’s handy that these settings tend to be the most movie night-friendly options.

Strangely, the Anti-RBE processing doesn’t seem as effective here as it did on the Valerion VisionMaster Pro Max. It does reduce the rainbow effect, but not as much – something that people who are particularly prone to seeing rainbowing might want to take note of.

The Dolby Vision Bright mode can generate a hint of shimmering effect over bright picture expanses, as well as introducing a mild green undertone to the image. This green undertone all but disappears in Dolby Vision Dark mode, though, helping it become one of our favourite out-of-the-box Dolby Vision projection options.

Even with its FreeSync VRR resolution and HDR limitation, the Aetherion Max is a fabulous big-screen gaming display.

It really is remarkably responsive for a projector, rivalling the best TVs for how quickly it seems to react to your controller or keyboard inputs. Its gaming images look crisp, punchy and vibrant, too, especially at the higher frame rates the projector can seamlessly handle.

Pro gamers may struggle with the time it takes to move their eyes around images as big as those the Aetherion Max is designed to deliver, but the projector’s silicon, at least, won’t cost such gamers many precious milliseconds of response time.

AWOL Vision provided a couple of pairs of its own DLP Link 3D glasses with the Aetherion Max – and we are mostly glad it did.

Early impressions of this projector had suggested that its 3D pictures might suffer from major crosstalk (ghosting) problems, but such issues seem to have been almost completely resolved with our sample. Its 3D images look impressively detailed and clean, in fact, with practically no crosstalk interference at all.

Judder can be a little distracting during 3D action scenes, but there isn’t any major flickering to worry about, and 3D images look brighter, more naturally coloured and richer in contrast – including excellent black levels – than they do on many 3D-capable rivals.

Sound quality

The Aetherion Max’s front-mounted speakers (where our description of front refers to the side of the projector that faces out into the room) are predictably far better than those you get built into most projectors.

They can get loud enough to create a cinematic presence in even quite large rooms, for starters, and they’re able to maintain impressive amounts of detail in a good movie mix even at near max volume levels.

More bass than many projectors can achieve is on hand to provide action movies with a good sense of weight and scale, and there’s enough headroom in the projector’s mid-range to allow the sound to shift up through a convincing number of gears as action and horror movie set pieces build to a climax.

Dialogue is usually clean without standing out too much from the rest of the mix, and expansive soundtracks are thrown clear of the projector very effectively, creating a soundstage so big it makes you forget that it’s being produced from the diminutive form of a UST projector.

There are a few limitations to its audio efforts, though.

Bass can become slightly strained and huffy under severe pressure, as well as sometimes struggling for timing with deep rhythmical/percussive effects.

Deep male voices can occasionally sound a little hummy/electronic too, and dialogue generally can sound as if it’s coming from below your screen, rather than being raised to the level of the onscreen action.

Finally, very high-pitched sounds can hit your ears a bit harshly at high volumes.

While these niggles explain why we’ve only given the Aetherion Max a score of four for sound, though, as we said at the start of this section, it still sounds much more immersive and cinematic than your average projector.

Verdict

While the AWOL Vision Aetherion Max isn’t cheap by today’s UST projector standards, it delivers a combination of specification and performance that ultimately makes it look like a bargain.

In fact, with the projector’s design, features, specs and picture and sound quality all given appropriate weight alongside its price, it’s sneaked right to the top of our current UST projector chart.

SCORES

• Picture 5
• Sound 4
• Features 4

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