Recommended 4K Laser Projectors

If you are buying a projector for your home theater and you’re looking at things like the Epson LS11000, 12000, or 5050UB, you should forget about those and buy the Valerion Max instead. Last year when I tested the Valerion Pro 2 I said it was basically flawless and the Max has taken that solid baseline performance of the Pro 2, added an iris for increased contrast, vertical lens shift for flexibility in placement, and an RBE reduction feature that more than triples the color cycles per frame. To my eye they’ve also eliminated the color shifts with EBL that were introduced with the EBL high and low update, and the Max also adds another layer of flexibility with the external lens mounting system, so if the Max is in your budget and you need the flexibility, it’s basically a no brainer.

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. In 2024, 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 Google TV operating system, and most importantly, it finished first in the side-by-side viewing experience testing in 2024. The Max’s biggest competitor is the Pro 2, which still performs exceptionally well, but for a lot less money based on the current sale prices listed on the Valerion website. So, if you don’t need lens shift or an external lens, it’s pretty hard to justify the significant price increase of the Valerion Max which makes the Pro 2 the right projector for most people’s home theaters based on value alone.

If you’re on a budget, the NexiGo TriVision Ultra currently priced at under $1300 is hands down the highest value projector on the market, with the 3rd highest usable lumens, and also finishing 3rd overall in my side-by-side testing with low input lag, 24p support, great 3D, dynamic tone mapping, Dolby Vision and HDR10+ support, and it just got a firmware update to add laser brightness controls and full fade to black. Unfortunately for the Dangbei MP1 Max, DBOX02 Pro, and BenQ GP520, the existence of the TriVision Ultra makes it really hard to recommend anything else in that $1500 and under price range unless a built-in gimbal and Google TV are on your must have list, in which case the Dangbei MP1 is probably the way to go.

If your setup is a bit more casual and you plan on putting your projector on a table or shelf, if you are mostly using your projector for video games with fast camera movements, or if 3D performance is at the top of your wish list, then the XGIMI Horizon 20 Max is also incredibly good. Even though it couldn’t touch its 5700 lumens claim in any usable mode, it still had over 3000 ANSI lumens with acceptable color accuracy. If they can figure out how to fix their dynamic black level enhancement setting, the Horizon 20 is going to be a serious competitor for the Valerion Pro 2 in a theater environment as well.