By Avi Greengart
Technological disruption is often portrayed as coming fully-formed from an all-new thing that is superior to established options, but that’s not always how innovations w ork. Many disruptions come from products that provide lesser experiences at lower price points or appeal to a different set of customer needs than the industry standard. These products then improve over time and eventually hit a tipping point where their advantages overtake the status quo. The front projection market has been fairly static for a while, but that is starting to change.
Smart Portable Projectors Move Upmarket
Fitting millions of tiny mirrors on a piece of silicon sounds like science fiction, but Texas Instruments introduced DLP all the way back in 1987. It has been a mature technology since the days of the Intel 286, and it has been used in business and home theater projectors since the 1990’s. Over the past decade or so, companies like Anker’s Nebula have taken commodity DLP chips and put them in soda can-sized containers containing a battery, LED lamp, speaker, and a MediaTek processor with Wi-Fi. By adding Android TV and keystone software, this becomes a self-contained streaming media projection system. You can turn it on, point it at a wall (the keystone software automatically adjusts the image angle, no adjustments necessary), and start watching. Image quality and brightness are usually just adequate, but the portability and convenience make cannister projectors the perfect solution for taking on vacation or getting a big picture without requiring dedicated wall space. They can be cheap, too, with most units selling for $400 – $600, no installation, and usually no dedicated screen – though YouTube van lifers and apartment dwellers often graduate from hanging a sheet to adding an inexpensive pull-down screen.
XGIMI is one of the cannister projector pioneers, and the Chinese company has now sold over five million units. However, it is starting to move decidedly upmarket and its latest product threatening to displace enthusiast home theater projector brands. XGIMI (pronounced “ex-jimmy;” we asked) started with relatively dim, smart portable pico-projectors, but it now offers higher brightness UST (Ultra Short Throw) projectors and 4K HDR projectors using laser light engines. The XGIMI Horizon Ultra I've had in for review is unique: it takes most of the elements of portable smart projectors designed for quick and casual use, then adds serious image quality that should appeal to home theater enthusiasts. In fact, the Horizon Ultra is the first long-throw projector of any kind with Dolby Vision.
The Horizon Ultra runs on the MediaTek MT9629, which is certainly a capable processor, as it supports 4K and HDR, but it is far from MediaTek’s top of the line Pentonic series. By pairing the MT9629 with a 4K DLP chip and a home-grown hybrid LED/laser light engine, the $1799 Horizon Ultra is able to outperform home theater projectors that cost $6000 in some key measures – specifically, HDR.
The Horizon Ultra’s light output requires a lot of power, so the unit does not have a battery and must be plugged into the wall. The power brick is enormous, and the cable position can make placement challenging. The projector itself is also significantly larger and more of a cube than its cannister predecessors, though it weighs just 11.5 lbs. and is still small enough to tuck in a closet when not in use. Despite the power, the Horizon Ultra merely gets warm during use and is almost dead silent even from two feet away.
The Horizon Ultra is spec'd at 2200 lumen, which is bright enough for casual viewing and sports with the lights on. For serious movie and prestige TV watching, you're still going to want full light control to get the best image. In the cinema mode and in Dolby Vision colors pop without oversaturation. To get HDR, XGIMI uses a dual laser and LED light engine, and it works! In scenes like Wonder Woman crossing no man's land, the sparks of bullets off Diana's shield are markedly brighter than the rest of the image, and her lasso is obviously enhanced, too. Watching Foundations on Apple TV — which has a "lets apply Dolby Vision to everything" mode — was a treat. Wide color gamut and high dynamic range scenes abound. Like many 4K projectors aimed at the consumer market, the DLP engine that XGIMI is using is not native 4K – it uses pixel shifting to get there — but it sure looks like 4K when the image is properly dialed in.
The Horizon Ultra’s origin as a portable smart projector can still be seen in its design – and its remote control. The unit’s built-in Harmon-branded speaker plays relatively loud and clean, even if it does not provide stereo or any spacial effects. However, people cross-shopping the Horizon Ultra with other home theater projectors won’t want a speaker at all and may never use the built-in Android TV functionality. They might prefer to save the space and cost of the speakers because they will be using one of the two HDMI 2.1 inputs instead with an A/V receiver or processor and amplifier. The remote control is also a victim of budget projector cost cutting, with no backlighting to speak of.
There are other, more fundamental, design compromises for home theater use.
Black levels and projector placement are the Horizon Ultra's main weaknesses. My eight-year-old Sony 1080p LCOS puts out a markedly softer image (as expected) but slightly better black levels. The XGIMI blows it away on brightness and on modern benchmarks like HDR and color range. However, getting all that light output on the screen can be a bit of a challenge. On most home theater projectors, the distance, height, and left/right position of the mount are precisely calibrated to match the screen size by an installer or the DIY enthusiast. Cannister projectors are less fussy about placement: by including aggressive keystone correction and dropping picture quality in favor of convenience, you can just set them down anywhere and they adjust the image accordingly. The Horizon Ultra tries to split the difference. It has the same set-it-and-forget-it keystoning feature as its smaller predecessors, but using it robs the projector of resolution. Enthusiasts would prefer to adjust the projector physically and not lose pixels, but that can be difficult with the Horizon Ultra. It has a single tripod-style thread underneath that did not seem strong enough for ceiling mounting and it lacks any other standard mounting points. There is an optical zoom lens for distance (settings are buried in the menu) but no ability to tilt and no lens shift. The optional stand does add modest tilt angles, but it did not extend up high enough to use behind my seating position. I ended up having to use the keystone feature and adjust the image manually to fit my screen at the cost of lost resolution and light spill all around the screen. The resulting image still looks good, especially in a dark room and with 4K HDR content, but it would look even better if I could properly mount and aim the Horizon Ultra. At $1800, XGIMI is pricing the Horizon Ultra out of reach for casual users, but if you can’t place the projector in the right spot in the room to ideally fit your screen, it still might make sense to choose a projector from a traditional brand like Sony, EPSON, or Optoma even without Dolby Vision and even at a higher price point.
Conclusion
XGIMI is taking technology perfected in budget smart portable projectors and is bringing it to the enthusiast home theater market. The Horizon Ultra has HDR features that aren’t found on other projectors at any price, and if the placement works in your room, it is a bargain at just $1800. Going forward, XGIMI needs to improve mounting options and provide tilt and lens shift. But even as is, the Horizon Ultra is a disruptive product that should have home theater enthusiasts discovering the brand for the first time.
XGIMI sent over a Horizon Ultra and stand for review but HomeTheaterView has no financial relationship with XGIMI and does not accept affiliate payments.
