If I’m truly honest I would love to be able to see every movie in a completely empty cinema. No mobile phones from other moviegoers who can distract you, no people who come in late, talk through the movie or other frustrations. When I received a press release about it I was intrigued. It was described as “a mobile 3D-theater”. So in other words your own cinema, enabling you to watch movies without distractions. I decided to check it out and received the unit to test it out during two weeks. Does this product offer the ultimate way to experience movies to a movie fanatic?
The Royole Moon comes in a box which holds the headset, which consists of noise-cancelling headphones with an attached screen. You connect it to a small box which is the size of a power bank, which runs the operating system. Besides those the box has a small pouch to carry in, a cleaning cloth, a charger and various cables which allow you to connect other devices to it. So you could play your Playstation, Xbox or Blu-Ray player using the Royole Moon as the screen.
You should be able to use a good product without looking at the manual. So I connected the headset to the box, pressed the big button on it and immediately was looking at an image. As you can’t wear both glasses and the Moon, this resulted in a blurry image, but luckily Royole has a solution for this. At the bottom of the headset there are two buttons you can turn to focus the lenses (+2 up to -7). After adjusting them the image was clear. In the past I have used a mobile phone in combination with a cheap 3D headset, but there you were able to distinguish individual pixels. That isn’t the case here. The screen is sharp and the manufacturer claims that it is comparable to an 800 inch screen, 20 meters in front of you. A claim which is hard to verify, but you don’t get the feeling that you are looking at two tiny screens just centimeters away from you eyes. This is no VR headset by the way, which means that you never get the feeling you are in a virtual space. Whichever way you turn, the screens are always showing what is being played.
When it’s booted up you are presented with a main menu, in which you can change settings, start a browser, watch YouTube, visit the Royole store to rent 3D movies of play movies you’ve stored in your own folder. As the operating system, Moon OS, is based on Android, it is also possible to install any app you want. There is a downside to this though as the unit doesn’t have a Play store. This means you have to download the apk files from websites, which of course comes with security risks. You’ll also have to install them manually. I decided to get the Netflix app and didn’t run into issues, although the process wasn’t very user-friendly. Once installed though, it was easy to navigate and the streaming worked as it should.
But what about the viewing experience? You can adjust the headset in various ways in order to find a setting which makes it comfortable. The part that goes in front of your eyes fits well and blocks out any outside light. The first time using it I did notice the lenses fogging up, but didn’t have this during other sessions. I might not be the biggest fan of 3D, but Gravity is one of my favorite movies in the genre (and also in my top 100). When it was out in cinemas I actually went again because I knew the experience at home wouldn’t be the same. So it was the perfect movie to check out what the Moon could do and see if it could reproduce the experience. The answer is both yes and no. The 3D is almost as good as in the cinema and you don’t see anything around you you feel like you are in the cinema. No distractions and as you can’t do anything else yourself because the screens are in front of your eyes, you completely focus on the movie. I did quickly notice though that I had to scale back the format of the virtual screen as both eyes couldn’t see the corners of the screen, making it slightly blurry at the edges. After adjusting it, the experience was better, but it gave me the feeling I was further away from the screen.
It’s a nice device, but is it something I would recommend? With a price of 899 euros I wouldn’t and I wonder who would actually buy one. It is a product that’s made for a niche market and I can imagine that if you travel a lot by airplane it is a perfect way to watch movies and TV shows at a high-resolution, without anyone bothering you. But at home? I had the unit for two weeks and when I wanted to watch something I usually didn’t pick this. I preferred the TV. I also wonder if the experience would be different compared to a high-end smart phone in combination with something like the Gear VR. I admit, that would cost about the same as this device, but you can also use a phone outside of the Gear. If the price was lower more people might be interested. Despite that it might be one of the most interesting ways to get your own private cinema…if money is no problem of course.