OBE listed the R3 Ultra Max on JD.com on 11 September at 3,999 yuan, about $595, and announced a second model the same day: the C5 Pro, priced at 1,499 yuan with a 1,099-yuan introductory price and an on-sale date of 24 September. Both are 1080p. Both are single-panel LCD. The more interesting detail is who supplies the parts.
OBE is the export name of Dayancheng, a Shenzhen brand that has spent the last two years pushing single-chip LCD projectors upmarket rather than downmarket, which is the opposite of what the technology is known for outside China.
The R3 Ultra Max is rated at 1,800 CVIA lumens at native 1920×1080, with HDR10 decoding, a 40,000:1 dynamic contrast figure, a 1.2:1 throw ratio and a 40-to-150-inch image range. It sits on an integrated Z-shaped gimbal with 120 degrees of vertical tilt and 360 degrees of rotation, so it can be pointed at a ceiling with the speakers still facing the room. Inside are a MediaTek MT9681, 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage; on the back, two HDMI 2.1 ports with eARC on one of them, USB-A 3.0 and a 3.5mm output. Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.2, ToF plus a camera for autofocus, keystone, screen-fit and obstacle avoidance, and a claimed 3ms input latency. Fan noise is rated below 26dB. It weighs 5.22kg and measures 294×244.5×286.5mm, which is not a portable by any reading.
The audio spec is the unusual part. Two 10W mid-and-treble drivers and a dedicated 25W subwoofer in a 1,070cc chamber, with bass quoted down to 43Hz. Most projectors in this price band ship a pair of 5W or 10W full-range drivers and hope you own a soundbar. Some regions are showing the R3 Ultra Max at 2,799 yuan, roughly $415, after China’s national appliance subsidy.
The C5 Pro is the small one: native 1080p, 600 CVIA lumens, 3000:1, a 1.2:1 throw ratio and a 40-to-120-inch range, on a U-shaped gimbal base that also works as a touch-controlled night light synced to whatever is playing. It runs an MT9-series chip with 1GB of RAM and 32GB of storage, has Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.3, one HDMI 2.0 and one USB 2.0, and drives a single 10W speaker. OBE pairs a ToF sensor with a full-colour camera and claims the combination corrects the image 120 percent faster and 35 percent more accurately than its previous arrangement, and it uses Scheimpflug correction to hold focus across the frame when the projector is placed off-axis rather than square to the wall.
The company also makes a point of saying its OS shows no advertising at startup or when you cast to it. In the Chinese market that is a competitive claim, not a throwaway one.
This is the part worth paying attention to. TCL CSOT — the display arm of TCL Technology, and one of the largest LCD panel makers in the world — is the exclusive panel supplier for OBE’s projector line. When OBE launched the R3 Ultra and C3 Max in April, CSOT stated that all three models in that launch used its panels: a five-inch high-transmittance LCD on the R3 Ultra series, with 26 percent more light-transmitting area than the 4.45-inch panel it replaced, and the 4.45-inch part on the cheaper C3 Max. In September 2025 the two companies put a 120Hz LTPS panel into the C3 Ultra, which CSOT billed as a first for single-panel LCD.
The light engines are not off-the-shelf either. CSOT has said the optical assemblies for that April line came from Hunan Chuangke Optoelectronics, a company inside its own group that has been building 1LCD engines for two decades, working on sealed optics, wider colour gamut and thermal management — the three things that historically made cheap LCD projectors fade, dim and collect dust inside the light path. Gizmochina reports the C5 Pro uses a newly co-developed metal black-matrix panel with roughly 20 percent better transmittance, and that the R3 Ultra Max carries the five-inch CSOT part.
Read that back as a supply-chain statement and it says something fairly stark: a tier-one display manufacturer is now designing custom panels and optical engines for a projector category that, in the United States, is represented mostly by unbranded boxes under $150.
The gap is hard to overstate. PMA Research, which has counted projector shipments for thirty years, only recently began separately counting the 1LCD units flooding European and American marketplaces, because they had grown too numerous to leave out. What that survey is counting is the $60-to-$150 end: no brand equity, no panel partner, frequently no agreement between the spec sheet and the listing — a problem we ran into directly with a $125 projector carrying HP’s licensed name.
The Chinese 1LCD market went the other way. It has brands, panel partners, published optical-engine sourcing, gimbals, subwoofers and 1,800-lumen ratings at $595. Whether the picture justifies the price is a separate question and one nobody outside China is in a position to measure yet, but the industrial commitment behind it is real and visible.
CVIA lumens are not ANSI lumens. The rating is a Chinese industry standard introduced to stop the brightness inflation that led, among other things, to a lawsuit between JMGO and Epson, and it is measured under its own procedure. It is a far more honest number than the “lumens” printed on a marketplace listing, but placing 1,800 CVIA directly against 1,800 ANSI is not a comparison anyone should make without a meter in the room. Our lumen converter is a reasonable starting point for the arithmetic, not a substitute for a measurement.
One more thing worth flagging, since it travelled quickly over the weekend: the C5 Pro circulated through several English- and Spanish-language outlets under Dangbei’s name. The JD listing, OBE’s own announcement and IT Home’s report all attribute both machines to OBE. Dangbei’s own recent Chinese launches are different machines, among them the RX10.
Neither of these came with an international release date, which leaves the open question. OBE has sold projectors in the US before, several generations back. If a panel maker of this size keeps funding the category, the pressure eventually lands on the DLP machines occupying the $500-to-$800 shelf in America — and nothing about that shelf suggests it is expecting the competition to arrive from single-panel LCD.