GAME CHANGING 4K Laser Projectors 2024

2024 has turned out to be a huge year for 4K lifestyle projectors, and I know the term “Game Changer” gets thrown around a lot, but the market is about to be completely disrupted and what people should expect in the sub $3000 price category is about to completely change. I’ve got nine brand new and soon to be released lifestyle projectors and, in this video, I’ll test their brightness, contrast, color accuracy, viewing experience, input lag, clarity, audio quality, 3D performance, and more to see which lifestyle projector is the best in 2024. As always there are no sponsored reviews on this channel and all the measurements you’re about to see are the result of my own testing instead of just repeating manufacturers claims.

Brightness and Contrast Testing

Starting with the least expensive projector, the Epson EF22 is a 1080p lifestyle projector with an MSRP of $999 and a common sale price of $899. Epson claims the single laser light source of the EF22 has a brightness of 1000 ISO lumens, and in my testing using the ANSI standard where you measure the brightness at nine separate points and multiply the average brightness by the screen size in square meters, the Epson exceeded its brightness claim by roughly 10% with 1104 lm on Dynamic mode, but only 641 lumens on Vivid mode. On its most color accurate mode, the EF22 measured just 63.7 nits, which is equivalent to around 580 lumens with a black floor of 0.104 nits giving it a native contrast ratio of 610:1 in Cinema mode, which isn’t great, but on Dynamic mode the peak brightness increased significantly to 117.8 nits without raising the black floor resulting in a much better contrast ratio of 1061:1.

After that with an MSRP of $1799 and a common sale price around $1299 is the 4K BENQ X300G. BENQ claims that the X300G’s 4LED light source can output 2000 ANSI lumens, but in my testing, it came in significantly below that at 1279 ANSI lumens on its not particularly color accurate Bright mode and just 789 lumens on the more standard FPS mode. On its most color accurate Cinema mode with the light source set to normal, it measured 83.3 nits, which is around 760 lumens, but had an impressively low black floor of 0.046 nits for a native contrast ratio of 1827:1. Setting the light source to Dynamic yielded a slightly higher peak brightness of 84 nits while cutting the black floor in half at an impressive 0.022 nits for a dynamic contrast ratio of 3758:1.

Next, also for $1299 is the Nebula Cosmos 4K SE. Nebula says that the Cosmos SE’s single laser light source can output 1800 ISO lumens, and in my testing, it significantly exceeded that on Conference mode with 2031 ANSI lumens. But on the more standard Nebula Master mode it dropped to 1485 ANSI lumens, and on its most color accurate Movie mode it measured 132.5 nits which is around 1220 lumens, with an extremely high black floor of 0.414 nits, giving it a pretty terrible native contrast ratio of 320:1. Unfortunately there aren’t any options for Dynamic contrast on the Nebula Cosmos 4K SE, so be prepared for some very gray black levels when watching this projector in a dark room.

After that for an MSRP of $1899 and a common sale price of $1399 is the Dangbei DBOX02, which was previously called the Mars Pro 2. Dangbei claims the DBOX02’s single laser light source can output 2450 ISO lumens, but in my testing, it came up well short of that even on High Performance mode where it measured 2136 ANSI lumens, and on Standard mode it measured 1986 ANSI lumens. In its most accurate movie mode, it measured 160.4 nits which is around 1475 lumens, with a black floor of 0.27 nits for a native contrast ratio of 594:1, which is twice as good as the Nebula Cosmos SE, but still not great, and like the Nebula the Dangbei doesn’t have any Dynamic contrast options.

Jumping up quite a bit in price with an MSRP of $1899, and no real sales yet is the just released XGIMI Horizon S Max, which has undergone quite a few changes since it was announced at CES 2024, but still has XGIMI’s dual light 2.0 system that combines an RGB laser with a single laser phosphor wheel to generate high brightness and good color space coverage while eliminating laser speckle and the eye strain that some people experience with standard RGB lasers. XGIMI says the Horizon S Max can output a massive 3100 ISO lumens, and my testing significantly exceeded that at 3395 ANSI lumens, but only on High Power mode, which ramps the fans to 100% and produces a heavily green shifted image. On Standard mode with the brightness set to 10+ Boost it was less impressive at just 2111 ANSI lumens. In its best configuration, which is Movie mode, brightness 10, with the contrast enhancing fixed iris engaged the Horizon S Max had a peak brightness of 141.6 nits, or around 1300 lumens, with a black floor of 0.097 nits for a native contrast ratio of 1459:1 which is very good, and by far the highest contrast standard throw projector XGIMI has ever made, but as of now there’s no dynamic dimming option to increase it further.

Next, with a planned MSRP of $1899 but a pre-order price of just $1099 is the Nexigo TriVision Ultra. Like the XGIMI, Nexigo is also using a hybrid light source, but this one, called ALPD 5.0 combines RGB lasers with RGB LEDs to generate high brightness and color space coverage without laser speckle. Nexigo is advertising 2600 lumens on the TriVision Ultra and I measured slightly more than that at 2715 ANSI lumens on Super Bright mode, which was still very usable, and 2344 ANSI lumens on the more standard “Vision Bright” mode. The most color accurate mode called “Vision Maker” measured 196.9 nits or around 1810 lumens with a black floor of 0.127 nits for a native contrast ratio of 1550:1, and as of right now there isn’t any Dynamic contrast mode on the TriVision Ultra.

Jumping past the $2000 price point we’ve got the JMGO N1S Ultimate with an MSRP of $2799 but a common sale price of $2399. The N1S Ultimate is JMGO’s current flagship and pushes its MALC triple laser light source to output a claimed 3500 ANSI lumens, but unfortunately my N1S Ultimate fell way short of that at just 2695 ANSI lumens with the Ultra Brightness option engaged, and 2086 ANSI lumens in standard picture mode. In its most color accurate movie mode, the N1S Ultimate measured just 153.7 nits or around 1410 lumens with a black floor of 0.147 nits for a native contrast ratio of 1029:1, and unfortunately like the XGIMI and Nexigo, the JMGO N1S Ultimate also doesn’t have any Dynamic contrast options.

After that with an MSRP of $2999 and a common sale price of $2499 is the Hisense C2 Ultra which has the latest generation of RGB laser light source which Hisense says can put out 3000 lumens, but in my testing, it only measured 2690 ANSI lumens with the picture mode on Dynamic and the brightness enhancer set to Ultra. Without the brightness enhancer, that number fell to 2348 ANSI lumens. On Cinema Day with dynamic dimming on, it measured 170.2 nits which is around 1570 lumens, but with a black floor of 0.026 nits for an awesome dynamic contrast ratio of 6436:1, while the native contrast ratio on the C2 Ultra was 1688:1, and both of those contrast values are VERY impressive for a bright DLP projector.

However, the last projector we’re going to test has some even bigger claims. The Valerion VisionMaster Pro 2 is a brand new triple laser projector from the same guys behind AWOL Vision. The Pro 2 will have an MSRP of $3499, but through November 24^th you can get the Pro 2 on Kickstarter for $2099, and like I said, Valerion is making some big claims like 3000 ISO lumen peak brightness, 4000:1 native contrast ratio, and 15000:1 dynamic contrast using what they call “enhanced black mode” or EBL. In my testing, the Valerion Pro 2 slightly exceeded its brightness claim with 3150 measured ANSI lumens in standard mode with the brightness enhancer set to High and maintained 2453 ANSI lumens with the brightness enhancer off. But most impressively the Pro 2 maintained 229.9 nits in its most color accurate Theater mode, and with EBL on, the black floor was 0.03 nits for a Dynamic Contrast ratio of 7731:1, and on Standard mode without EBL, I measured the native contrast at 1723:1. Both of those numbers are great, but not anywhere close to Valerion’s claims, which is mostly due to my standard method of measuring contrast using this pattern with a moving 50% gray box, which doesn’t seem to let EBL kick in fully. I reached out to Valerion about this issue, and they sent me their test pattern which uses two smaller white moving boxes and using that pattern I measured 12,709:1, which isn’t quite 15,000:1, but I don’t think it will make a huge difference while viewing actual content. As for the native contrast ratio, I haven’t been able to measure anywhere near 4000:1 using either test pattern, and that number is only achievable with a full black screen.

Brightness and Contrast Summary

And that means that overall, the brightest projectors using high power modes with low color accuracy were the XGIMI with 3395 ANSI lumens, the Valerion with 3150 ANSI lumens, and the Nexigo with 2715 ANSI lumens.

But most people will not end up using those modes, and when looking at their usable brightness, the Valerion VisionMaster Pro2 was in first with 2453 ANSI lumens, the Hisense C2 Ultra came in second with 2348 ANSI lumens, and the Nexigo TriVision Ultra was in third with 2344 ANSI lumens.

For color accurate brightness, the Valerion was in first by a significant margin with 2115 lumens, with the Nexigo in a distant second with 1811 lumens, and the Hisense was in 3^rd with 1566 lumens.

For native contrast with no dynamic dimming, the BENQ X300G came out on top with 1827:1 due to using a larger 0.65” DLP chip, Valerion was in second with 1723:1, and the Hisense C2 Ultra was in third measuring 1688:1.

After enabling dynamic dimming on the most color accurate mode and measuring using my standard test pattern the Valerion had by far the highest dynamic contrast at 7731:1, followed by the Hisense with 6436:1, and the BENQ had a still respectable 3758:1 dynamic contrast ratio.

Color Performance Testing

Along with brightness and contrast, color is equally important for producing a high-quality projected image, and color has two important attributes. First is how many colors can be produced by the light source, which we call the color gamut, and second is how accurately a projector can produce the requested color, which we call the delta Error, or dE.

Looking at color gamut, this diagram represents all the colors that our eyes can see, but video content is produced in a much smaller subsection of available colors. Standard Dynamic Range content is mastered in the Rec 709 color space, which is this triangle, while High Dynamic Range content is mastered in the DCI-P3 color space, which is this significantly larger triangle. And the newest HDR content can utilize an even larger color space called Rec 2020, though most movie content is still mastered in DCI-P3.

Using a professional colorimeter, I can pinpoint a projector’s three primary colors (red, green, and blue) on the color spectrum and draw a triangle between them. That triangle then shows all the colors that that specific projector can produce. If the triangle includes an entire smaller color space, we say that it covers 100% or more of that specific color gamut.

For SDR content in the Rec 709 color space most of the projectors performed almost equally with the single laser projectors from Epson, Dangbei, and Nebula performing the worst. Moving into the larger HDR DCI-P3 color space, the differences became more pronounced with the triple laser projectors from Hisense, JMGO, and Valerion performing the best, followed by the hybrid light sources from XGIMI and Nexigo, and then the single lasers and LED projectors were at the bottom.

And for the widest BT2020 color space, the JMGO Malc triple laser setup came out on top with 97.53% coverage, followed closely by the triple lasers from Valerion and Hisense, then the hybrid Nexigo, and the rest of the projectors were below 80% BT2020 coverage.

When looking at color accuracy, I profiled my C6 colorimeter with my JETI 1501 high res spectroradiometer and then used Calman Ultimate SDR color checker to measure each projector’s out of the box Delta Error and I found that most of the projectors were surprisingly accurate. Any delta error under 3 is generally regarded as the point where the naked eye can’t tell the difference between two colors, meaning the Hisense C2 Ultra and XGIMI Horizon S Max were exceptionally accurate, but the Valerion, BENQ, Epson and Dangbei were also under 4, which is still surprisingly good.

However, HDR color accuracy was not so great, and using Calman’s HDR color checker yielded much higher delta errors, with the C2 Ultra and Horizon S Max still coming out on top. In general, standard HDR is just much harder for projectors to handle because they can’t hit the extreme brightness values that some modern TVs can produce, and that’s where dynamic tone mapping, HDR10+, and Dolby Vision come into play. The best way to judge tone mapping performance is in side-by-side tests, so I set up two identical 100” screens in my light controlled garage and to make sure the projectors were getting all the correct tone mapping information each one got its own Amazon FireTV 4K Max streaming stick with identical settings.

Side-by-Side Testing

Round 1 had the Epson EF22 on the left and the BENQ X300G on the right. Starting with bright SDR content, neither projector had as much brightness as I’d prefer, but I thought the Epson was noticeably worse with a pretty flat and uninteresting image that was shifted towards the red spectrum, while the BENQ was not only more color accurate, but also a bit more vibrant due to the increase contrast. Also, in dark SDR content, the BENQ’s ultra-low black floor looked excellent and in comparison, the Epson looked completely gray and washed out.

For HDR content neither the BENQ nor the Epson support Dolby vision, but I was still pleasantly surprised at how they handled the moderately lit scenes in Wakanda Forever. Even though both projectors lacked the brightness needed to make the highlights pop, the BENQ remained significantly more color accurate, and the raised black floor of the Epson was still noticeable, even in brighter scenes. To more clearly show that on video, I’ve started including this test using my camera’s shutter priority mode, which raises the exposure until one or both projector’s black floors become visible, and you can see that this round wasn’t even close and the BENQ easily moved on.

In Round 2, the Nebula Cosmos 4K SE is on the left and the BENQ is on the right. For some reason the Nebula’s DLP chip doesn’t operate at 60 Hz like every other projector on the market and I had to set my camera’s shutter speed to 58.2 Hz to avoid these flashing scan lines, which then caused some strange banding on the BENQ, so I had to film this round twice and combine them in premiere. Thankfully, there wasn’t much to this round, and while the increased brightness on the Nebula was definitely welcomed on brighter scenes and in the highlights, darker scenes were an absolute joke, and this is very close to the worst I’ve ever seen a projector perform in a dark scene. Even though the Nebula supports Dolby Vision, there was no saving it from its poor black levels, and this was another very easy win for the BENQ.

And that means Round 3 was the Dangbei DBOX02 on the left and the BENQ X300G on the right. You can see what a huge difference brightness makes when looking at bright SDR content and the Dangbei looked extremely vibrant, crisp and life like. While the BENQ’s contrast and black floor carried it through the last two rounds, all the Dangbei had to do was not screw up too badly on darker scene. While I wouldn’t call its low APL performance great by any means, it also wasn’t terrible, and although dark scenes were a little gray and washed out, at least most of the shadow detail was preserved. HDR moderately lit scenes were much better on the Dangbei and highlights finally felt like highlights, while in dark scenes a lower gamma setting helped to make details visible despite a high black floor and relatively poor native contrast. So, ultimately this was a close round, but I chose the much better medium and high APL performance of the Dangbei over the low black floor of the BENQ.

In Round 4 the Dangbei DBOX02 was on the left and last year’s winner, the Hisense C1 was on the right. On their most color accurate modes, the Dangbei is around one and half times brighter than the Hisense which easily showed up in bright scenes, but the Hisense has an over two times lower black floor, which also showed up. This round is definitely going to come down to personal preference. I was back and forth every scene and the Dangbei always looked MUCH better in bright scenes while the Hisense looked MUCH better in dark scenes. But the deciding scene was the chase scene in Wakanda Forever, where you can see that the Hisense absolutely had a lower black floor which is visible in the black bars above and below the screen, but the black level on the content itself looked basically identical and the highlights provided by the extra brightness on the Dangbei were just so much more impactful. So, in about 90% of scenes, I preferred the Dangbei, but in the 10% darkest scenes, including the auto exposure camera test the Hisense was the clear winner, so ultimately, I chose the Dangbei, which some may not agree with, but that’s why I show you the actual content, so you can make the decision for yourself.

In Round 5 the Dangbei DBOX02 was on the left and the Nexigo TriVision Ultra was on the right. Unlike the last round, this one wasn’t particularly close. In bright scenes, the Nexigo had better tone mapping, higher brightness, and better color accuracy. In dark scenes the TriVision Ultra’s black floor was not only lower, but also a more neutral black compared to the Dangbei which had some blue tint, and the same was true in Dolby vision where the Nexigo’s contrast and more neutral looking black floor gave it a huge advantage over the Dangbei. The auto exposure test just confirmed everything that we had already seen, and this was an easy win for the Nexigo.

So then Round 6 was the XGIMI Horizon S Max on the left and the Nexigo TriVision Ultra on the right. In SDR content, in bright and moderately lit scenes, the color accuracy and tone mapping of the XGIMI was absolutely spot on, and it wasn’t until it got to the absolute darkest scenes that the Nexigo started to have the edge. However, in HDR and Dolby Vision, the Nexigo was ever so slightly better in both light and dark scenes because again it not only had a slightly lower and more neutral colored black floor but also brighter highlights. The auto exposure test was also much closer than any of the previous rounds, and ultimately the Nexigo was just barely better, and I chose it to win this round, but I do think the Horizon S Max is easily the best projector that XGIMI has ever made.

Round 7 then put the JMGO N1S Ultimate on the left and the Nexigo TriVision Ultra on the right. This was another close round. Like the XGIMI in the previous round, the JMGO had the obvious edge in bright and moderately lit SDR scenes and the Nexigo’s only SDR advantage was in dark scenes where it not only had brighter highlights, but also more shadow detail and a more neutral black tone while the JMGO’s blacks were shifted towards blue. But just like the previous round, the Nexigo’s HDR performance was significantly better in basically all conditions and a few scenes were absolutely no contest with the biggest issue on the JMGO being crushed shadow detail, even with the gamma set to bright. Again, the blacks on the JMGO were definitely shifted blue compared to the Nexigo, which you can clearly see in the auto exposure test, meaning the Nexigo was going to move on again.

So Round 8 put the Hisense C2 Ultra on the left and the Nexigo TriVision Ultra on the right. The Hisense C2 Ultra is the first projector since the BENQ in Round 1 to have dynamic dimming for a lower black floor in the darkest scenes. That’s encouraging since the C2 Ultra also looked fantastic in bright and moderately lit SDR content, with brighter highlights and more shadow detail in areas like the trees on the left, and in the absolute darkest scenes the dynamic dimming on the Hisense C2 Ultra came through, lowering the black floor significantly compared to the Nexigo, leading to a much more contrasty image while preserving shadow detail. I’ll be honest, this was the first “oh wow” moment I had while shooting this video, because the Hisense C2 Ultra looked absolutely excellent. However, in Dolby Vision content, the C2 fell a little flat. It’s not that it didn’t look good, it just didn’t look as good as I was expecting, and dark scenes didn’t seem to be getting the same amount of dynamic dimming as in SDR. In about half the scenes, I thought that the Nexigo TriVision Ultra actually performed better than the C2 Ultra, but I felt that the dynamic dimming performance of the Hisense, combined with very solid performance in bright and moderately lit scenes earned it the win in this round, even though the scene in the auto exposure test was too brightly lit for the Hisense dynamic dimming, resulting in the Nexigo actually having the lower black floor about half the time.

And that means that the final round is the Hisense C2 Ultra on the left and the Valerion Vision Master Pro 2 on the right. In bright SDR content these two projectors were basically indistinguishable from each other. But in moderately lit scenes, the Valerion’s Enhanced Black Level mode absolutely mopped the floor with the Hisense High Dynamic Mode, not only increasing contrast and lowering the black floor, but occasionally I could see the Hisense step its laser power up or down in the middle of a scene, but I never noticed pumping or dramatic shifts in the Valerion’s laser brightness. Most importantly, the Valerion kept dark scenes dark while preserving shadow detail, while the Hisense C2 needed to brighten the entire scene to maintain the same level of contrast.

In the previous round I mentioned that the C2 kind of fell flat when it came to Dolby Vision content, but the Valerion did not disappoint at all, and the tone mapping was basically perfect. I know it’s a Kickstarter price, but I feel pretty confident that there has never been a projector under $3000 that has this kind of performance, and Valerion says there’s still working on perfecting EBL. But even in its current state, it’s faster, more responsive, and has a higher impact than any other dynamic dimming and tone mapping on the market.

That means that the final rankings for viewing experience had the Valerion Pro 2 on top by what I thought was a significant margin, followed by the Hisense C2 Ultra which seems to have the hardware to compete, but weak software, and the Nexigo TriVision Ultra in third which seems to have the opposite problem with great tone mapping and firmware, but no dynamic dimming support with its ALPD 5.0 light source.

Input Lag Testing

But there’s still a lot more stuff to measure and talk about, starting with input lag which is really important if you want to play video games on your projector. I measured input lag using the industry standard Leo Bodnar lag tester and found that at 4K60Hz, the BENQ X300G was at 16.7 ms which is the theoretical minimum input lag for a DLP projector, but the majority were under the 20 millisecond mark meaning they are excellent for all levels of gaming, while the Hisense, Epson, Dangbei, and JMGO were in a more casual gaming input lag range.

At 1080p120Hz, only the BENQ, Valerion, Nexigo, and Hisense improved their input lag from their 4K60Hz numbers with the BENQ only missing the theoretical minimum by 0.1 ms, and at 1080p240Hz those same four projectors improved, with the BENQ hitting the 240 Hz theoretical minimum of 4.2ms, while the XGIMI Horizon S Max didn’t support 240 Hz input at all.

So, for gaming, the BENQ X300G is the absolute best, followed very closely by the Valerion Pro 2, but keep in mind that you need to enable instant response mode, high refresh rate mode, and DLP turbo mode on the Valerion to get those input lag numbers, and if you use keystone, it doubles the lag at each refresh rate.

Focus and Clarity Testing

I also tested the focus uniformity and sharpness of each projector by setting up the projectors with zero keystone, projecting this image on the screen, taking individual pictures of each corner, and then zooming in on the smallest text. In this test, the Valerion and Hisense had perfect four corner focus with mild chromatic aberration and color fringing around each of the smallest letters earning 9 points out of a possible 10 each. 

The Dangbei DBOX02 and XGIMI Horizon S Max had a single corner with soft focus and more extreme chromatic aberration than the Hisense and Valerion earning 7 points each, and the Nebula also earned 7 points, with soft focus in two corners, but the least color fringing of any of the projectors in the video.

The JMGO and Nexigo were just generally not as crisp as the other projectors and both had moderate fringing in all four corners, and the BENQ had excellent clarity but extreme fringing, and all three of those projectors earned 6 of a possible 10 points.

And the 1080p Epson had the worst clarity, focus, and screen door effect, earning just 3 out of a possible 10 points.

Fan Noise & Speaker Quality Testing

Next, I tested fan noise, and they were all pretty good. The majority of the noise actually came from the pixel shifting mechanisms rather than fans, and here they are from loudest to quietest.

Also, being lifestyle projectors, I would expect the internal speakers in these projectors to be both loud enough and high enough quality to use them for a movie night, but overall, I was a little disappointed in their internal speakers. I found that only the Valerion, Hisense, Nexigo, and Nebula had loud enough speakers to really fill a room, and the Hisense C2 was the only one that I would describe as high quality since it has a large speaker driver in the base of its gimbal mount. So, if you want to use the internal speakers your best choices are the Hisense C2 Ultra, Valerion Pro 2, and Nexigo TriVision Ultra.

Built In OS

Another important aspect for portability is having a fully functional smart OS with good performance. The new, most popular smart TV OS is GoogleTV, which unfortunately seems to be pretty processor intensive and during my testing I noted noticeable UI lag on four of the five projectors using GoogleTV, with only the Valerion Pro 2 having enough CPU horsepower to deliver a good, lag free experience.

The Hisense C2 also has a high power CPU, but uses Vidda OS instead of GoogleTV, which to be honest is probably more than fine and includes all the major streaming services and apps. But if you have a specific Android app that you need to install, like maybe for your television service provider, you won’t be able to do that on Vidda OS.

The BENQ X300G and XGIMI Horizon S Max use Android 11, which is a fine OS, but I was really surprised to see that the XGIMI isn’t Netflix certified, which is a problem most companies have fixed by now. So, you’ll need a separate streaming device if you want to watch Netflix on the Horizon S Max. Nexigo went with a different strategy altogether, just leaving the smart OS out completely and giving you a hidden compartment with HDMI and USB micro to install whichever streaming stick you want, which I don’t mind at all.

3D Performance

I also tested 3D performance broken down into three sub scores for 3D effect, eye comfort, and format compatibility. The best performer was the Dangbei DBOX02, which had medium 3D effect, high eye comfort, and full compatibility with Half Side by Side, Top and Bottom, and Frame Packed 3D formats.

The JMGO N1S Ultimate had the second best 3D performance with high 3D effect, moderate eye comfort, and support for all types of 3D.

And here are the rest of the scores, though it should be noted that the Valerion is still very much in development and the firmware update supporting frame packing was sent to me three days ago, so they’re definitely still improving it.

24p Motion Testing

I also tested 24p motion handling using the RTINGs test pattern and found that only the BENQ, Valerion, and Nexigo TriVision Ultra were able to change their DLP frequency to 48 Hz to properly display 24p content. The BENQ and Valerion automatically perform the change when fed with 24p content, while the TriVision Ultra needs to have 24p mode switched on in settings. However, in this section I should note that due to the fact that DLP can’t produce motion blur I personally prefer to keep frame matching off in my player’s settings to avoid motion stutter during smooth panning shots, but you may not be as sensitive to it as me.

DLP Rainbow Effect (RBE)

Speaking of individual sensitivities, I also tested for the DLP rainbow effect using my standard test pattern with MEMC off and found that the Valerion Pro 2, Hisense C2 Ultra, and Nebula Cosmos SE all had low RBE, and all the other DLP projectors had a normal, moderate amount of RBE, while the Epson EF22 had none since it uses 3LCD projection and not DLP.

Laser Speckle Testing

Laser speckle can also be an issue based on the type of screen you’re planning on using, and I found that while JMGO has significantly reduced laser speckle between the N1 and N1S series of projectors, the N1S Ultimate still had the most speckle which I rated as moderate, followed by the Valerion and the Hisense which had low speckle. The XGIMI Horizon S Max dual light source had very low speckle, but not zero, and I couldn’t see any speckle at all from the Nexigo’s ALPD 5.0 light source or any of the single laser projectors.

Aiming and Throw Ratio

Throw ratio and aiming solutions may also be important for your space and here are the measured throw distances required for each projector to produce a 100” diagonal image with some notable differences being the short throw of the BENQ X300G, and the 1.2x optical zoom of the Valerion, Hisense, and BENQ which give them a bit of flexibility in placement without sacrificing resolution. But be aware that they will have slightly higher brightness at their minimum throw distance and slightly higher contrast at their maximum throw distance.

The Epson, Hisense, XGIMI, and JMGO all have built in, non-removable gimble mounts that are great for aiming your projector quickly, but they do make it a bit more difficult to permanently mount them. The Dangbei and Valerion both have optional gimbal stands that screw into the center quarter twenty tripod mount.

Miscellaneous Observations

And before we wrap things up, I’m adding a new miscellaneous section for noting anything else that I thought was important, starting with power connections. If you’re planning on moving these things around a lot you should know the power bricks for the Nexigo and XGIMI are absolutely massive compared to the others, and the Valerion is also unique in that it’s a wall wort instead of a power brick, which I’m not sure if I like or not, and the Nebula Cosmos is the only one with a built in power supply.

Last, when looking at their remotes, most are lacking the correct number of buttons to easily navigate their operating system with the biggest offenders being the Dangbei and Nebula that require navigating through three sub menus just to get to the picture settings, while the Valerion, Nexigo, BENQ, and Hisense all have the most intuitive and easiest to use remotes, with backlights and a useful number of buttons.

Conclusions

The Valerion Vision Master Pro 2 has basically no weaknesses. I’ve reviewed hundreds of projectors, and I can usually find something wrong with them, but other than some maybe overzealous contrast claims that are only achievable with full black and white patterns, the Valerion is absolutely exceptional, and at $2099 we’ve never seen a projector with this kind of performance at that price point. 

The Valerion had the highest usable brightness, the highest color accurate brightness, the second highest native contrast, and by far the highest dynamic contrast. It covers 99.5% of the DCI-P3 color space with an SDR color accuracy of 3.12 average delta error. It supports 24p, all types of 3D, Dolby Vision, and IMAX enhanced, it has exceptionally low input lag, 1.2x optical zoom, great clarity, great auto focus and keystone, a built in aiming kickstand and optional gimbal mount, a useful remote, snappy processor for its GoogleTV operating system, and most importantly, it finished first in the side-by-side viewing experience testing. Honestly, the final round versus the Hisense C2 Ultra wasn’t even close.

If you’re watching this after November 24^th when the Kickstarter ends and the Pro 2 is at its full retail price of $3500 that’s going to sting a little bit, but it may still be the best option available even at that price. I’m very rarely this definitive about recommending a product and remember there are no sponsored reviews on this channel, but the Valerion Pro 2 is ridiculously good, and the Max will likely be even better.

The Nexigo TriVision Ultra was the other standout in this video, based strictly on its price versus performance ratio. 2400 usable ANSI lumens with 1550:1 native contrast ratio and 95% DCI-P3 color space coverage for the $1099 pre-order price is unheard of, and even at a full MSRP of $1899 it would still be the best value of anything currently on the market.

As I mentioned at the beginning of the video, I think that both the Valerion and the Nexigo are absolute gamechangers and I honestly feel a little bad because if these Hisense, XGIMI, or JMGO projectors were in last year’s video, they would have easily won. But the performance and value of the Valerion and Nexigo are completely unmatched.

As of filming, the Valerion and Nexigo are still in pre-order phase with expected shipping dates in December 2024. The good news about that is that you can still get the discounted price, but the bad news is you’ll need to wait at least a month before you get your projector, and I do think it’s worth the wait. But if I absolutely had to choose a projector that could be delivered right now in November 2024, I’d either pick the Hisense C2 Ultra or XGIMI Horizon S Max, and I’ve got links for all the projectors in this video below, and as always I appreciate when you use those links since as an Amazon Affiliate I do earn a small commission on the sale at no cost to you.

I’d also like to thank all of my awesome patrons over at Patreon for supporting my unsponsored reviews, and if you’re interested in supporting my channel please check out those links in the description.  If you enjoyed this video don’t forget to hit the thumbs up button and consider subscribing to my YouTube channel and, and as always, thanks for watching The Hook Up.