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The XGIMI Horizon Ultra is the brightest projector I’ve ever had the pleasure of using. Coming from the previous-gen Horizon Pro beamer, with its 1500 ISO lumens peak, the 2300 ISO lumens output of this thing feels almost searing in its brightness. But that makes it an outstanding HDR projector for both games (with HDR10 support baked in) and movies with Dolby Vision support as standard.
I reviewed this XGIMI projector back in early 2024, and I’ve had it attached to my wall ever since, delivering on both movie and gaming nights. I played almost the entirety of Baldur’s Gate 3 plastered over a big ol’ 100-inch ‘screen’ and it was glorious.
One of the big issues, however, is that at $1,700 it’s a mighty costly bit of kit, even if beamers of this quality had previously come in at twice the price. But thanks to a handy dandy discount code (300SAVE), you can get $300 off the already discounted price, which brings the XGIMI Horizon Ultra down to $849 at Wellbots. And at half price, this is a lot of projector for the money.
Both the image and the device itself look great. If you want a projector to fit into your home without being crazy intrusive, the Horizon Ultra’s got a neat party trick. When it’s turned off, the lens is covered by a fabric mesh screen, which slowly lowers itself down when you power it up. It looks pretty stylish when it’s off, and I do love that little bit of theatre when it gets up and running. A small thing, but I’m a nerd, and those things please me.
It’s got a set of Harmon Kardon speakers built into the projector housing itself, and they’re genuinely impressive. The bass response on them is truly surprising, and the clarity and volume have meant I’ve never been tempted to trail more cables down my wall to run into some third-party speaker setup.
It’s running Android TV out of the box (with Chromecast built in), though this is where the first of the slight niggles crop up. I don’t pretend to understand the ring-fencing, but not all the apps in the Google Store are available on this device despite nominally being available on Android TV. So, Netflix is a no-no natively.
(Image credit: Future)
Personally, I’ve got a wee Nvidia Shield tube plugged into it to circumvent those issues, which also gives me easy access to GeForce Now and Steam Link for gaming fun times. Though the other niggle is that you’re only getting a 60 Hz refresh rate out of the Horizon Pro, which puts it below the likes of the Dangbei DBOX02 Pro, which will hit 120 Hz at native and 240 Hz at 1080p.
But 60 fps at 4K is still a challenge for a lot of gaming PCs, so whether that’s an issue you can live with will depend on you. For me, the glory of a huge game image at a smooth 60 fps still hits hard. The Horizon Ultra’s game mode is pretty impressive too, cutting the input latency down to just ~17 ms, and that works whether you’re keystoning or not.
And that is another area where the XGIMI beamer shines (see what I did there?) – the auto-keystoning. You can stick this projector anywhere and it will adjust the image and the focus to fit whatever flat surface you’re pointing at, with simple manual adjustments so you can fit it to a certain area of your wall. It takes a ton of the hassle out of projector placement.
So, if you’re after some big screen HDR thrills without the thousand-dollar-plus price tag, this half-price beamer is well worth a look. I can personally vouch for it.
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