The Xgimi Horizon S Max ($1,899.99) offers all the right features for a 4K (3,840-by-2,160-pixel) room-to-room portable projector, including a higher-than-typical maximum rated brightness of 3,100 ISO lumens, Dolby Vision (the most sophisticated current version of HDR), and even IMAX Enhanced support. However, our tests show it handles streaming SDR far better than HDR movies on disc, and overall image brightness is much higher for SDR than HDR. If you have a library of HDR discs on hand, or want to watch HDR material in a room with lights on, you’ll likely be better off with the Editors’ Choice-winning Hisense C1—or potentially the Hisense C2, which we’ll be reviewing shortly. But the Horizon S Max is well worth considering if you primarily stream your movies and don’t mind turning down the lights for HDR.
Design: Innovative Light Source Gives You Options
As with all 4K room-to-room portables today, the Horizon S Max is built around a solid-state light source paired with a DLP chip, or more precisely, a 1,920-by-1,080-pixel chip that uses TI fast-switch pixel shifting to deliver 3,840 by 2,160 pixels to the screen.
The interesting variation in this case is the solid-state light source, Xgimi’s Dual Light 2.0. The light source, which has a fairly typical rated life of 20,000 hours, qualifies as “dual” in two ways. First, it uses both lasers and LEDs. And second, you can set it to use lasers only or use both lasers and LEDs together. The three lasers by themselves provide a basic red, green, and blue light source, with both the advantages and disadvantages triple-laser designs are known for. The key advantage is a wide color gamut (range of colors), rated at 110% of BT.2020, the standard for 4K UHD TVs. The key disadvantages are laser speckle and the tendency to show fringe colors around white areas, including text in movie credits.
(Credit: M. David Stone)
According to Xgimi, using the dual light mode to add the LEDs removes both issues (which I can’t vouch for since I tend not to see either one). However, note that adding the LEDs also boosts brightness enough to notice, which you may want for HDR material in particular. (More on that later.) Adding the LEDs also narrows the gamut to deliver slightly less vivid but more accurate color. (More on this later also.) Xgimi recommends trying the light source both ways and picking the one you like better.
The Horizon S Max weighs 10.6 pounds, including its gimbal mount—a convenience we first saw on the JMGO N1 Ultra that has since been widely copied for room-to-room portable projectors. The mount reduces the time it takes to point the projector at whatever you’re using for a screen to just a few seconds. Xgimi’s version pivots horizontally by 360 degrees and vertically by 135 degrees, for a tilt ranging from 45 degrees down to 90 degrees up, to project on the ceiling.
(Credit: M. David Stone)
The projector’s measurements, including the mount, are 9.2 by 10.7 by 6.9 inches (HWD), with the projector pointed straight ahead.
The initial setup consists of plugging in the power cord, turning the projector on, and running through the standard Android TV setup routine, which connects by Wi-Fi only. Unfortunately, the built-in streaming lacks a licensed Netflix app. You can add a third-party dongle that includes one and power it using one of the two USB ports. But with only one HDMI port, you can’t plug in both a dongle and another video source—a set-top box, for example—at the same time. If you want to set up the projector more or less permanently, you’d be continually switching cables unless you add an external HDMI switch.
Xgimi provides all the automatic adjustment features you could want for quick setup after moving the projector, including autofocus, auto keystone, screen fit, and obstacle avoidance (to adjust image size to avoid projecting on light switches and the like). I tried most of these in my tests, and they all worked as promised to deliver a right-sized, sharp image every time. Aside from autofocus, we usually advise against using these features, because digital adjustments lower brightness and can introduce artifacts in some images. However, it’s hard to avoid needing them if you’re taking advantage of the gimbal mount to aim the projector. It’s also hard to beat the combination of gimbal mount and automatic adjustments for easy setup.
(Credit: M. David Stone)
Based on the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) recommendations, the rated 3,100 ISO lumen brightness should be enough to fill a 255-inch, 1.0-gain screen in a dark room. Consistent with that, even with the lower-than-maximum brightness when using my preferred settings for best SDR picture quality, the image was far too bright for comfortable viewing on a 90-inch screen in a dark room. I needed to drop the power setting from the default 10 (of settings 1 through 10) to 7. Unfortunately, even the 10 setting did not did deliver anywhere near as bright a picture for HDR input.
Note that the projector also has a 10+ boost mode that Xgimi says can affect color accuracy. However, most people will find it acceptable if they need the boost in a bright room. The Horizon S Max also offers an even brighter High Power SDR picture mode, but it adds an obvious green bias and increases fan noise to a level that few, if any, will consider tolerable in most circumstances.
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The Harman/Kardon audio system, with its two 12-watt speakers, delivers volume high enough to fill a large family room and good enough quality that you might not want to bother with an external sound system. Its certifications include DTS-Virtual:X, DTS-HD, Dolby Audio with Dolby Digital, and Dolby Digital Plus. If you’d like to connect an external sound system, the only connection options are Bluetooth or the single HDMI port, which also supports eArc. And since only one HDMI port exists, you can’t use it for audio output at the same time as you’re using an HDMI video source, including a streaming dongle. Note also that to use the projector as a Bluetooth speaker, you can simply connect an audio source using Bluetooth and select Display Off.
Testing the Xgimi Horizon S Max: Mixed Results for HDR
The Picture Settings menu offers a Picture Mode menu with seven choices that work with both SDR and HDR10 input and a separate menu for Dolby Vision with three choices. Other options include IMAX Enhanced mode (which you can set to Auto or Off) and a Professional Color Mode, which, in my tests, improved color quality enough to notice but not by enough to make any difference. Xgimi says the reason the mode is optional and off by default is that the company’s research showed that most potential customers prefer the extra vibrancy of oversaturated color instead of more accurate color.
My preliminary testing turned up some key options worth experimenting with. In particular you’ll want to find a power setting that gives you a comfortable image brightness for extended viewing, and also choose between the two settings for the light source. For viewing in a dark room, I picked different power levels for SDR and HDR (manually changing them when I switched back and forth). I chose the dual light mode for the light source because HDR input needed the higher brightness, and changing two settings every time I switched between input types felt like too much of a chore. I also turned off frame interpolation, which added an obvious digital video effect (making filmed material look like live video) even at the lowest setting.
(Credit: M. David Stone)
For my SDR viewing tests, I chose Custom mode, the only one with brightness, contrast, and gamma settings. Every predefined mode lost significant shadow detail in the darkest scenes in our test clips. Raising the Custom mode brightness just a touch improved the shadow detail significantly with little effect on the black level and without washing out brighter scenes. After these adjustments, the Horizon S Max delivered good contrast, color accuracy, and image brightness for SDR, plus good enough shadow detail to easily make out what was happening in our darkest test clips.
Even with the higher power setting I used for HDR10, movies on disc were darker overall than they should be, particularly for scenes dominated by midtones. For movies we test in both SDR and HDR versions, I could not find a setting for HDR that improved shadow detail without raising the black level enough to cause other issues.
(Credit: M. David Stone)
Both overall brightness and shadow detail for HDR10 seemed much better when streaming, but without viewing the same movies that we use in our formal tests using movies on disc, it’s impossible to make a direct comparison. I was able to find one of our standard test movies to stream using Dolby Vision, however. It offered definitively better shadow detail than the HDR10 version on disc, and although the image brightness on a 90-inch-diagonal screen in a dark room was a little lower than I prefer, it was high enough for comfortable viewing. Much the same comment applies to the IMAX Enhanced mode. Also, for both modes, adding ambient light at a level equivalent to turning on the lights in a family room at night left the picture watchable but a bit washed out.
Also note that just because a streaming service offers IMAX Enhanced movies, doesn’t mean it necessarily supports IMAX’s Digital Media Remastering (DMR), which automatically adjusts image quality. For IMAX Enhanced movies on Prime Video, which supports DMR, the IMAX Enhanced mode on the projector controlled virtually all image settings and wouldn’t let me change them. For IMAX Enhanced movies on Disney+, the projector negotiated a Dolby Vision connection.
(Credit: M. David Stone)
Rainbow artifacts (red/green/blue flashes that single chip projectors tend to show) are more obvious than with many current DLP projectors, but in testing I didn’t see them as often as with some other projectors. If you’re concerned about the issue, note that Xgimi has a 30-day return policy for any reason, with shipping covered (assuming you bought the unit from Xgimi or an authorized dealer). That should be more than enough time to test out the projector for yourself.
The Horizon S Max supports full HD 3D in side-by-side and top-bottom formats only, using DLP-Link glasses, and only one 3D mode. In my tests, 3D-related motion artifacts were less obvious than typical for current projectors, and I didn’t see any crosstalk. However, 3D does not work with Game Mode.
(Credit: M. David Stone)
By default, the Game Mode is set to Auto, which turns on auto low latency mode (ALLM), but you can also turn on either of two low latency modes manually—one that supports image geometry correction and one that doesn’t. Using a Bodnar 4K lag tester and a 60Hz refresh rate, I measured the first at 34.9 milliseconds (ms) for 4K and 35.2ms for 1080p. The ultra-low-latency mode dropped the lag by almost half, to 18.1ms for 4K and 18.2ms for 1080p.
Verdict: Best to Limit HDR Viewing to a Dark Room
The Xgimi Horizon S Max checks all the right boxes on a feature chart, but although the high rated brightness pays off for SDR material, it doesn’t translate to similarly high image brightness for HDR. As potential alternatives, be sure to take a look at the Hisense C1 and JMGO N1 Ultra, and check out our upcoming reviews of the newer Hisense C2 Ultra and JMGO N1S Ultimate. At this writing, we hadn’t tested either, but we expect that each will build on the strengths of its predecessor.
Neither the C1 nor the N1 Ultra offers as high a brightness rating as the Horizon S Max, but both delivered brighter HDR images in our tests that stood up better to ambient light, and both did better than the Horizon S Max at holding shadow detail. Between them, the N1 has the advantage of easy setup, thanks to its gimbal mount, while the C1 offers better HDR image quality overall, thanks in part to its Dolby Vision support. Neither offers IMAX Enhanced support, which is one of the Horizon S Max’s strong points.
The problem that the Horizon S Max has with HDR10 material on disc makes it the wrong choice if you have a library of HDR discs you want to watch, and its relatively low image brightness for HDR makes it a poor choice for brightly lit rooms. But if it’s bright enough for the image size you need in the level of room light you want to use it in, it could work well. Its high-quality image across the board for streaming, including for IMAX Enhanced material, can make it the right projector if you have the right room.
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The Bottom Line
The Xgimi Horizon S Max projector’s IMAX Enhanced certification has the potential to level up your home theater, but this model’s image quality and brightness could be better.
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About M. David Stone
Contributing Editor
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