Samsung's 2023 Freestyle Projector Means Great News for Gamers
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Samsung has made plenty of noise in the world of digital projectors with The Freestyle, a cylindrical projector that brings the company’s smart TV experience, Tizen, to screens as large as 100 inches. It’s one of the best premium projectors you can get, and now, it’s getting an upgrade.
The Freestyle Gen 2 is officially here and, on the surface, it looks a lot like the original. Samsung didn’t go crazy with upgrades this year. Instead, the focus is on improving one area over the original model: gaming.
The best part? Even with the upgrades, Samsung is keeping the same $800 price, and the first-generation is sticking around for a bit as well. Let’s unpack everything you need to know about 2023's Freestyle Gen 2 and how to preorder it.
How to Preorder the Samsung Freestyle Gen 2 Projector
The Freestyle Gen 2 is available for preorder at Samsung.com for $799.99. It’s only available in one color, white, and it looks clean and minimal. It’ll officially launch on Thursday, August 31.
For those of you who plan to preorder, you’ll want to jump on it by Wednesday, August 30 because everyone who places an order before then will receive a free IP55-rated storage case for The Freestyle Gen 2, which can help protect it from harmful climates. It’s a $59.99 value, so you don’t want to miss out.
The Freestyle Gen 2: What’s New and What’s Staying the Same?
The big new feature on The Freestyle Gen 2 is the inclusion of Gaming Hub, Samsung’s software experience that powers cloud gaming services on its platform. Thanks to the new integration, you can play over 3,000 games from services like Xbox Game Pass, NVIDIA GeForce NOW, Amazon Luna, Utomik, Antstream Arcade, and Blacknut on the projector. It’s seemingly one of the most immersive gaming experiences on the market.
Samsung built support for Bluetooth gaming controllers right into The Freestyle, so you can have the most natural experience possible. For instance, you could connect an Xbox Wireless Controller and enter the game. Applications like YouTube and Twitch are already supported, so you can follow along with your favorite streamers while you game.
To help games run smoothly, Samsung increased the memory of The Freestyle Gen 2. This extra headroom will allow games to maintain their framerates and resolutions a lot easier, so you can maximize the quality of each title you fire up. It will also speed up navigating the Tizen interface and generally get you into content faster.
The Freestyle Gen 2 also ships with Samsung’s SolarCell remote, which recharges automatically when exposed to sunshine. It’s another way Samsung hopes to reduce the number of batteries that wind up in landfills by 200 million over seven years.
Beyond that, this is the same Freestyle projector we’ve come to know. It can project a display up to 100 inches, enough to make any blank wall a movie theater. It still outputs at 1920x1080 resolution, while features like Auto Leveling, Auto Focus, and Auto Keystone will ensure you get the best picture quality depending on the surface you project on. Samsung also includes its PurColor technology which optimizes color automatically based on your environment for accurate vibrance and richness.
The 180-degree rotating cradle stand lets you adjust the projection exactly how you want, while 360-degree speakers inside The Freestyle Gen 2 give you immersive audio quality. You will still need to connect The Freestyle to power to use, and a USB-C to USB-C cable and a wall plug are included in the box.
How the Freestyle Gen 2 Compares
In our review of the original Freestyle projector on TheStreet, we found it to be mostly worth the $799 asking price, given its excellent picture quality and software experience. Of course, that comes with a big caveat: plenty of other projectors on the market do the same thing for less money, like Anker’s Nebula Capsule II. It might only run with a 720p resolution, but it’s $100 less and can project up to 100 inches.
If you’re eyeing up The Freestyle Gen 2, you might want to consider whether you need the extra memory for gaming. Anyone who doesn’t use a cloud gaming service will be fine without this newer edition and can easily get away with the original Freestyle, which remains in the lineup at a discounted price of $599 at third-party retailers (you can get it for even less on Amazon).
Still, it’s cool to see Samsung add a special gaming mode to The Freestyle Gen 2. It’ll help the projector appeal to serious gamers, and it could open up a variety of possibilities for gaming in the future.