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I'm getting very mixed messages today. On the one hand, the Athereion Max from

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Awol Vision is very easy to set up with only a 9-minute installation video. On

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the other hand, here's everything that came with it. They sponsored this video,

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sending us over a complete package with the projector itself, their Vanish

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cabinet, a 130in screen that rises from

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the floor, presumably out of the Vanish cabinet, and also the Thunderbeat, a 4.2

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2.2 sound system that works with the speaker and the projector for 5.2.2. A

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major focus for AWOL Vision in the design of the Athereion Max was

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apparently what they're calling pixel level clarity. Kicking off with some

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speeds and feeds. This thing supports pretty much everything. [music] Dolby

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Vision, HDR Plus, 110% coverage of the

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Rec 2020 color space along with gaming features like variable refresh rate and

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auto low latency mode. Of course, ah,

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the entire other side is dedicated to this tagline. Precision in every pixel.

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Apparently, clarity was a major focus during the design of this product. Pun

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intended. [music] This thing is absolutely packed with clarity enhancing features like

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highindex sapphire glass with what they're calling a rare earth coating

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which supposedly will reduce reflections, a titanium thermal mesh

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that's supposed to reduce focus drift and anti- rainbow effect technology

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which I will be very interested to see because I do have a bit of sensitivity

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to the rainbow effect. Like the way everything's laid out in here. You got

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your power cable, you've got your HDMI C. This is a USBC cable.

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>> [music] >> What an interesting selection. USB microB

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composite and a remote, but no HDMI. Pretty

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standard remote. Nice prominent voice control button. Free TV. And of course,

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it has an AI button because what wouldn't these days? Now, let's take a

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look at the projector itself. Bold design. We've got an IR sensor on the

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front. And then moving around to Hey, look. Cooler Master fans.

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fun. It makes sense, you know, masters

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of cooling. They can cool a projector just as well as they can cool a PC. Uh,

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what else we got out the back here? Got our power in, three HDMI inputs with one

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of them supporting EER, a type-C input

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that, huh, they want you to use for a

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computer. So, I guess that's DisplayPort, USB port for connecting a media

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device. There's that composite. uh RS232 for if you have like a home automation

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system or something like that, as well as wired Ethernet and optical audio,

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which I do still like to see even though it's kind of an older standard. Oh,

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look, I missed something. [music] There's a USB 3 port over on the right

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along with the power button. And then on the bottom, you've got your various mounting options. Either your adjustable

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feet if you want to just sit it down or if you want a ceiling mount, you've got

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your bolt pattern right there. The Max boasts a maximum of 3,300 lumens output,

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which they claim is good for up to a 200 inch screen. I would say that's probably

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getting close to the limit, unless you have a perfectly [music] light controlled room. And it'll do up

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to a 6,000 to1 native contrast ratio with some black enhancement that will

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hopefully boost it beyond that. Now, it's time to hook it up to all this

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other stuff, which hopefully is not too

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hard to figure out. This is cool. Well, the middle unit of the media console has

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a built-in power hub as well as some fun stuff in here. Remote control, power

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adapter. So, that's presumably for that barrel jack before. And then we've got a

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really fun USBA to dual USBA female port

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thing. And then an A to C cable along with a baggie of drywall screws and a

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cute little screwdriver. So, stubby. Oh,

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another built-in power bar. [music] There's a fan grill here, but I think

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that's just meant to be a passive intake for [music] the active exhaust that's

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over here. Oh, this is also metal on the

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top. That explains why the whole thing is so faking heavy. There's a third

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power bar. How much stuff do they expect you to be

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hooking up to your projector? Okay, so

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we have ultra short throw light rejecting screen.

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Oh, an extra year of warranty. Look at that. Please keep. They may be needed

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for the future use of your screen. Okay, inside this box is some

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interesting stuff. We have a third remote, which apparently I don't need

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cuz it should automatically lift and lower the screen when the projector

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turns on and off. So, I guess we'll see. As well as this power cord. Oh, sticker.

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Put that wherever I want. Also, I may have gotten the order of operations

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confused again because these all have to go together before I can put the

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projector screen on them. Derp. I think the feet just kind of slide on.

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Am I missing anything?

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I don't know. Sure. Right. Like, do I

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just Yeah. Yeah.

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Oh, that's kind of cool. See, I thought the sliding feet was a bug, but it turns

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out it's a feature. It allows you to very easily adjust it and get at this

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power plug over here. Okay. Oh, hey, there's a 3 and 12 mil ox

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jack in the side of the projector. I didn't notice that before. I'm going to

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plug this into here. Oh, it said uh

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don't try to open it before removing the protective film. So, I'm on it. I'm on

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it, boys. It's easy to lose track of the scale of this product a little bit

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because it's in front of a 150in screen.

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This is a giant giant screen. Wow, those

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cooling fans rip. I would probably want

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to put that on a speed controller myself. Does it have one? No. But it's

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just standard mounting holes, so nothing would prevent you from putting a Noctua or something in there. In fact, it would

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match the color scheme. Built-in cable management holes are nice. You'd love to

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see it. We figured out what the USB splitter is for. This guy goes right

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here. Okay, that handles the screen. And

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then this guy, that USB A to C goes into

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this USBC port down here in the base

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what that one does. Not sure yet. With that all connected, theoretically,

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it's opening the thing. It's firing my laser. Oh, it's a laser projector. Did I

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mention that? Damn. Now,

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all right. Heck yeah. Okay. It needs to be aligned.

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This is This is normal.

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Wow. It's dark back here.

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Oh, this is cool. Yeah. It has like acoustically transparent material here

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so that you can put speakers right below the screen at the bottom. We haven't

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even set up the speakers yet. That is a lot of speaker built into the projector.

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They really intend for you to use this as a center channel. Like obviously all

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I'm hearing are interface dootes so far, but it's really loud. Okay, auto

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keystone correction. Let's see how this goes. Ensure the projected image is a

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rectangle. Okay, I think I was playing with them when I was unboxing it and

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getting the B-roll, so they're just super not even right now. Okay, we tried

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uploading our picture of the screen. It did not work.

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We need to get it so that the edge of our screen is inside the border area.

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>> Liner stops liners. [laughter] I'm not going to do it again. I'm not

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going to touch it now. Long story short, some hours of micro adjustments to the

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feet as well as playing around with the

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height of the screen when it reaches its maximum and we got this far. Bottom

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line, it did need some keystone. We do still have about an inch of blank space

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at the bottom that it looks like from all the other videos we've seen of this

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product are pretty normal. And there is some winess at the edge that seems to be

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a function of this extending and retracting projector screen. You

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wouldn't get that if you had a fixed screen. There's also other downsides of

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this style of screen.

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>> [laughter] >> That's not cuz I was running really fast. But

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can your setup do this? Hey, [screaming]

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definitely cool. Now we turn it on.

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I'm going to try and figure out the motor for this guy now. Uh the plug

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might have come deplugged. Brief update.

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We're trying to get the whole thing to, you know,

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you do the thing. And it turns out CEC is too good. And this remote is now

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controlling the NVIDIA Shield that we plugged in. And so when we power it off,

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it doesn't power off the projector. Quick update. We have solved the drawer

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retraction detraction. Traction. [music]

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We've solved the drawer issue. All right, boys. We're there.

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It always comes down to cables, doesn't it? That's why you should get your

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cables at ltstore.com

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in a couple months when we have stock. >> Let's go.

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>> There we go. Get these remotes out of

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here. Who needs them until I'm troubleshooting? >> What did you do?

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>> I didn't do anything. >> What do you mean? This has never happened before. >> I didn't do anything.

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>> Oh my god. It's in thermal protection mode. It could take 10 minutes before.

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It's in thermal protection mode cuz we were lifting it and retracting it so

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much. You know what? I have an LMG review. I will go do that and then I

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will return. Okay, we waited for the thermal protection. A boom.

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It took a lot more than 9 minutes, but we finally got there. Finally, time

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to check out some content. We haven't played around with image settings pretty

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much at all yet, but right out of the gate, HDR is looking really nice in a

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light controlled environment. And AWOL points out that their Noircene system 2

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combined with their strong native and dynamic contrast really helps to make

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HDR content pop. You can't have highs

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without contrasting lows. AI contrast.

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Whoa. Huh. Wow. You can tune this to be really

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poppy if you really want to. High might be a little bit much for me, but it's

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definitely doing something. Do you know what?

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[sighs] This is the first device that I've been like, "Okay, yeah, vivid.

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Fine. The skin tones are a little off.

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They're a little red and vivid." The darkest image setting and highest

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contrast. Okay, I'm I'm down for some high contrast. Definitely a unique value

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proposition. the high. I mean, it's huge. And I gotta

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say, with the content on the screen, when's the last time you thought about the ripple at the edges? Like, could it

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be kind of irritating? Yeah. But it's in your peripheral vision for the vast

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majority of what you're going to look at on a screen this size, right? Like, it's, you know, we shouldn't make

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excuses for, you know, poor tensioning,

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right? But it's going to be a limitation of this style of screen. And you're not

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married to this style of screen. You can use a different style of screen if you want. Oh, right. That's right. They have

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150 in as well. That would be I think that would be towards the limit of what

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I would want to do with this level of brightness. Should we fire up a game?

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Switching over to games. Filmmaker mode.

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Not going to work for that. Definitely too much latency. But game mode. Well,

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that's much better. Actually, actually really good. High

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refresh rate mode. Hold on a second here. But it totally does it. It totally

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does it. It even supports Fresync Premium Pro.

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Definitely still has some rainbow effect, which I especially notice with

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like a mouse cursor moving around like that. Image quality, yeah, not quite on

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par with what we saw in filmmaker mode or, you know, fine-tuning the image in

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some of the other modes, but if that's the cost of having latency this low,

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this is extremely usable and obviously a

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gigantic screen, so the immersion is undeniable. Sponsored or no? before they

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actually ship this Kickstarter. There's definitely some rough edges that they

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need to file off a little, especially with the uh ease of alignment and the

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deployment and and undeployment. But in terms of cool factor,

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I mean, it's kind of undeniable. It's

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just a matter of whether the cool factor is worth the price. We'll have their

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Kickstarter links down below. If you guys enjoyed this video, hey, subscribe to ShortCircuit.