I spent two weeks with the $1,700 Horizon Ultra projector from XGIMI to see whether it belongs in your home, and I’m happy to report that it does.
In the vast world of premium projectors, it’s assumed that you need to spend thousands of dollars to achieve everything you want, like 4K playback and a healthy dosage of lumens. That may have been the norm a few years ago, but it’s certainly not today, especially thanks to XGIMI.
The company’s Horizon Pro 4K projector impressed us last year with its ease of use, excellent picture quality and premium design. It, too, was $1,700, which cemented it as one of the best high-end projectors you can get. For 2023, we have the Horizon Ultra, an even more souped-up projector with a striking new lens system and some of the best picture quality on the market.
It’s big, it’s heavy and it’s the first long throw projector to support Dolby Vision. None of this comes cheap, but compared to similarly specced projectors, the Horizon Ultra is quite the deal at thousands less.
So, should you make it a mainstay in your home theater? Let’s find out.
If you're willing to invest in a high-quality 4K projector but don't want to shell out upward of $6,000, the XGIMI Horizon Ultra is an excellent middle ground that does a lot for the premium price.
What we liked about it
Setup is easy and painless
XGIMI did a great job at simplifying the setup process of its projectors. The Horizon Ultra is basically plug and play: After you plug it in with its huge power supply, you hit the power button on the remote and watch the projection come to life.
It runs Android TV 11, which will feel familiar to anyone who’s used a smart TV operating system in the past. You can use your Android phone to set it up quickly, syncing your accounts and apps with a few taps. You can also use an iPhone, as long as you have the Google app installed so you can use the quick pairing feature.
After that, the Horizon Ultra will use a few of its neat tricks to align itself on the surface you shine it on. XGIMI includes automatic keystone correction and autofocus, which help a lot when you’re trying to quickly reposition the projector. It worked really well on every hard surface I shined it on, with scaling and corner identification effortlessly locking into place at the perfect angle. Of course, if it doesn’t get it right the first time (and there’s a good chance it won’t, depending on its positioning), you can manually adjust keystone settings using the remote.
The projector was also smart enough to avoid objects that were in the picture’s way. Using XGIMI’s Intelligent Obstacle Avoidance feature, the frame kept itself above objects like picture frames and kept plants from interfering. It worked exceptionally well.
From there, it’s time for the popcorn. You’re presented with the Android TV home screen that gives you easy access to all of your streaming services, apps and games. You can download new ones from the Play Store, and performance is pretty snappy too. You even get Chromecast integration, which lets you cast whatever you want to it like you can on a regular smart TV or smart home display.
Excellent picture quality with 4K, Dolby Vision and 2,300 lumens
Here’s the real reason to buy the Horizon Ultra: The picture quality is extremely good.
XGIMI went all out with the Horizon Ultra’s lens system. It engineered a new Dual Light technology that blends elements of lasers and LEDs to achieve better brightness, color accuracy, contrast and sharpness than most projectors. I got to check out the hybrid system at an event the company hosted in New York City, and it looked like nothing short of utter complexity.
What you need to know is it helps everything look spectacular. I was most impressed by the brightness of this thing. At 2,300 lumens, it’s one of the brightest projectors on the market — regardless of price. I’ve fired this puppy up in a variety of lighting settings, from nighttime to the sun shining through a window on a clear day, and somehow the projector was never distorted or faded. It was always easy to see, which is a huge advantage over others on the market. Granted, your TV will still be much easier to see in every room of your house, but this is a close second.
From an image quality perspective, the Horizon Ultra is a beast. It upscales content to 4K for extra sharpness, color accuracy is on point and nothing feels washed out or overblown. I was delighted to see all of the different picture modes that were available, including Cinema (the default), Vivid, Bright, Performance, Custom and High Color Accuracy. Cinema looked great for pretty much everything I watched, while Custom came in handy to fine-tune the quality if I was looking at something particularly dark on a bright day.
If the backdrop you shine the projector on isn’t pearly white, the Horizon Ultra can automatically compensate using a feature called wall color adaption. It does exactly what it implies: It looks at the color of your wall and adjusts the color output so it remains accurate and unaffected by something off-white. Everything always looked natural and accurate to me, so the feature seems to have done its job.
The projector also supports content treated with Dolby Vision, which is quite impressive given its long throw range. Speaking of which, it has a throw ratio of 1.2-1.5:1, giving it a lot of flexibility in terms of where you can position it. You can place it a lot closer to your wall than most other projectors with 2:1 throw ratios, which means they need to be 2 feet away for every foot of image width you want to achieve. The Horizon Ultra closes that gap significantly, and can even be stretched to 200 inches (if your wall is big enough, of course).
One of my most fun tests with the Horizon Ultra was an outdoor movie night on a huge inflatable movie screen. No, the projector doesn’t have any IP ratings or drop resistance, and I’m sure the folks at XGIMI wouldn’t recommend doing this because of it. But I was careful and set the projector up on a stable surface far away from our pool, and it worked out well.
I was able to fill the entire screen with the image being projected, with plenty of brightness and rich color. We decided to watch the ’80s classic “Weekend at Bernie’s” (“Manos de piedras!”), which simply looked great coming from this projector. If you’re gonna watch a movie about a corrupt boss inviting the two guys who accidentally expose his crimes to his beach house for Labor Day weekend — only to be killed by the same hit man he sent after them — you’ve gotta do it on the big screen.
XGIMI also says you can game on the Horizon Ultra. It can reduce its response latency between connected controllers to 18 milliseconds, which is nice, but you won’t be doing anything hardcore since you only get a 60Hz refresh rate (meaning you can’t take advantage of the PS5 and Xbox Series’ ultra-smooth 120Hz gameplay capabilities) and limited internal specs. I’m not a gamer, so I didn’t test anything during my review process, but if you are, just keep that in mind.
The integrated speakers are pretty great
The dual 12W speakers jammed inside the Horizon Ultra are quite good. XGIMI had them tuned by Harman Kardon with a little extra bass and good definition in the highs, and it’s mostly a pleasant listening experience.
Throughout “Weekend at Bernie’s,” I could clearly hear each character’s voice and all of the background shenanigans that broke out. I also fired up some music, including The Rolling Stones and Jay-Z. I found the latter sounded a bit better on these speakers, simply because they’re tuned with a more mainstream sound opposed to something more open that would flatter the rock-and-roll soundstage of the Stones.
Are the speakers good enough to replace a dedicated sound system or soundbar? No, not at all. But if you aren’t interested in setting up something like that, these speakers will serve you well. I liked them a lot.
Lots of ports for extra versatility
Spin the Horizon Ultra around and you’ll notice that there are a ton of ports on this thing. XGIMI includes an HDMI port with eARC support, a regular HDMI port, two USB-A ports, a LAN jack, a 3.5mm headphone jack and an optical audio port for external speakers. You can connect basically anything you want, which is a nice touch.
The only downside is the lack of a USB-C port, which would come in handy if you had a USB-C flash drive and wanted to show a presentation or slideshow.
It’s a great-looking projector
I’d also like to point out that the Horizon Ultra looks really good too. It’s far from looking cheap with glossy plastic and rounded sides. Instead, XGIMI designed a nearly cube-shaped projector using metal and fabric for its construction. This gives it a much homier vibe that fits well with almost any aesthetic you’re rocking at home. The projector also uses vegan leather to add a touch of “premium-ness” to the design, which I really dig.
Here’s something cool: Hit the power button on the remote and you’ll watch the fabric visor on the front automatically slide down to reveal the lens. This means you don’t have to deal with any manual shutters or lens caps, which is nice, given the price of this thing. Is it practical? No, not really, but it’s awesome anyway.
Even the remote looks good. It’s crafted out of aluminum and plastic, and it feels like something you’d find associated with an Apple product. It’s very comfortable to hold and adds a premium touch to the experience.
What we didn’t like about it
Netflix isn’t available out of the box
When I unboxed my Horizon Ultra review unit, I was surprised to find a pamphlet with the Netflix logo on it. I thought to myself, “Oh, sweet, maybe they’re giving customers a free trial or something.” I opened it up thinking I’d find a promotional code, but instead, it was a set of odd instructions to install the Netflix app.
Yup, for some reason, Netflix isn’t supported natively on the Horizon Ultra. That’s been the case on many projectors in the past — both from XGIMI and competitors like Anker and LG — and it hasn’t changed on this one. You can’t install it from the Play Store; instead, you have to download a separate app launcher that lets you install a few “unsupported” apps, like Netflix. I opened it up and had trouble logging in, but I was able to finally get it to work. You won’t be able to stream movies or TV shows in Dolby Vision, sadly, and the app never consistently opened upon first attempt. It always took a few tries to get it up.
If you’re a huge Netflix user, beware of this quirk. It’d be nice to see XGIMI eventually get proper Netflix support out of the box, but for the time being, that’s nonexistent.
Automatic keystone correction doesn’t play nicely with softer surfaces
During our movie night outside, the Horizon Ultra’s automatic keystone correction had a tough time trying to find the edges and corners of the movie screen itself. I found this to be a bit odd: It’s a blow-up movie screen, sure, but the white portion you project on contrasts pretty well with the blue frame it’s surrounded by.
I think the issues were caused by all of the wrinkles in the screen itself, which seemed to confuse the projector a few times. While, yes, you generally want the surface you project onto to be flat to avoid intrusions in picture quality, if you plan on projecting onto fabric at all, make sure you iron it out first.
Why is motion smoothing turned on by default?
I know most new televisions do it, but I didn’t expect it from my fancy new projector. I fired up “Weekend at Bernie’s” and it felt like I was watching a soap opera. Why, XGIMI, do you turn motion smoothing on by default? It’s one of the most unnecessary features of the current age of technology, yet you felt the need to flick the switch for your out-of-box experience.
Luckily, you can turn it off fairly quickly by turning off “Motion Compensation” in the Picture section of the settings menu. Still, this feature should not be turned on by default.
How it compares
Most projectors of this caliber cost anywhere between $2,000 and $6,000. Models like Epson’s Home Cinema LS11000 and the Sony VPLXW5000ES offer similar 4K outputs and color technologies, but oftentimes they can’t get as bright as the Horizon Ultra or they’re not as user-friendly. XGIMI’s latest projector is the same price as LG’s CineBeam PU700R, which impressed us with its image quality but wasn’t quite as reliable in terms of software and audio quality.
Obviously, the Horizon Ultra costs a lot more than something like Samsung’s The Freestyle or BenQ’s HT2060. For most people, those sub-$1,000 projectors will do just fine since they’ll serve the purpose of giving you a huge movie screen whenever you want. But if you want 4K output, extra brightness and solid speakers in a beautiful design, the Horizon Ultra is the one to get.
Bottom line
XGIMI didn’t design the Horizon Ultra to be the projector for everyone. It’s for those who want a home theater and don’t want the somewhat rudimentary image quality of typical $1,000 projectors. It’s for those who want something nicer than those models while also not breaking the bank with something that costs thousands more.
With its Dual Light technology that produces up to 2,300 lumens of brightness, 4K video playback, Dolby Vision support, long throw ratio and surprisingly good speaker system, it’s hard to go wrong with the Horizon Ultra. If you’re thinking about getting a projector and have a budget of $2,000, you’ll be perfectly happy with this.
