Premium Projectors 2026 – XGIMI Puts JVC & Epson on Notice

The line that separates traditional home theater projectors from lifestyle projectors has been getting blurry for a few years. But now, as of July 2026, I can say that it is officially gone. In this video, I’ve got close to $50,000 of flagship projectors and I’m going to test their brightness, contrast, and color performance. Then I’ll put them side-by-side in a picture quality test. After that, I’ll test their zoom and lens shift, clarity and resolution, input lag, 3D performance, and a lot more to figure out which is the best projector under $10,000. As always, there are no sponsored reviews on this channel and all of the measurements in this video are the result of my own testing rather than relying on manufacturer claims.

Brightness Testing

Starting with brightness, it is unfortunately still the norm for projector companies to advertise much higher brightness values than you will ever get to use because the highest brightness modes have unusable color accuracy, extremely loud fans, or both. Still, I do like to at least verify that the projectors can hit their maximum advertised brightness.

You can see that the XGIMI Titan Noir Max has the highest advertised brightness at 7000 lumens but actually measured 8926 lumens on Performance mode. For the most part, all the projectors were acceptably close to their claims, with only the Hisense XR10, JMGO N3 Ultimate, and Nebula X1 Pro failing to hit at least 90% of their advertised brightness. But in my opinion, the only ones that were usable in that high brightness mode were the XGIMI Titan in Performance mode, Epson QB1000 in Dynamic mode, and the JVC NZ500 in High Bright mode.

Of those, the QB1000 had a slightly green blue shifted white balance with a color error of 7.01 using CalMan’s color checker, the NZ500’s High Bright mode was green shifted with a color error of 7.99, and the XGIMI Titan put out 6700 lumens with a cooler white balance and mostly acceptable color error of 12.17 using CalMan’s color checker. The XGIMI Titan also had its fans ramped up higher than you’d want to be around, but they would be more than acceptable for an outdoor event if you’re just trying to blast the most lumens possible.

However, looking at maximum accurate brightness, I calibrated the white balance of each projector to the appropriate perceived d65 white point for their light source and then measured their brightness using the ISO standard taking nine individual measurements, averaging them, and then multiplying by the screen size in square meters. The XGIMI Titan came out in first place again with 3725 lumens, followed very closely by the Hisense XR10 with 3715 lumens, and just for fun, here are the lumen per dollar values for each of the projectors.

Contrast Testing

Unfortunately, advertised contrast values are even more unreliable since there’s no real standard about whether dynamic contrast or native contrast should be reported. For the uninitiated, native contrast is the difference between the brightest white and darkest black that can be displayed without adjusting the iris or dimming the light source, while dynamic contrast is a much less regulated term that is just the difference between the brightest white and darkest black that the projector can ever produce, which in some cases is measured with the light source completely turned off. For some dynamic algorithms like Epson’s High-Speed Dynamic, just having a single pixel on the screen will reduce their advertised dynamic contrast ratio of 5,000,000:1 down to less than 50,000:1, which to be fair is still good but it’s less than 1% of advertised.

Now that physical irises are becoming more common, even native contrast measurements are hard to trust, because while clamping down the iris results in a huge contrast boost, it can cut the max brightness down to just a small fraction of what’s advertised. If we take for instance a native contrast ratio of around 4500:1, you can see that the Hisense XR10 needs to have its iris set to Cinema 2 where it has just 631 lumens of brightness and the Valerion Max hits around 4300:1 native contrast in Cinema 2 with 993 lumens, but the Titan Noir Pro hits 4500:1 contrast on f/3.0 with 2351 lumens, the Titan Noir Max hits 4500:1 also on f/3.0 with 2464 lumens, and the Epson QB1000 has around 5000:1 native contrast without an iris and 2338 lumens of brightness.

Then you’ve got the JVC NZ500 with 22,250:1 native contrast with its iris wide open, and if you really want to, you can clamp it all the way down to get to 30,000:1 native contrast though I’m not sure it’s worth the tradeoff of nearly half of its already low brightness.

The last thing to address as it pertains to contrast is the dynamic contrast, which is another complex subject. While laser dimming has become much more common, its effectiveness is dependent on whether the projector has a powerful enough dedicated chip for laser dimming processing and how fine-tuned a company’s dimming algorithm is. To complicate things even further, the Nebula X1 Pro and Valerion Max both received firmware updates that allow their iris to also participate in the dynamic algorithm, and the Titan Noir Pro and Max have dual irises that can also operate dynamically. But I think we’ve officially reached the point where it’s not particularly useful to measure and report on dynamic contrast because while projectors like the Titan Noir Max can put up dynamic contrast numbers well over 1,000,000:1, the odds of seeing contrast that high in real content is basically zero.

Color Performance

The last thing I want to cover before getting into the direct side-by-side testing is color performance, which is a combination of color accuracy, color gamut coverage, and tone mapping. While all the projectors in this video are laser projectors, they’re very different when it comes to color performance.

The Epson QB1000 and JVC NZ500 are single laser projectors that use a direct blue laser and produce their red and green light using a white phosphor split through dichroic glass. As a result, the blue part of their color spectrum can reach deeper into the BT.2020 color gamut, but red and green are lacking, and using the Gamut rings feature in Calman ultimate reveals the fact that there is significant missing color volume throughout different luminance levels, not just at the edge of the gamut.

The original XGIMI Titan with the 0.78” DLP chip uses a direct blue laser and a direct red laser but creates green using a phosphor. As a result, you can see the large amount of missing colors in the green portion of the gamut ring, and the surrounding colors that result from the mixing of green.

The rest of the projectors are pure RGB laser projectors, which gives each color an extremely narrow spectral distribution and allows for nearly complete coverage of the BT.2020 color gamut.

Looking at overall gamut ring coverage instead of just BT.2020 color space coverage this year, for the RGB laser projectors, the Titan Noir Pro comes out on top with 93.81% coverage with the Valerion Max having the least coverage at 88.52%, struggling with the green portion of the gamut. In an unexpected twist, the single laser JVC NZ500 had higher gamut coverage than the dual laser XGIMI titan, and the Epson QB1000 was by far the lowest, covering less than 50% of the BT.2020 gamut target.

However, all of the projectors can easily cover the SDR Rec709 color gamut, so they were on an even playing field when I measured their out of the box color accuracy. The JMGO N3 Ultimate posted an extremely impressive result with an average SDR color error of 0.97 and a maximum single-color error of 2.55, which are both below the generally accepted threshold of 3 where the human eye wouldn’t be able to detect a difference in color without an immediate side-by-side reference. The majority of the projectors were very accurate out of the box, with the JVC NZ500 coming in a surprising last place with an average error of 5.05 and a max error of 10.31 for SDR color.

But HDR accuracy was a different story, and because the HDR color gamut is so demanding in terms of both brightness and saturation, a projector’s tone mapping algorithm has to balance keeping colors accurate with being able to provide the correct luminance. If we just look at the HDR color accuracy without luminance, the Nebula X1 Pro comes out on top with an average error of just 3.13. But to do that, the luminance of those colors was all over the place and including luminance it had a dE of 38.15. The real stars in terms of HDR were the XGIMI Titan Noir Pro and Max which maintained reasonably accurate colors including luminance, putting up the two best HDR color accuracy measurements I’ve ever seen from a projector.

Side-by-Side Testing

If we combine brightness, contrast, and color performance, we should be able to reasonably predict each projector’s picture quality, but the only way to know for sure is to put them head-to-head. So, I set up two 100” white screens in my light-controlled garage and played a mix of SDR, HDR, and Dolby Vision content to judge their overall viewing experience.

Starting with the least expensive projector, the $2399 JMGO N3 Ultimate on the left and the $2599 XGIMI Horizon 20 Max on the right. In bright SDR content, they performed very similarly, but moderately lit scenes showed a much flatter image on the JMGO with lower intra-scene contrast. In the darkest SDR scenes, the laser dimming on the Horizon 20 Max which is called DBLE significantly outperformed the JMGO’s AI dynamic black level setting and resulted in both darker shadows and brighter highlights. The same was true in HDR content where the Horizon 20 Max consistently produced an image with more depth, better color, and more shadow detail, giving it an easy win in this round.

That makes round 2 the $3999 dual laser XGIMI 0.78” Titan on the left and the $2599 XGIMI Horizon 20 Max on the right. In SDR content, they both looked very good. I would say that the Titan’s black floor was slightly too blue while the Horizon 20’s black floor was slightly too green, but DBLE laser dimming did a great job on both projectors. In HDR content, the Titan’s DBLE system was faster and more responsive resulting in deeper blacks and more overall contrast, but the RGB laser on the Horizon 20 Max was able to produce more saturated, richer color. But the reason the Titan is ultimately going to win this round is that its DBLE system is controlled by XGIMI’s dedicated X1 chip, while DBLE on the Horizon 20 is part of its MediaTek processor. Although XGIMI has significantly improved the Horizon 20’s laser-dimming performance since last year’s review, it doesn’t seem to be capable of easing in and out, and it occasionally flickers on and off. While this was infrequent, it was very distracting, so the Titan is going to move on to the next round.

Round 3 is the $3999 XGIMI Titan on the left and overall winner of last year’s video, the $3999 Valerion Max on the right. The Valerion Max also has the soon to be released OTA3 firmware update that added a dynamic iris mode, which is what I’m using for this side-by-side. This round was extremely difficult to judge because the Titan’s strength is brightness and the Valerion’s strength is its EBL dynamic dimming and new dynamic iris. So, in brighter content, the Titan was much more visually interesting, but in dark scenes when the dynamic iris and EBL were actually working, the Valerion Max was extremely impressive, and I say when it was actually working because this is a very beta version of OTA3 and it had all kinds of issues with EBL getting stuck off as well as other random issues like choppy video playback and picture modes disappearing. Given that this is beta firmware and these two projectors excel in very different areas I’m actually going to do something a little strange here and declare this round a tie for now, so we’ll see both of these projectors again in a future round.

In round 4, the challenger is the $4289 Nebula X1 Pro on the left, and its feature set is most similar to the $3999 Valerion Max, so it will be on the right. While the Nebula X1 Pro does have dynamic laser dimming and a dynamic iris, its $4289 price tag has more to do with the fact that it’s a massive rolling unit with a built-in subwoofer and integrated wireless front and rear speakers that enable 7.1.4 surround sound. While the X1 Pro performed admirably and was actually brighter than the Valerion in SDR when both projectors were set to dynamic iris, the Valerion’s dynamic laser dimming was in a completely different league, and 7.1.4 surround sound aside, there was no question that the Valerion Max was the superior projector in terms of image quality.

In round 5, the $4999 XGIMI Titan Noir Pro is on the left and the $3999 Valerion Max is on the right. I should mention that $4999 is the MSRP of the Titan Noir Pro, but it recently came off Kickstarter where it was priced at $2699, which was an absolutely insane deal because this projector is a monster. With both projectors set to dynamic iris with DBLE and EBL laser dimming on, the Titan Noir Pro is 33% brighter in the brightest scenes, has a lower black floor, and higher native contrast. In the darkest scenes, like Sandra Bullock drifting into space in Gravity, the two projectors were fairly evenly matched, only differing in how many of the stars were visible in the background. But when highlights were needed like the appearance of the Balrog in Rings of Power, the Valerion looked like a projected image of fire, while the Titan Noir Pro looked like actual fire. This is due partly to the extra brightness of the Titan Noir, but also to the HDR tone mapping that I talked about earlier where the Valerion and Titan Noir Pro had similar HDR color accuracy without luminance error, but the Titan Noir Pro also properly displayed the brightness of those colors, not just their hue and saturation. This round is easily going to go to the Titan Noir Pro.

That brings us to round 5 part 2, where the $4999 Titan Noir Pro is still on the left but I’m going to bring the $3999 XGIMI Titan Back on the right because as I mentioned in round 3, the Valerion is more of a dark room specialist, while the XGIMI Titan shines in bright content in less than perfect viewing conditions. But the Titan Noir Pro can do both, and in content that demanded the absolute brightest highlights like the Balrog scene, the Titan Noir Pro held its own against the bigger, brighter Titan while conserving more shadow detail. When a scene called for darkness and contrast, the Titan Noir Pro was on another level, and that means that the Titan Noir Pro has successfully resolved the round 3 tie by besting both the Valerion Max in dark content and the original XGIMI Titan in bright content.

Round 6 then puts the $4999 Titan Noir Pro on the left and the $5997 Hisense XR10 on the right. Unfortunately, the XR10 is another projector from Hisense with impressive build quality and specs, but pretty mediocre software. Not only does it lack a dynamic iris like the much less expensive Titan Noir Pro, but the Hisense dynamic dimming algorithm, called Scenario Enhancement, is just considerably less effective than DBLE from XGIMI and EBL from Valerion. In SDR content, the projectors were decently matched but in HDR, the Hisense was comparatively flat and lifeless. Overall, it was no match for the superior image processing of the XGIMI, and the Titan Noir Pro is going to move on again.

That makes round 7 the $4999 Titan Noir Pro on the left and the $5999 Titan Noir Max on the right, and this went about how you would expect. With both projectors on the latest firmware and both set to the exact same settings, the Titan Noir Max was just a little bit brighter and had an almost identical black floor, leading to an overall higher contrast ratio. Overall, in person these two projectors were so incredibly similar that in a blind test I’m not sure I could easily pick out which was which. But watching them back on footage, the Titan Noir Max is just a little bit better all the time, which is good, because in person I decided to just give it the benefit of the doubt and move it on even though I was having trouble finding many differences between them in person.

Round 8 then has the $6999 JVC NZ500 on the left and the $5999 Titan Noir Max on the right. For this comparison, I clamped the iris on the Titan Noir Max all the way down to f/7.0 to make the overall brightness more similar to the JVC and I cranked up the exposure on my camera. What I saw in this round absolutely blew me away. In the 1917 staircase scene, there were a few frames that I could pull out where the XGIMI’s dynamic dimming algorithm got thwarted by a bright highlight which exposed its native contrast of just over 6000:1 compared to 22000:1 on the JVC. But for the most part, this entire scene was just absolutely dominated by the XGIMI which had better tone mapping, better motion, better color accuracy, and at certain points, significantly higher intra-scene contrast. The same held true in Gravity where the black floor was basically identical, but the stars were brighter and the motion was better. I want to reiterate that this is the XGIMI clamped all the way down to its smallest iris setting to try to get closer to the NZ500’s brightness. But in dynamic iris mode, the XGIMI is more than twice as bright as the NZ500, and the impact that has on the highlights in HDR content cannot be overstated. Even if these two projectors were the exact same price, I personally would choose the XGIMI Titan Noir Max every, single, time, because black level can only get you so far and sometimes you need brightness.

That brings us to the final round, where the $7999 Epson QB1000 is on the left and the $5999 XGIMI Titan Noir Max is on the right. The QB1000 is the brightest of Epson’s consumer home cinema line that includes the LS9000, LS11000, LS12000, and QB1000. After a VERY light calibration, it retained a little over 2300 lumens, but the Titan Noir Max has about 300 more than that even on dynamic mode. So, while the last time I reviewed the QB1000 I praised its excellent brightness compared to other similarly priced home theater projectors, that advantage doesn’t exist against the Titan Noir Max. In SDR content, the Epson appeared slightly dimmer but also considerably oversaturated, and in HDR content it was just no contest. I would go so far as to call the Epson’s HDR performance embarrassing when compared to the Titan Noir Max, making this last round a little anti-climactic, but securing the top spot for the Titan Noir Max in the side-by-side testing for 2026.

Here are the overall rankings for this year, but there’s still a lot more to cover, so let’s talk about optics.

Zoom and Lens Shift

Traditionally, one of the defining characteristics of a home theater projector versus a lifestyle projector is the presence of optical zoom and lens shift which makes precise installation much more flexible. But every single one of these projectors has at least some optical zoom. I measured the Hisense XR10 as having the largest zoom range in this video at 2.23x with a max throw of 1.97 and minimum throw ratio of 0.88:1 which was the shortest throw of any of the projectors in this video, and the Epson QB1000 had the second largest zoom range at 2.1x, and it had the longest throw of 2.83:1, but a pretty long minimum throw of 1.35:1.

Lens shift is also an extremely useful and convenient feature, and it’s important to know that there is a difference in the way that Chinese brands advertise lens shift range when compared to traditional projector brands like JVC and Epson. So, instead of going off of advertised claims, I actually measured their usable lens shift. The Epson QB1000 has by far the most vertical lens shift that I measured at 197% using the Chinese standard, which would be +/-98.5% in traditional notation. The Epson also had the most horizontal lens shift at 96% total or +/-48%. However, one strange exception here is that lens shift traditionally operates in a circle, so if you max out the lens shift on one axis, the other axis needs to be completely centered. But the Hisense XR10 doesn’t seem to be confined by that rule and when maxed out horizontally or vertically you still have a significant amount of lens shift to work with on the other axis, which makes it much more versatile.

Focus and Clarity

The last thing to cover in terms of optics is the focus and clarity of the lens. To evaluate that, I projected a text image and zoomed in on the smallest text. I then ranked the projectors based on overall sharpness, chromatic aberration and color fringing, and whether there was a visible pixel grid, known as the screen-door effect (SDE). I evaluated both white text on a black background and black text on a white background.

The Hisense XR10 had the sharpest lens ranking 1^st for black text and 2^nd for white text, the Titan Noir Max and Titan Noir Pro were in 2^nd and 3^rd place, and the JVC NZ500, which is the only projector in this video that would be called native 4K and not pixel shifted 4K, came in 4^th. You can see that compared to the XR10, the overall sharpness is lower and there is color fringing from mild panel misalignment, but there is no visible pixel structure. Other than the JMGO N3 Ultimate and Nebula X1 Pro, I thought SDE was very mild on all of the other pixel shifted 4K projectors.

24p Playback

Next, I tested the features specific to each projector use case. For watching movies, you may want true 24p support for a more cinematic feel without motion judder. Using the RTINGS 24p test pattern, only the JVC, Valerion, and Epson were able to play back 24 frames per second natively in 4K. The JMGO, XGIMI Horizon 20, and Hisense XR10 can play back 24p content in their high framerate mode, but that reduces their resolution to 1080p, and the Nebula X1 Pro, XGIMI Titan, Titan Noir Pro, and Titan Noir Max all failed to play back 24p content without motion judder, though there is a beta firmware already available for the Titan Noir Pro and Max that enables 24p playback, but it’s not part of the public firmware yet.

Input Lag Testing

For gamers, I measured input lag at 4K 60Hz, 1080p 120Hz, and 1080p 240Hz. In general, input lag numbers under 20ms are excellent for gaming, between 20-50ms is good for casual gaming, 50-100ms starts to be problematic, and anything over 100ms shouldn’t be used for gaming. At 4K 60Hz, all of the projectors other than the JVC NZ500 and original XGIMI Titan were under that 20ms mark, with the lowest input lag coming from the XGIMI Titan Noir Pro and Horizon 20 Max that refresh from the top of the screen down and had around 10ms of input lag at the center screen measurement.

At 1080p 120Hz, the input lag went down for most of the DLP projectors, but the XGIMI Titan and Nebula X1 Pro dropped frames, the Epson QB1000’s input lag increased from its 4K 60Hz measurement. The JVC NZ500 doesn’t support 120Hz at all.

At 1080p 240Hz, several of the projectors measured under 3ms of input lag on the middle bar using that sequential refresh method and measured as low as 1ms at the top bar.

Unfortunately, my lag tester doesn’t support 4K 120Hz, but the only projector in this video that supports that resolution is the Epson QB1000. Based on the fact that 4K 60Hz has a lower input lag than 1080p 120Hz and the fact that pixel response time on Epson’s LCD panels is pretty low, I’d say you’re better off playing in 4K 60Hz rather than 4K 120Hz on the QB1000 anyway. If you have your heart set on 4K 120Hz projector gaming, JMGO does have a projector in China called the N5 that is the first single chip DLP to support 4K 120Hz, so those may be coming soon, but so far, no word on a global release.

3D Playback

The last specialty use case is 3D playback. Using a 100” Spectra Shadowscape ALR screen, I tested each compatible projector for 3D effect, eye comfort, 3D format compatibility, and 3D resolution. Unfortunately, none of the projectors are what I would call the “complete package” in terms of 3D. The XGIMI Titan Noir Max was the standout as the best and supports full resolution 3D playback, with very good 3D effect and good eye comfort. It even supports anti-RBE and DBLE laser dimming in 3D, but it’s missing automatic 3D detection and activation.

The original XGIMI Titan was also very good in terms of 3D effect and to me it was the most comfortable to watch which has been a consistent finding for me with XGIMI’s dual laser projectors, but I did notice some unusual color banding, and it suffers from the 3D half resolution bug.

The JMGO was the last standout for me that had very good 3D effect and good eye comfort, but it also failed to playback 3D files in full resolution, though I did note that it seemed higher resolution than the other projectors that suffered from the half resolution bug.

I thought the 3D performance of the Hisense XR10 and Nebula X1 were comparatively pretty bad and the Epson QB1000 and JVC NZ500 don’t support 3D at all.

RGB DLP Sensitivities

Next, we’ve heralded the benefits of RGB Laser DLP projectors in terms of color gamut, gaming pixel response time, and 3D compatibility, but the technology is not without drawbacks starting with the DLP rainbow effect. RBE is caused by the fact that single chip DLP projectors flash each color sequentially and rely on persistence of vision to combine those three colors together. While the tendency to see rainbows will vary from person to person, the faster the colors flash the less likely you are to be able to see RBE. In this video, all of the DLP projectors have a standard 4x speed color sequence meaning they flash red, green, and blue four times per frame at 60 frames per second, so we’ll just call this 12 flashes per frame. 

The XGIMI Horizon 20 Max has a luminance boost mode that adds in cyan and yellow to the sequence, which increases brightness at the cost of color accuracy and saturation, but also increases the number of flashes per frame to 20. XGIMI recently updated the Horizon 20 Max to include an anti-RBE mode that doubles the color speed to 8x which keeps the brightness and color accuracy the same but increases the color sequence to 24 flashes per frame, significantly reducing rainbows.

The XGIMI Titan Noir and Titan Noir Max also have RBE-reducing modes, with the standard mode matching the Horizon 20 Max’s standard 8x sequence with 24 flashes per frame. However, each model also offers an enhanced mode, with slightly different color sequencing between the two. Both enhanced modes result in 36 flashes per frame, which completely eliminates my ability to force myself to see rainbows. Unfortunately, this comes with reduced picture quality due to dithering artifacts.

Valerion was essentially the inventor of these anti-RBE modes, and the Max still has the best RBE reduction with almost no reduction in picture quality. With the white balance set to warm1 and RBE reduction on, the Valerion has 48 flashes per frame. Using Warm2 that adds yellow and cyan similar to luminance boost on the Horizon 20, the Valerion Max flashes 56 times per frame.

Just to be clear, the JVC uses 3 chip LCoS technology, and the Epson uses 3LCD so they don’t have color flashing at all and there shouldn’t be any rainbows.

The second drawback of a DLP RGB Laser projector is laser speckle, which is caused by the fact that there is minimal diffusion of the laser before it hits the screen. Single laser projectors like the JVC and Epson will speckle only on the most saturated pure blue colors which is where they use the direct blue laser, but even then, some of that speckle is diffused by the LCoS and LCD panels.

A dual laser projector like the XGIMI Titan will speckle on pure red, pure blue, and any color that only contains red and blue RGB values, but any color that mixes in the green phosphor will have much less speckle. So, in real content, a dual laser projector like the Titan doesn’t speckle too often.

But pure RGB projectors lack any sort of phosphor and always use direct lasers even when mixing colors. Even though manufacturers keep saying they are including laser speckle reducing features, as someone who is fairly sensitive to laser speckle, the only real difference that I’ve seen is that brighter projectors have more noticeable speckle. I spent a few minutes with each RGB laser projector in this video trying to spot any differences in speckle, and that same observation held true that the brightest projectors speckled the most. So, be wary of any marketing that says there’s such a thing as a less speckle or no speckle RGB laser projector. However, certain screens, specifically woven acoustically transparent screens, are incredibly effective at removing laser speckle, so make sure you check out my last video before choosing a screen for your RGB laser projector.

Form Factor

Wrapping up this marathon video taking a quick look at form factor. The XGIMI Titan, JVC NZ500, and Epson QB1000 are very traditional looking home theater projectors, while I think the XGIMI Titan Noir Series, and Hisense XR10 would fit in equally in a home theater or in a living room, and the JMGO N3 Ultimate and XGIMI Horizon 20 Max are more of what I would traditionally consider a “lifestyle” projector designed for less permanent installations and mobility. The JMGO even has a motorized gimbal that you can steer around using a gyroscope in the remote and I’m not sure why you would ever need that, but it’s pretty unique.

The Nebula X1 Pro takes uniqueness to a completely different level, and it’s kind of just its own thing. I don’t think anyone should buy an X1 Pro for their home theater, and you probably shouldn’t even get it for your living room or bedroom. It’s a massive, heavy, rolling tank of a unit that’s designed to be tucked away in a closet or garage and pulled out for outdoor movie nights or sporting events. If that’s what you’re looking for, it’s really the only game in town. The speakers are wireless, high quality, and ridiculously loud and the built-in subwoofer can provide more bass than you’ll probably feel comfortable using without disturbing your neighbors. If you pop open the top storage locker, it’s also got two wireless microphones in case a karaoke session spontaneously happens. I don’t know how often I’d personally use the X1 Pro, but if I had both friends and money, it might be a fun toy.

Conclusions

Now it’s conclusion time. My top pick for the best standard throw projector of 2026 is the XGIMI Titan Noir Max and if you picked one up for $2999 on the Kickstarter, you did very well for yourself.

But at the MSRP of $5999 it’s difficult to recommend it over the Titan Noir Pro, which is 98% as good. This isn’t like the Valerion Pro 2 versus Max situation last year where you got extra features like lens shift and an iris. The Titan Noir Max and Titan Noir Pro have the exact same feature set, same lens, same remote, same everything except the Max is a little bit brighter which gives slightly brighter highlights and the edge in 3D performance.  If I had gotten this video out a few days earlier, you still could have picked up the Pro as late Kickstarter pledge for $2999, but those are officially gone too. I did convince XGIMI to give me a discount code to get the Pro down to $3699, but that code expires at the end of July.

I’d say that unless you need a throw longer than 2.05:1 or you have some extreme sensitivity to DLP rainbows or RGB laser speckle, there is zero reason you should consider the Epson QB1000 for your home theater. Even the lower priced Titan Noir Pro is better in every single way, and I don’t even think it was particularly close.

If you’re a JVC guy and you’re looking for the signature JVC picture, the NZ500 is still a good projector that has a place in a Batcave home theater with a modest screen size, but after watching it side-by-side with the Titan Noir Max, there zero chance I would personally consider the NZ500 over the Titan Noir, even if the prices were the same.

The JMGO N3 Ultimate and XGIMI Horizon 20 Max were a much harder sell when the Titan Noir Pro was $2999, but they did perform admirably given that they’re priced under $2600, but to me there’s not a big enough gap in performance to get them over the XGIMI Horizon 20 base model, which is $1000 less.

In November I’ll be looking at more budget friendly projectors in the $1500 and under range, but as it stands right now Titan Noir Pro and Max are easily the best projectors under $10,000 and could probably hold that title all the way up to the $19,000 JVC NZ800 and Epson QL3000.

As always, there are no sponsored reviews on this channel, but I do have links below for all the projectors in this video. If you appreciate the absolutely ridiculous amount of time and tens of thousands of dollars in equipment that it takes to make a video like this, I’d love it if you would use those links since as an affiliate I do earn a small commission on the sale at no cost to you.

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