Samsung finally unveiled its latest projectors, The Premiere 9 and The Premiere 7, in late August after first offering a sneak peek at CES 2024 and at IFA 2024 I got to see the Premiere 9 in action.
When it comes to the visuals, there's wasn't much surprising going on – it has a 'triple laser' projection design, the colors were rich and nuanced, and combined with the brightness of over 3,000 ANSI Lumens, it looked rich even with the lights on, and very impressive with them off.
But it wasn't the picture quality that I was most interested in (especially given it wasn't overall ideal viewing conditions – we'll review the Premiere 9 and get serious about that stuff later). Instead, the 2.2.2-channel Dolby Atmos sound system is the most fun part.
Samsung's demo footage was designed to show off what it can do with height and width, and you can really tell the system has the benefit of upfiring drivers, because even in a sub-optimal conference center room, elements of the sound steered across the 130-inch screen with precision, and burst up way higher than the low profile of the projector's body. The positioning had some specificity too, it didn't just run up or to the side – it felt like it had more of a clear point of height and width.
It was a pretty dynamic sound, and offered a solid grasp on detail and clarity, though not as strong as the best soundbars can go, if you spend a lot of month just on that, rather than having it bundled into your projector price.
But I was seriously impressed with the spatial sound and general home theater effect of the Atmos reproduction, and I don't think you'd need a soundbar in many cases, with one serious issue: bass.
Samsung has certainly tried to put bass into the Premiere 9 (it does claim two sub channels, after all!), but there's simply no physical way to put a really impactful subwoofer in a unit that large if you're also squeezing in a whole projector.
I just wrote about how Yaber's new projector that comes with a separate subwoofer unit made me realise that all ultra short throw projectors that pride themselves on offering sound too should give you the option of a bundled subwoofer, and The Premiere 9 really hammered that home.
It sounded great in so many ways, but a 130-inch picture isn't going to satisfy home theater fans without great bass underpinning it. Movie soundtracks are made with hefty low-end in mind, and the effort of the Premiere 9's drivers just couldn't add any real impact.
It's not like it would need to be a massive subwoofer – Samsung makes an excellent little compact subwoofer that comes with the Samsung HW-S800D soundbar. I tested the previous version – the Samsung HW-S800B – and that tiny cube sub did an excellent job. If Samsung gave people the option of paying an extra $250 to add it to the Premiere 9 and get a more full movie sound out of the box, I think a lot of people would go for it.
Based on my experience with The Premiere 9, I could definitely be tempted by the 130-inch rich 4K images – we'll test it when it launches in 2025 to see if it rivals the best 4K projectors – and having built-in good Dolby Atmos positional audio to simplify my setup only makes it more tempting… but I'll need it to deliver the bass as well.
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