Back in May, Chinese home entertainment hardware maker XGIMI announced that it had managed to combine the best aspects of LED and laser light sources into one projection engine. Now the first product featuring that tech has launched, the Horizon Ultra.
The company is pitching the new addition to its Horizon range as "the world's first 4K long-throw home projector with Dolby vision" but the headline feature here is arguably the new Optical Machine, which offers a best-of-both-worlds viewing experience.
As we explained in our earlier coverage, single-laser setups can boast high brightness, but often at the expense of color and image quality. Models that take a triple-laser approach are bright and color-rich, but speckling and other quality issues can spoil the viewing party. LED, meanwhile, can mean more natural colors and better eye comfort at a relatively low cost, but overall brightness can be quite low.
After years of research, XGIMI reckons that it's cracked these issues with a Dual Light Technology where a full-color LED lamp bead matches wavebands of a laser neighbor for output via a five-channel light path. And it's this Optical Machine that's present in the new flagship 4K projector.
The Horizon Ultra puts out 2,300 ISO lumens for the potential of daytime viewing without closing the blinds. There's support for 95.5% of the DCI-P3 color gamut and more than 99.9% of the Rec.709 color space, with SGS and TÜV Süd certifying an average color accuracy of Delta E 1 for the promise of a "most desirable and comfortable viewing experience with a clear picture and no color fringing or speckles."
As for XGIMI's choice for the unit's headline feature, "Dolby Vision unlocks the full potential of HDR to deliver stunning visual every time," said the company in a press statement. "When enjoyed in Dolby Vision, customers will experience their favorite entertainment come to life with incredible brightness, richer colors, and wider contrast, revealing more details like never before."
The projector has a throw ratio of 1.2-1.5:1 for eye-popping visuals at up to 200 diagonal inches. There's support for HDR10 and HLG formats. It runs Android TV 11 and Chromecast is built in, and the system features 2 GB of RAM and 32 GB of storage. And when not in use, a front cover can slide up to protect the optics.
The Ultra rocks a Harman Kardon sound system comprising two 12-W Dolby Audio speakers. Connectivity shapes up as two HDMI ports (one of which supports eARC), plus USB, LAN, Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.2, and 4K gaming at 60 Hz is supported, with latency reported as low a 18 milliseconds.
Optics are automatically adjusted to compensate for ambient conditions, with the company's ISA 3.0 technology tweaking brightness, contrast and color for daytime or night-time viewing as well as scaling via optical zoom, adjusting keystone alignment, and adapting output for optimum viewing on colored walls.
The thrown image will also be adjusted to avoid obstacles, the rectangular visuals will snap to a detected screen, and if movement is detected across the projected beam, the light source will automatically dim to prevent possible eye damage.
The Horizon Ultra projector is on sale now for US$1,699, and ships with a Bluetooth remote.
Product page: XGIMI Horizon Ultra
