Samsung Freestyle Review: A Pint-Sized Smart Projector
Samsung’s Freestyle Projector made a big splash at CES in January, and in November landed a spot on Oprah’s Favorite Things of 2022 list. At $799, it’s not the cheapest smart projector on the market, but it has a hip, Samsung twist.
A unique circular design sits in a stand that lets you rotate it to project on nearly any surface and it boasts many of the same benefits of a traditional Samsung (SSNLF) TV. And I’ve spent the past few weeks putting a Freestyle to the test on walls, floors, and even ceilings.
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A Pint-Sized Projector
Once in hand, the sheer compactness of The Freestyle comes through. It comes in a small cardboard box and the circular, can-like, projector is attached to a stand out of the box. In fact it weighs just under two pounds--specifically 1.8-pounds--and at its tallest is just under seven inches. That’s pretty wild and is about one and a half ice cream pints tall.
This sheer size makes it easy to place The Freestyle really anywhere. It can go on a nightstand to project onto the ceiling--the same spot could be achieved by placing it on top of a headboard--or really on any surface. The built-in stand allows one to securely move and have the projector lock itself, this way it doesn’t jerk around while projecting the screen. You also get 180 degrees of rotation, so it’s easy to achieve the projection on the surface you want.
The one knock here though is that The Freestyle doesn’t have any built-in power source. So with no battery inside, it needs to be plugged in and that means if you want to use this outside to project onto a building, an RV, or even in a tent, you’ll need to provide power. Samsung includes a USB-C cable and a wall plug in the box, but for those on-the-go moments, you’ll need to pair this with a mobile power bank.
Ultimately, it’s an easy problem to solve, but for the price it would have been nice to see some integrated power. Samsung actually makes a battery base for The Freestyle, which retails at $189.99, but you can also get a power bank on Amazon and plug it in just as easily.
The USB-C port lives on the slide, along with a mini HDMI and button to enable or disable the onboard microphones. The latter can be used to chat with Bixby or with Alexa. Around the projector lens up top are capacitive buttons for power and pairing with a phone.
You also get an equally compact smart remote in the box. It doesn’t feature a solar panel for automatic recharging on the box, but it does have a circular D-Pad, power, volume rocker, and dedicated streaming buttons. Basically, all you could need is a remote.
Around the top and bottom of The Freestyle are a few vents, and you will hear some noise as it cools itself off with extended use. Built into this compact projector as well is a speaker system which Samsung says provides premium 360 sound. It’s pretty good and does a decent job representing low, mid, and high tones. You can also easily pair this with a sound system for when you need a boost, most likely when projecting in a large indoor space or outdoors.
A Vibrant View With Easy Access to Streaming
While the design is equally important with The Freestyle, the quality of the projection is also keenly important. So let’s rattle off the key information — Samsung’s The Freestyle delivers a picture at up to 1080p HD and works best in spaces where it’s dark. The Freestyle can’t produce the same brightness as say a Neo QLED TV with a plethora of mini LEDs, but in dark spaces you get a vibrant, bright enough view.
It’s really an excellent view in darker spaces--and when outside you’ll definitely want to use it way after dusk when it is firmly declared the night. The result is up to a 100-inch view that can be immersive and a great way to take in content. Even especially punchy films, say Marvel’s Endgame, come through clearly and let you take in a range of action. It’s not 4K, but who really needs that on a portable projector that can fit a bevy of use cases.
For those who wish for rainy days, you can even project a window scape with rain in your space. And that speaks to the multimode use cases of The Freestyle. With Ambient Mode, you can cast something fun like a neon sign welcoming people into a party, set the scene for the holidays, or even project photos. It’s really neat and The Freestyle screams millennial or Gen Z in this vein. Heck, this would have been a blast to have in college.
The other nice feature here is that it will automatically level and straighten the picture. Meaning that regardless of the size of the projection, it will make sure it’s straight and not crooked on the wall. And the accuracy with this has only gotten better over the course of some updates.
And just like a Samsung smart TV, be it a Frame or a QLED TV, this is running a Tizen smart interface. Here you can go through the setup and pick from a few different scenes for those fun ambient modes, but additionally it gives you access to a number of streaming services. Meaning that this is an all-in-one solution for casting content anywhere from a number of sources.
Disney+, Paramount, Samsung TV Plus, Netflix, Hulu, and many others are all represented. And you can use the proprietary app store to install a variety of apps. It can be a little slow after setup, but The Freestyle tends to speed up after you’ve used the app at least once before it. I expect that Samsung will continue to issue updates to speed things up here as well. Luckily, casting to it—once your on Wi-Fi—is plenty simple.
If you enable Bixby or connect it with Amazon’s Alexa, you can also ask for content with your voice. Otherwise the physical control or the SmartThings app on iOS or Android will be your best bet for controls.
Is The Freestyle Worth it?
There’s no doubt about it, Samsung’s The Freestyle is one of the most unique gadgets available today and it’s really a multitool of a projector. At $799, it’s compact and delivers a vibrant screen with easy access to services, but it’s nearly the cost of a TV. With a discounted price to $599 and a free case included, it could be an excellent purchase or a gift for someone this year.
Samsung’s clearly playing with this form and will hopefully be evolving it, but as a first-generation product, if you have dark space or one where you can control the light, it’s a blast to play with and equally great for a movie night.
Prices are accurate and items in stock at time of publishing.
