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Rating:

9/10

If your preference is to make colors pop on the screen for movie night, the Leica Cine Play 1 delivers with an immersive cinematic experience. This short-throw laser projector from the company that makes high-end cameras with a cult following ticks almost every box for tack-sharp picture quality, rendering Pixar films and the Avatar series with vibrant colors and beautiful details.

Crafted out of aluminum and glass, Leica's latest projector borrows many of its design ethos and superb build quality from the company’s cameras. It comes with a carrying handle, making it easy to move around the home, and is powered by the intuitive VIDAA operating system. The Leica optical performance makes movies come alive.

At $2,995 after an $800 rebate, the Cine Play 1 is competitive with midrange home cinema projectors from Sony, Epson, and others. The only minor ding against the Cine Play 1 is that you’ll need a mostly dark room to take advantage of Leica’s brilliant color reproduction, while competitors like the Epson Pro Cinema LS9000 perform well in both dark and well-lit environments.

Setting Up the Projector

The Cine Play 1 uses a Leica Summicron lens with an outstanding optical zoom. Known for its extreme sharpness and near-zero color fringing on Leica’s storied cameras, the Summicron glass delivers similar benefits on the Cine Play 1. With the Cine Play 1, it’s like having a high-end camera that, instead of capturing a scene, projects one with added vibrancy. Though Leica has made optical lenses for other projectors, this partnership with Hisense makes this the first projector to bear Leica’s branding, complete with the iconic red dot on the top.

Though seemingly mobile at about the size of a large lunch box and weighing 14.6 pounds, the lack of a built-in battery means that the Cine Play 1 is mostly confined to indoor use. Like most other projectors, you can mount the Cine Play 1 on your own stand or opt for Leica’s optional $495 Cine Play 1 Floor Stand. Though expensive, the Floor Stand has an ingenious design that is Apple-like in approach. After mounting the projector to the stand with a couple of bolts, I noticed a proprietary connection, allowing you to connect the power cord into the base of the stand rather than on the rear of the Cine Play 1, solving the problem of unwieldy wires.

After mounting the Cine Play 1, I set up the projector roughly 12 feet from the wall. This resulted in a 150-inch image. The Cine Play 1 can project 65- to 300-inch images, but for smaller picture sizes, it would be easier to get a 4K TV instead. No matter how large the projection I was testing, the focus, brightness, and color quality were all above average compared to other projectors.

The auto keystone and autofocus features were almost magical, adjusting to my projector screen automatically. I did have to turn off the auto-adjusting after bumping into the projector a few times, but the idea is that it will adjust if you move the Cine Play 1 to a different room.

Powering on the Cine Play 1, I was pleasantly surprised at how vibrant and colorful everything looked in a dark room.

The onscreen setup took only a few minutes. The Cine Play 1 uses Hisense’s VIDAA operating system, so I created a new profile and logged into the companion app. At the top of the screen, there’s a series of banners that allow you to access the app store, art mode, and scan a QR code to install the mobile app. I found the OS to be highly intuitive. There’s also a highly effective voice search option if you would rather not rely on the included remote.

VIDAA provides access to most streaming services, with Fandango at Home being a notable exception. (Leica reps stated that they may add this service at a later date.)

Benchmark Results and First Impressions

Apart from minor brightness issues when using the Cine Play 1 in brighter environments, this projector passed my benchmark tests. Colors were vibrant, skin tones did not appear washed out, and a butterfly scene showed subtle differences between the shades of yellows and oranges in my test clips. In comparison, colors on the TCL NXTVISION were noticeably duller. The Cine Play 1 also excels as a gaming display, with superb color reproduction and stutter-free performance when tested with Crimson Desert paired with Acer's Nitro 60 gaming desktop.

I found that the Cine Play 1 works fine during the day, but performance is best in a dark room. The projector is rated at 3,000 lumens and comes with a 1500:1 contrast ratio, similar to rivals in the midrange category.

The Cine Play 1 supports Dolby Vision, HDR10+, IMAX Enhanced, and Dolby Atmos Audio. The built-in speakers sounded fine as a backup if you don’t connect through eARC to an AV receiver or soundbar. Speaking of connections, there are only two HDMI ports and, if you use the eARC port, you are limited to one HDMI device for connecting a streamer or console. There’s also 3.5-mm audio out, an optical out, two USB ports, and an Ethernet port if you want to skip the Wi-Fi 6 connection. For those who want to use a terrestrial HD antenna, there is no coaxial connection. You can always watch free movies and shows with an app like Pluto TV.

Leica Optics Delivers

The Cine Play 1 is exceptionally good at color reproduction, exceeding the wide BT.2020 color spectrum spec at 107 percent, and you can tell. Playing Avatar: Fire and Ash on a Google TV media streamer using the Fandango at Home app, I noticed the deep red and vibrant blues. A scene with whale-like creatures looked absolutely stunning with crisp details.

Watching the entire Predator: Badlands movie, I kept noticing subtle details like moisture on the creature’s skin, although the Epson ProCinema LS9000 (which costs about $1,000 more) is still my top pick for overall picture clarity and sharpness. The Cine Play 1 is just as colorful and vibrant, though.

As a sports fan, I used the YouTube TV app to stream a Minnesota Timberwolves game, and it felt just as immersive as being there in person. The picture is so crisp that you can see every slight ball maneuver. An ABC News broadcast looked equally sharp, but not in the overly smooth soap opera look of some Samsung televisions.

However, I was not a fan of the remote. The remote is not backlit, making it hard to navigate the buttons in the dark. Dedicated buttons for Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney+, and YouTube cannot be remapped to other services, and I prefer the back button on the left rather than on the upper right side of the Home button.

The remote also has a voice button, which is useful if you’d rather not poke at the buttons. Smartphone owners can also sidestep the remote and use the VIDAA app on their phones instead.

As for picture settings, the filmmaker picture mode was the most impressive in my tests. Streaming Anaconda on Netflix, I noticed a lot of details even in bright, sunny scenes. Connecting my own speakers, the Dolby Atmos audio delivered excellent surround sound for a theater-like experience. The built-in speakers are decent but not on par with a projector like the Epson Lifestudio Grand Plus that has a built-in soundbar. I also streamed the movie Alien: Romulus from the HBO Max app, and it played flawlessly without any glitches or stutter.

The projector has several other picture modes such as dynamic, sports, and standard and each one had advantages in toning down the colors (for sports) or making them pop. It’s easy to go into settings even while you are watching a movie or show and change the picture mode.

Playing Games, Viewing Artwork, and More

The Cine Play 1 is a highly capable projector, but it’s missing a few features that typically ship on consumer TVs and projectors. There are no built-in gaming apps, like on Samsung's The Frame Pro television. Gaming enthusiasts can still use the Cine Play 1 as a well-rounded entertainment hub, however, as long as you are willing to connect a console or use Apple Arcade on the Apple TV.

I tested an Xbox Series X, playing Forza Horizon 5 and colors look vibrant with a movie-like richness that’s missing on other projectors. The Cine Play 1 also kept up with high-frame rate PC game, performing at 120 Hz at 1080p.

In addition to this Leica collaboration, Hisense also makes their own line of laser projectors including the Hisense C2 Triple Laser Smart Mini Projector that’s similar in shape and design but priced about $1,000 less. For the premium price, the Cine Play 1 produces richer colors at similar brightness settings.

Art mode is another feature that I had hoped to see on this projector. On Samsung's Freestyle projector, this mode allows you to project beautiful paintings and watercolors on your wall when the projector isn't streaming a movie. As a workaround, I loaded up a few Van Gogh and Andrew Wyeth paintings from my phone (Leica also makes its own phones in the form of the Xiaomi 17 Ultra Leica Edition) and played them as a slideshow on the Cine Play 1. While you might not want to leave a projector on all day, art mode could be a nice way to liven up a room. Curiously, I didn’t find a way to send videos from my phone to the projector to view homemade movies.

The Cine Play 1 lives up to its Leica heritage: Solid craftsmanship, superb image quality, and smart design. As long as you can overlook the somewhat flawed remote and prefer to watch movies and shows in the dark, the Cine Play 1 delivers.

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