If you’re considering buying a smart TV from any of the major brands for your living room, you may want to revisit the idea of getting a projector instead — especially now that Samsung has unveiled a brand-new portable projector that uses AI to improve your viewing experience and reduce the need for tweaking the image. After all, messing with the settings may be the most annoying thing about projectors. The Freestyle Plus (which Samsung styles as Freestyle+) comes with improved brightness over its predecessors — another important feature you’d want in a TV alternative. Announced ahead of CES 2026 in Las Vegas, the Freestyle Plus delivers the same design as the original Freestyle projector. It looks like a cylinder that you can move around with ease.
You can also rotate the device, which means you can turn any surface in your home into a TV replacement, whether it’s a wall, the ceiling, or a floor. The projector supports 430 ISO Lumens, which Samsung says is twice the brightness of the previous generation, making the new Freestyle model a good choice for “everyday living environments.” A 360-degree speaker should deliver “immersive, room-filling sound,” according to Samsung. The Freestyle Plus also supports Q-Symphony — a feature that will let you sync the projector with Samsung soundbars for an even richer sound experience. While these features may be compelling enough for the Freestyle Plus to replace a TV in your home, Samsung didn’t mention the price or release date for the new device.
The Freestyle Plus’s AI capabilities
Samsung’s announcement focuses on the AI capabilities of the Freestyle Plus. The projector features an AI-powered screen optimization technology that the brand refers to as AI OptiScreen. It includes several tools that allow the projector to optimize the picture on any surface without user interaction. That’s a great feature to have in a projector. The real-time focus feature ensures the focus is automatically adjusted when the projector is moved or rotated to eliminate blur and noise. 3D Auto Keystone is a feature that lets the projector adapt the image to surfaces that might not be even or flat. Wall Calibration should work great with the former, as it analyzes the color and patterns on the surface to reduce visual distractions.
These features ensure that you can turn any surface into a TV display when a projector screen is unavailable. Along with these perks, Samsung has also added conversational AI tools to the Freestyle Plus under its Vision AI Companion platform. Users will have access to the Bixby voice assistant and other AI services, which will enable more natural, conversational interaction with on-screen content. AI capabilities aside, the Freestyle Plus will compete directly against portable projectors like the Anker Nebula Capsule 3 and the Xgimi MoGo 3. We’ll have to wait for user reviews to see how good the device is in real-life use.
