Samsung The Premiere 5 review

Samsung’s The Premiere projector series has played a key role in popularising ultra-short-throw projectors. These all-in-one picture and sound solutions can achieve a huge cinematic picture and sound experience from relatively compact form factors.

The UST category is where we tend to see the most experimentation in the projector world. Take the Optoma Photon Go, for example, with its built-in battery and super-compact size for portable movie watching. Or the Leica Cine 1, which features a gorgeous premium metal chassis for the discerning home cinema fan.

The Premiere 5, which we have in our AV testing room today, is another new take on the UST projector. It’s a portable lifestyle projector that packs Samsung’s Tizen OS and a unique touchscreen interface mode into a super-compact chassis designed to be picked up and moved around the house.

It’s a unique proposition for sure, and the 'fun factor' is definitely there – it’s just a shame that it doesn’t do any of its necessary functions particularly well, especially considering the massive price tag.

Price

Let’s cut to the chase; this projector is officially priced at £1999 / AU$2999. It doesn’t appear to be available in the US (at least not yet), where it would hypothetically cost in the region of $2700.

That astronomical price may seem small fry compared with some other UST projectors we have recently reviewed, such as the Hisense PX3-Pro (£2499 / $3499 / AU$4499) and Xgimi Aura 2 (£2459 / $2699 / AU$6399), and it's even on par with the five-star Hisense PL2.

However, as we’re about to find out, it might not be the bargain that it first appears to be.

Build

Starting with a positive, the Samsung Premiere 5 is a neat-looking unit, and it feels premium in the hand, too.

For anyone familiar with the Sonos One smart speaker from 2017, The Premiere 5 should trigger a sense of deja vu, as it looks very similar, including the wraparound grille and capacitive touch buttons on the top panel.

That illusion is broken by a top-mounted lens that can project an up to 100-inch image when placed just 43.3cm from the wall.

But let’s forget about walls for a moment, as this projector’s party trick allows it to beam onto a table, worktop or floor with ease.

Snapping the included Touch Stand into place (with the aid of some satisfyingly clicky magnets) allows you to project on a new axis and access the touch interface.

For traditional use, the included remote will be familiar to anyone with a Samsung TV, as it's a sleek-looking white version of the SolarCell Remote.

It includes shortcuts to a handful of major streaming services, and it can be recharged through exposure to light – bonus points for the financial and environmental benefit of ditching single-use batteries.

Features

The Premiere 5 is a truly mixed bag when it comes to features. It has some unique aspects that make it one of the most interesting home cinema products on the market, but it appears as though they have been achieved by compromising some crucial AV-related features.

This is a 1080p projector that supports HDR10, HDR10+ and HLG. The 10W two-channel built-in sound system also supports Dolby Atmos, and Samsung has implemented a handful of AI-backed features from its TV lineup, such as Object Tracking Sound Lite and Active Voice Amplifier Pro.

We’ve seen projectors that cost much less and still tout a 4K image, though we need to remember that this is a smaller device intended for portable use. However, when the price is taken into consideration, the specifications make it a tough pill to swallow.

On paper, The Premiere 5 shares a very similar spec to the much cheaper Freestyle Gen 2 portable projector, though The Premiere touts a more advanced triple laser light source and the NQP AI Processor, a step up from Samsung’s Crystal Processor found on The Freestyle and the company’s entry-level TVs.

Samsung has opted not to include a built-in battery, unlike the Optoma Photon Go, which can beam a movie onto your wall without needing to be constantly hooked up to a power socket. That being said, the fact that it uses USB-C for power means you could hypothetically run The Premiere 5 off a beefy power bank in a pinch.

Alongside the USB-C power socket, you’ll find an additional USB-C socket for charging and data, and two Micro HDMI sockets.

Be warned, there are no adapters included in the box, so if you plan on hooking a console or Blu-ray player up to the projector, then be prepared to fork out for some new cables.

You may not feel the need to hook up any external devices, though, thanks to The Premiere’s 5 built-in Tizen OS system – the very same smart platform that’s featured on Samsung’s OLED and Neo QLED TVs.

App support is excellent, with all of the major international and domestic streaming apps supported, alongside various gaming, lifestyle and fitness applications.

Interacting with these apps is The Premiere 5’s party trick, as included in the box is the Touch Stand, a magnetic cradle that snaps onto the projector with a satisfying click. This allows the projector to beam its image directly downwards onto the surface below, whether that be a table, worktop or floor.

When it works, the touch interface is nifty and fairly responsive, though we’re not entirely convinced it's anything more than a gimmick, aside from a handful of games it enables.

We need to emphasise the “when it works”, too, as the touch interface is very temperamental and only seems to work on very specific surfaces. We asked Samsung if it recommends any specific suitable surfaces, to which it responded that matte white surfaces work best, while a handful of other surfaces should work fine, including MDF, laminate, wood and ceramic tiles.

In practice, we found that The Premiere would only project on a matte grey desk in fairly restrained ambient lighting conditions. We tried a white, flat and non-reflective table in a dark room with the curtains drawn, and the projector still couldn’t enable the touch features.

We can’t test this with every single surface and lighting condition, so be aware that this touch feature may well be limited.

For our testing metrics, picture and sound are paramount, and when trying to watch a movie in this desktop mode, we just end up with a stiff neck.

Picture

A laundry list of features is all well and good as long as the projector’s picture performance is top-notch. The Premiere 5, unfortunately, does not meet expectations.

We use a mixture of Blu-ray reference discs and streaming content from Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Apple TV+, and we assess this projector's picture performance, alongside a handful of competitor products, to find where The Premiere 5 sits in the context of the current projector market.

Considering it's a fairly unique product proposition, we’ve compared it to a range of projectors; namely, the Hisense PL2, Optoma Photon Go and Nebula X1.

Firing up our Blu-ray of Alien Romulus in the projector’s Movie film preset, we find that The Premiere exhibits a bold and punchy image, though its colours are not very accurate. The Standard picture mode helps to rein in these colours, but it does so at the expense of brightness and contrast.

It’s a noticeably soft image, with the edges of subjects on screen lacking a sense of sharpness and definition. This leaves the image looking unavoidably flat and uninteresting, and we can’t really beat around the bush here – The Premiere 5 looks low-res. Unquestionably better than the Optoma Photon Go (as you'd expect, given the massive price difference), but there is still a definite dullness to the picture.

It’s not all bad news, however, as The Premiere 5 can go fairly bright, and it presents the yellow-tinged lights of the Jackson’s Star colony towards the beginning of the film with ample punch.

Moving over to Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning in HDR on Netflix, we find the same shortcomings. The picture is bright and colourful, but also lacks detail and impact.

We also try Challengers on Amazon Prime Video, though we cannot seem to get HDR to work on this app. We have reached out to Samsung to confirm whether this is a known issue.

It's a shame that HDR via Prime Video doesn't work, and the picture does look less vibrant as a result of not being able to access it. However, it could be argued that this leads to a slightly more natural look overall.

One area where The Premiere 5 does outshine its rivals is motion. It’s not perfect, and we can't see any dedicated settings to amend it to our liking, but a gliding Osprey military aircraft doesn’t exhibit stutter, and we don’t see any glaring issues when Ethan Hunt darts around Abu Dhabi airport.

One setting we suggest being cautious of is the Dynamic picture mode, which amps everything up way too far. Testing this mode with our 4K copy of Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, we see greatly exaggerated colours and brightness. It does make it more visible when the lights are switched on, but it’s not good for dark-room viewing.

There is a general lack of refinement to the image that makes it fine for casual watching, but will leave movie enthusiasts wanting more. The lack of picture settings confirms our view, as its meagre three settings dictate most of what the projector can do.

Once we take the price into account, it becomes even harder to justify the picture performance, as we’ve seen many other projectors around this price point offer a lot more.

Sound

One area where The Premiere 5 does impress is sound. The front-firing speakers may be fairly basic, but they do project sound fairly well and with some decent punch and volume.

The score of Mission: Impossible has the opportunity to ramp up in intensity, and dialogue is clear, with some tonal variation.

And, while they are decidedly not the most spacious-sounding speakers we’ve ever heard, the sound is quite direct. This is likely due to the UST design, which is intended to sit in front of the viewer, meaning the speakers are directed toward the viewing position.

Verdict

Samsung’s pricey UST projector is a decent concept that doesn’t deliver in the metrics we test for. What's more, while the touch screen aspect is a fun idea, it doesn’t seem to work all that well, and the HDR issues and lack of full-sized HDMI sockets are issues, too.

If you need a small projector to take around the house for lifestyle and fitness apps, then The Premiere 5 may suffice, but we think you can do much better for the money if you’re after a solid cinematic picture experience.

SCORES

• Picture 3
• Sound 4
• Features 3

MORE:

Read our review of the Hisense PL2

Also consider the Hisense C1

Read our BenQ X3100i review

Best projectors: budget, 4K and ultra-short-throw