u/AV_Integrated

Just had this show up at my door. Yes, I was one of the lucky ones who gets to take a look at the Iris Ultra Max from JMGO. Over the next few weeks I will be taking a look at it and evaluating it. I will be comparing it to my Titan Noir Max as well as the Valerion Max on different screen sizes in different environments. The majority and most serious evaluation will come from my 110" matte white Silver Ticket screen in a light controlled environment as I have put in other reviews.

I will happily answer questions as best I can, within the confines of the gear I own. I will also bring my son into the mix as he is the gamer in the family and get his thoughts on things. I'm afraid, I would suck at getting deep on 4K/120hz gaming, but he should be able to give his thoughts on it for sure.

I will test input lag up to 1080p/60 on my tester, but have nothing faster at this time. I am sure this model will be blazing fast.

From my side, I will be watching sports, TV shows, and movies pretty much daily as time allows.

Ask questions if you would like me to test out something specific.

This is it. The projector that everyone starting out should be short listing. No non-branded junk that nobody has made any serious reviews of. A well established brand, with a long history of making projectors. Almost exclusively, projectors. But, how are they pulling off one of the lowest priced projectors the industry has ever seen? More important, how does it stack up? At under $300 in the USA, and under $400 in much of Europe and the rest of the world, the value proposition should put it on the short list for anyone on a budget.

PROS
- Class leading brightness
- No cheap built in operating system to be buggy
- Sharp corner to corner image
- DLP technology
- LED light source, no laser speckle
- Optical zoom

CONS
- No built in smart operating system at all, must use an external streaming device.
- Manual controls for zoom and focus
- Difficult to align perfectly to a screen
- Onboard speakers are terrible
- Remote makes no sense at all
- Only 1080p resolution
- 55ms of input lag leave it strictly for casual gamers

I have been following the PH31 for several months now. It was first pointed out to me a couple of months ago on Reddit, and I dug into it. I had been suggesting it to other people since I saw the $300 price point. But, I wasn't finding any reviews of it. The good reviews I did read were their 4K variations. The PK31 and PK32 has some reviews out there that are strong, but nothing about the younger brother to those models. Finally, I decided to pick one up. Since the normal buying options were out of stock, I ended up making my first Temu purchase and had it delivered to my door, in under a week, for less than $300, taxes included. This puts it in the price range of the no-name cheap models that I generally refer to as Cheap Chinese Crap. The single TFT LCD projectors that you see on Temu, Alibaba, Amazon... the ones that first time buyers often consider because of their low price point. Yes, this isn't $100, but at $300, it's closer to what many people are willing to spend.

As I unboxed the Optoma PH31 I was very aware that this wasn't like unboxing the XGimi Eflin Flip 4K I had recently received. This felt far more like a standard piece of electronics coming out of a box. No fancy packaging, no fancy presentation, just cardboard and a safely delivered black box. There was nothing shocking in the box whatsoever. The projector, a remote, a power cord. Any manuals were not really useful. Long gone are the days of thick manuals coming with projectors, so a digital copy is a good thing to grab over at Projector Central...
https://www.projectorcentral.com/pdf/projector_manual_12850.pdf

Right away I noticed that besides a focus ring, the projector also has a zoom knob. In the photos, the knob with the handle on it is for zoom, the ring in front of it is for focusing. Using zoom will throw the projector significantly out of focus, but it isn't until focus is adjusted will the image obviously change size.

Powering it on for the first time was as easy as plugging it in and pressing the power button, then the fun (?) began. The Optoma PH31 doesn't feature all the bells and whistles of the competition. It powers on to the only input the projector has, HDMI. The remote control has a lot of buttons on it, all of which are almost entirely useless. No custom remote for the product, and the extra buttons are meaningless to this model. A shame they couldn't have given us a much more basic remote to go with the projector. The projector doesn't offer up 4-corner keystone correction. This is something I asked AI before I bought it and AI got it wrong. The PH31 absolutely does NOT feature 4-corner keystone correction. It does offer automatic vertical keystone correction, and that can be set to manual as well. Manual keystone offers both horizontal and vertical controls.

But, placement isn't that easy. The zoom range of the PH31 is limited, and the image offset is fixed so that the center of the lens is even with the bottom edge of the projected image/screen when right side up. Fortunately, it has a tripod mounting point on it, so I pulled out my shorter tripod and put the PH31 onto it which was just fine. The tripod allows for full pan/tilt/yaw correction, but if I had the PH31 on a table, the projector has 3 feet on it to give some adjustment. If ceiling mounting, those 3 feet can be removed to allow a standard projector ceiling mount to be used. This is a feature I feel that every projector should have on it at the very least. Especially models that come with a gimbal that can't be removed.

The limited zoom range means that for my 110" diagonal screen the lens to screen distance must be between 12 feet to 13 feet, 2 inches.
https://www.projectorcentral.com/optoma-photon_life_ph31-projection-calculator-pro.htm
Getting everything properly aligned took some time. Probably 15 minutes or so to get it to a point that I felt was nearly perfect. I didn't use any keystone correction and had the projector placed so that I was about in the middle of the available zoom range. All photos were taken when the projector was setup this way. If I were a more casual user, then setting it perfectly wouldn't be a priority. It is easy enough to use keystone, and not have a 'perfect' image. Keystone doesn't massively impact image quality when used lightly. If there is no screen, there are no screen borders to perfectly align to. Outside movie night with the kids on the side of the house would take under a couple of minutes to setup.

Since the PH31 does not have a internal 'smart' operating system, I chose the Amazon Fire TV Stick as my streaming source. I could have used any number of streaming options like a laptop, a game console, a Roku, Apple TV, or Google TV device, or many other options. I chose the Firestick because I had it on hand and I knew the Firestick has built in Bluetooth audio to connect to an external speaker. Very handy on a sub-$20 product. The PH31 has a USB port on it, that appears to be for power only. It provides enough USB power to run the Firestick just fine. Not always a feature you can expect, even when a projector has a USB port on it.

I setup the projector to cinema mode (it has Dynamic and Game modes as well). The Cinema mode looked excellent with colors that popped while not overdoing things like they did in dynamic mode. The skin tones appeared very natural, and whites would pop without being washed out. I pushed the contrast a bit to bump up black levels a tiny bit, and increase brightness just a hair. Using test videos from YouTube on the Firestick helped me ensure I wasn't getting any black crush or blown out whites.

I watched several movies on the projector including Project Hail Mary, the new Supergirl movie, and Avatar Fire and Ash. I watched the TV show Suits on it as well. For TV viewing, I was just sitting back and seeing how much I would just ignore the projector and let the show be enjoyable. At first, it absolutely wasn't. It wasn't the image that was killing things, it was the audio. The built in speaker on the projector shows clearly one of the ways Optoma saved money on their design. The projector has barely usable audio, and would require a perfectly silent room for the muddled sound to be acceptable. If I hadn't been using a Firestick, the only option I would have for audio is the 'audio out' port that is on the projector. A standard 3.5mm stereo headphone jack. This would require me to get a set of speakers which use that connection and the wire itself. Fortunately, the Firestick has Bluetooth built in, with lag correction, so I was able to connect the Firestick to an external speaker easily. I ended up using the Saiyin Soundbar as recommended by The Hook Up on YouTube...
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DD3YWTT2
Under $100 for the soundbar and the Firestick were massive additions to making this projector shine.

But, the focus here is on the projector, not the audio. The image popped on my 110" screen for both movies and TV shows. Colors were about as accurate as I have seen out of the box and didn't leave me wishing for individual color correction. Brightness was not just plenty for my screen size, but matched up similar to what the Elfin Flip 4K had been giving me. Perhaps even a bit brighter when I A-B tested them. The 1080p resolution wasn't a big distraction in terms of image quality, but the lack of proper HDR support absolutely was. HDR content when fed through my Plex server just looked dull. The projector accepted the video signal, but didn't have any way to process it accurately. So, I stuck with SDR content to view on the projector only. This made all the difference as the projector does really well with SDR content overall. (edit:) I wanted to add that the rainbow effect (RBE) which is common on all single chip DLP projectors was kept to a minimum on this model. Even less visible than what I had been seeing on the Elfin Flip 4K I have to compare against. That's really good for first time buyers who may not know if they are RBE sensitive or not. It is likely operating at the equivalent of a 4x color wheel, but it felt, to my eyes, as being a bit faster. 5x or 6x color wheel equivalent was what it felt like to my eyes.

As a plus, the Firestick remote could be setup to power the projector on and off directly, and could control the volume of the PH31. Once switched to Bluetooth, the Firestick controlled itself, the projector, and the soundbar just fine. So, I could just leave the projector remote alone while watching things. This seems like it should make sense, but I couldn't get my XGimi projector to work at all through the Firestick remote. So, points for Optoma on that one.

Power on and off took under ten seconds. It does seem like the projector loses all settings when it loses power. So, I had to bump contrast and brightness a tiny bit when I unplugged it. On the other hand, on a scale from 0-100, 50 being the middle, I bumped contrast to 54 and brightness to 51. Very small changes. Sharpness I left at 50 as the projector noticeably went softer when I reduced sharpness, and immediately added digital artifacts when I pushed the sharpness up at all. Just leaving it at the halfway point was the way to go.

The projector itself is the noisiest I've tested in a bit. That doesn't mean it is noisy. But, it sound similar to a laptop fan spinning. In a quiet room, this means you get a constant whirrrrr of the fan. It was low in pitch, and didn't ramp up or down at all. The projector offers a low-power mode that brought the fan noise down some, but I found the image to be too dim in that mode on my screen. I could see someone with a smaller screen using low-lamp mode to reduce fan noise. The fan noise itself was still lower than what I have been living with for years from my lamp-based JVC DLA-X590R projector. Not by a lot, but definitely lower.

While colors were excellent, contrast was not. Arguably, contrast is very standard for a DLP projector. I am completely estimating, but would call it about 800:1. It doesn't touch the newer DLP models on the market with a dynamic iris. But, there doesn't appear to be any dynamic light control at all within the projector. Black levels were a dark grey. In black scenes in my dark basement, the black surround of the screen was much darker than the screen itself. Standing in front of a black screen would clearly cast a shadow.

But, the second the image fired up, you forgot about the average black levels. Because the brightness is enough to give the appearance of much better blacks then what are being delivered.

The use of a LED light source has to be pointed out as a win. Perhaps lasers are better for the expanded colors of HDR viewing, but they add laser speckle. Not a problem that exists with LEDs as the light source. The bright areas of the image were smooth without any hint of speckle like I have been seeing on my laser-based XGimi models in the last month or so. For someone looking to avoid any chance of laser speckle, this is a big plus.

I did pull out my Leo Bodnar lag tester and in game mode, with no keystone correction, the projector could only muster about 55ms of input lag. This isn't good. It puts it at the long end of being okay for casual gaming. It is not acceptable for anyone who is more serious about gaming, especially first person shooters.

At the end of the day this is the entry level projector everyone should be getting. Yes, you need an external streaming device. Yes, the internal speaker suck and you really do need an external speaker of some kind that is decent. Yes, perfect setup can be kind of painful. But, the Optoma is still a step up from the competitors. A big step up. The use of proven DLP technology, like you see in movie theaters throughout the world is massive for reliability. The LED light engine is common at this price point, but not with 1,500 rated ISO lumens. Probably closer to 1,000 or 1,100 in actual use, though I expect I could get close to 1,500 lumens with less than stellar colors. Still, compared to similarly priced DLP models that only put on 400 rated ISO lumens, or the no-name LCD projectors that are often well under 1,000 ISO lumens in the real world, the Optoma PH31 delivers. The edge to edge sharp image with only minor color aberration is much better than many lenses can deliver at this price point. This price point. It's the most important factor. You can spend $800 or more on the entry level 4K models from JMGO or XGimi. They absolutely give you more. A good built in operating system. Much better audio. Solid HDR support. Similar brightness. That's coming up on 3 times the price. For those on a budget, that price point is unrealistic. $300? That's about right for a lot of people out there. If they are at $250, then on Amazon right now, the $270 point is attainable. The $20 Firestick add on brings it closer to $300, but it's attainable. Many already own a Bluetooth speaker or Bluetooth headphones. So, that may not be an added cost at all.

No, this wasn't sent to me. I wasn't paid to write this. I have no affiliation with Optoma. These are just my thoughts about a product I purchased myself. If you have questions, please ask them. I'm happy to answer as best I can. All photos of movies/video were taken with a Nikon D750 DSLR camera except close up photos of the screen and of the projector itself. Note that one pair of photos near the end highlight shadow details that the projector is able to reproduce. So, one of the photos has been brightened significantly to show those shadow details.

It was pointed out in my recent post that the photos I put in, which included many with lights on and in less than favorable locations weren't understood to show of the flexibility of the Elfin Flip 4K. I wanted to add some additional photos the show off just how good it looked in a dark theater.

I used my Nikon D750 DSLR to capture these images. I cropped them down a bit to help with sizing. Any bowing to the image was due to the lens of the camera as the image filled my screen top to bottom. The camera did a better job than my phone, but absolutely did not capture the shadow detail perfectly.

I made small adjustments within the projector settings to the contrast and brightness to ensure highlights weren't blown out and black levels were not crushing details. The number of adjustments which can be made to colors within the menu system is exceptional, and I could push things more towards blue, green, or red as I chose. It offers an 11-point white balance for those who want to get really nerdy with it and have the tools to do so.

Lag times shown are in game mode with the fastest settings I could get out of it. Yesterday I measured about 30ms, but thought that there might be some tweaking I could do. Today I got it working really well and with 1080p/60 input, 9.3ms at the top of the image and 16.9 at the bottom. This is about as fast as 60fps can actually appear on screen. 1/60th of a second is 16.666ms. So, about as good as it can be.

Ask if you have questions as it is very hard to judge a projector from photos alone.

Starting off, I wanted to thank XGimi for sending me their new Elfin Flip 4K model for review. I received a knock on the door one day, and it showed up at my door thanks in part to u/ProjectionHead - Brian, from ProjectorScreen.com
It is important to note I was given zero direction on what to say about this model. Good or bad, whatever needed to be said, could be said, which typical shows high confidence in a product, and for the most part, it was an experience unlike any others I have seen.

The Basics: Out of the box, you had the usual suspects, a thin guide, a projector, and a remote, with batteries for that remote. The projector itself it one that I consider ideal for portability. The 1,600 rated ISO lumens is very solid for the size, and the 4K resolution is an added bonus. Flat and square. I was able to fit it into my computer backpack that I travel with while still having my laptop, power supply, and a dozen different testing cables in the bag. It won't fit in a bag that is already snug, but with my 16-inch laptop, it is the very definition of a product that can travel with you.

The Great: Image quality, brightness, and audio are what I would consider top notch right now. In formal testing, the brightness is closer to 1,000 ISO lumens, but that's with accurate colors and decent HDR support with excellent sharpness. The colors were spot on out of the box in standard settings. It is possible to tweak things a great deal to throw colors way off, but unless you go into boost mode for brightness, the standard settings tend to be very solid and enjoyable. I ran most of my testing on a 110" Silver Ticket Matte White screen, and I had zero complaints about brightness or colors. The big surprise, which should not have been, is the audio. XGimi gets a lot more out of most of their projectors than other brands do. I had just used the significantly better sounding Titan Noir Max from XGimi, and thought it was a letdown, until I used some small, but decent Bluetooth speakers. A JBL Bluetooth speaker which was about $60, was a good deal less impressive in terms of volume and the ability to fill the space with audio. I have a larger speaker that does add some volume to the sound, but it's a long way from portable. So, the built in speakers, maintaining the small footprint was phenomenal. It is plenty for a hotel room or small room environment without the requirement for adding a external speaker. But, if you have a permanent or semi-permanent setup, then adding a decent Bluetooth, or HDMI-ARC speaker at the front of the room is something I would consider a must. I spent a lot of time listening through my $100 Ion Audio Tailgater speaker, and the jump in room filling sound was only part of the equation. Moving the audio from right beside me to under the screen was much more natural sounding. Yet, I'm not putting a 20 pound speaker into my backpack for travel. So, the internal sound was more than enough for normal usage needs. I'm going to add into the great the fact that it offers optical zoom. This feature has been a very slow rollout in the lifestyle category, and is almost unheard of in the portable category. But, XGimi just set a new standard here. A 1.3x optical zoom lens means you can get a 100" diagonal size from as close as almost 7 feet (2.15m) lens to screen. The same 100" diagonal allows the projector to be about 9.5 feet (2.9m) away. If you needed the projector even further away, then it offers digital zoom which can shrink the image even more as you want to. I didn't do this as using digital zoom decreases image quality and lowers brightness.

The inclusion of 2 HDMI inputs on the projector is something I have always considered a major requirement, yet so many manufacturers don't seem to understand. HDMI-ARC doesn't allow anything but built in streaming to send audio to a soundbar if there is only one HDMI connection. Having 2 HDMI inputs allows one connection to send audio back to your sound system while the other connection is made to any source you wish to use. Whether that be a different streaming device of your choosing, or a game console that you want to push 4K/60 or 1080p/240 resolutions. That added HDMI connection makes such a massive difference for the gamers out there.

The Good: So much falls into this category. At brightness level 10, the projector remains quiet. At no point did I find the noise to be intrusive. It was similar to a quiet laptop fan at a constant rate. It was clear that XGimi has spent time over the years refining their fans and setup to allow the fan to just be near perfection. It is a small projector, but unlike cheap projectors with extremely noisy fans, these fans could sit right next to you on a table and you wouldn't even notice them.

The contrast is also on point. Not up to the level of a high end home theater projector, but the jump from the original XGimi to the current XGimi Elfin Flip 4K is monumental. In fact, XGimi has been called out for years for their poor contrast, and it seems like they were taking notes, because this projector ups their game significantly. No, it's not the same contrast as my JVC, but it offers solid standard contrast, and allows you to toggle on and off dynamic contrast. The dynamic contrast was helpful when I had things up on my 161" screen while I was watching Project Hail Mary. The space scenes were nearing inky black with stars shining in the distance. But, the bright scenes allowed the projector to step things up some and keep their pop. At 110" and 100" screen sizes, I didn't uses dynamic contrast as often as it was sometimes apparent when it was in use.

The built in Google operating system was Google. It's solid. That's always a good thing if you want simplicity in a portable projector. It allowed for streaming from Amazon, Netflix, YouTube, Plex, Disney, and all the standard favorites. In some testing, I wanted to try to force the projector to boot to the HDMI 1 input, so I tried loading Projectivy Launcher from the Google Play store. This was my first time using it and it worked perfectly with the Elfin Flip 4K. The projector would power on to the HDMI 1 input and allowed me to connect to my main surround sound system. As part of my testing, I moved between different locations, and one of those locations was my main theater space which uses a 161" diagonal screen. I have a JVC DLA-X590R hooked up at that location, but set the XGimi up at the same time using a 4K HDMI Splitter. Was shocked me most was how the triple RGB laser setup delivers brightness that was comparable to high end projectors from just a few years back. I was flipping between the two and, yes, the XGimi isn't as bright as the JVC, but it's not nearly as much difference as I was thinking it would be and it held its own, in a dark theater space, on that 161" screen size. I wouldn't want to do it all the time as the HDR content was struggling at that size, but for some big gaming sessions or the next football or soccer match, it would be a pleasure to watch.

Aiming and setup was easy, most of the time. I will have one note about it below that isn't as nice, but in normal use it wasn't a problem. I tested the auto-keystone, which was excellent. I tested the auto-screen fit, which wasn't always perfect on my 110" screen against a black background, but was better on my 100" that I used in my garage. Yes, I have 3 different screens to test various setups in different environments. The screen fit in my garage was spot on. In my basement with the 110" screen, I had to manually use 4-corner image correction and optical zoom to get the image perfect. In some of my testing I went through the extra work to set the projector up exactly on the 110" screen so I wasn't using any digital correction to the image size at all. I would say that the difference between not using digital correction and just using a small bit of digital correction was minimal in normal movie content. I tested the feature of the projector to recognize when someone is in front of it to turn down the laser on the whole screen, and it worked well. Really nifty was the feature where it would see something in front of it, and just turn off the mirrors on the DLP chip to prevent light in the local area where someone was walking. This was great when I was in front of it setting things up.

Powering the projector on and off was quick. About 10 seconds either direction after the initial bootup sequence. To start the Google operating system, it takes a little bit longer to power on when first plugged in. Still, this was under a minute in total going from unplugged to seeing an image on screen and subsequent power changes were under that 10 second window. This is great when you want to power it off, unplug it, and throw it in a bag for travel.

I mentioned this before, but I will say again how much I appreciated the size and the fact it is fold flat capable. The single screw on the bottom allows it to easily be connected to a tripod, but the entire concept of it being able to flip up or down to your needs is exactly right. I do see this gimbal approach in many other projectors that would be considered to be lifestyle models, or portable models. But, those models often have a problem in that their form factor absolutely makes it a headache to travel with them. A similarly priced JMGO N1S 4K may match up in many ways to the Elfin Flip, but it isn't going to pack into a backpack, or possibly a suitcase, with nearly the ease that the Elfin Flip delivers. This isn't a minor thing when people want to do more than just move it from room to room. The base of the Flip is wide enough that it isn't easy to knock it over, but if that is a concern than putting it on a tripod does add stability. When I set it up for my 161" screen I was worried about knocking it over, so I used a 1/4" clamp mount, like may be used for a camera, and clamped it to a board up near my ceiling. Took me under a minute to get the projector mounted using that clamp and it was now up at my ceiling, upside down. Not surprisingly, the projector recognized it was upside down and flipped the image right side up. The mount I used was similar to this... https://www.amazon.com/ULANZI-Monitor-Ballhead-Adapter-Ronin-M/dp/B09C882D4M/ref=sr_1_3_sspa

The Okay: Viewing under lights was pretty much what I expected. It was usable, but not great and took quite a hit. Out in my garage, it was rough going. The image simply wasn't bright enough, even on a 100" screen, to be fun to watch for very long. But, it was enough to work with sports and brighter content if you are a forgiving person. Set your expectations appropriately, and understand my garage has covered windows on one side and I had the double car door wide open during this testing. Don't plan on using this in any rooms with a lot of ambient light during the day. As is always the case, the sun is very bright.

For those who are rainbow effect (RBE) sensitive then this projector is another model that will follow form to other single chip DLP home theater projectors. The typical testing shows most of these models operate at about a 4x speed. Since I am RBE sensitive, I can agree that this is what it looks like. I saw pronounced RBE with white text against a black background. During normal video content, I had to look hard to make myself see it. So, it is solidly average in this regard.

The Bad (that they can fix): Limited manual 4-corner correction. Maybe I missed something, but in one test I set the Elfin Flip 4K directly on my bedside table. Similar to what I might do in a hotel. This severely skews the image when I put the image on my ceiling and pointed it over my bed. Unfortunately, the 4-corner keystone correction didn't give me enough range to correct things and square up the image. This doesn't seem to be a real limitation of the hardware, but may be something that could be corrected in software. When projecting on the wall it wasn't as skewed and allowed for easy image correction.

The Bad (that maybe they can fix?): A projector like this should be able to be run off a battery pack. Maybe they don't sell that pack themselves, but it would be very helpful to know what power supply and what adapter would be needed to run this projector off an external power source for two or three hours. It would add a level of portability that is missing from this model currently. But, it's a feature that most projector manufactures don't discuss. I've always thought that having details on how to battery power small projectors without a battery would be a plus for most manufacturers.

It would also be nice to see a reduced RBE function on this model similar to the XGimi Titan Noir Max. This feature doubles the effective sequencing of colors on the DLP chip. When testing the Titan Noir, the anti-RBE feature worked wonderfully to basically knock out any ability I had of noticing RBE issues. To have this on a lower priced model would be amazing, but it may be a hardware limitation of this model. If it is something that could be put into play through a firmware update, it would help many people who are very RBE sensitive.

The Bad (that they can't fix): Laser speckle was apparent on all three of the screens I used, and even on my ceiling when I projected onto it. Laser speckle is a bit of shimmering that appears when lasers are used. If you've ever used a pocket laser, and looked at the dot on the wall you can see this shimmering effect pretty easily most of the time. Same is true here. So, I had to give some slack to the projector overall as this is a simple reality with laser projectors. If you are very sensitive to laser speckle, then you may want to look for a LED lit alternative instead. In guess in reality, XGimi could try a LED light engine, but they would probably be giving up some brightness as well as some of their excellent color range to do so. Still, I wouldn't change this product to do so.

Final thoughts: This projector hits the marks on exactly what it should hit. I've recommended it many times already. For the money, it's properly priced. It actually hits the mark for a inexpensive lifestyle model, or a easy to setup and use portable model. It travels well and can be stored on a bookshelf with ease. The ability to flip open means that you get an easy handle to carry it with you in your home, while also protecting the projector's lens and inputs when it is closed and stored away. Watching 4K content on it was sharp and had good colors as should be expected, but the really strong sound was a very nice addition to that strong image quality. The remote worked well, and the power supply while external, is still small enough to allow you to easily carry it with you.

Going from this to a Horizon 20 is a big jump in overall quality, and I don't consider this model to be directly competition to the full sized lifestyle models which are available for a few hundred dollars more. If you want a better home setup with a lifestyle projector, I would take the Horizon 20 in a second as my best pick. But, the Horizon 20, like many others out there, don't get tossed into your backpack with ease. I'm unaware of any models at all which are so integrated and perfect for portable use (if you have a plug around). Solid image, ease of use, and spectacular audio in a small footprint make this the best projector in this category that I have ever seen.

Please take a look at the photos I have included for some reference while knowing that photos rarely capture the actual quality that any projector delivers.

In early June, I was fortunate enough to be selected to take an early preview look at the XGimi Titan Noir Max thanks to Brian u/ProjectionHead from ProjectorScreen.com

I spent about two weeks trying it out in my theater, as well as doing a bit of outdoor testing with it and giving it a fair shot, I spent most of my time with it in my home theater running on a 161" diagonal Draper Ultimate Access V screen with 1.3 gain material on it. For testing purposes, my reference projector is my JVC DLA-X590R which I have been using for the last few years.

I will say, the presentation of the projector was stellar right from the start. If you've worked with heavy electronics in the past you likely know what a pain they are to simply get out of the box and how you end up rolling boxes sideways and upside down just to get into the box inside of a box inside of a box packaging they often use. Do yourself a favor, and watch an unboxing video of the Titan Noir. Once the outer box is opened up, you are presented with a handle to lift out the main projector box. Once that is opened up, the foam carrying case box also has a handle on it. Just pull it out and you have easy access to the projector inside of it. This was easily the best unboxing experience I've ever had with a full sized projector by far.

I won't get into the build quality really other than to say that it is sturdy like most quality electronics tend to be. It doesn't feel cheap and if any plastics are in use, they are used properly. At the end of the day, it is still just a box. Nothing fancy, and unlike so many of the gimbal projectors on the market today, this one is much more friendly in the home theater.

I will say, this is something that is long overdue from XGimi and others need to take notice. Having a projector that is designed for the home theater, needs to actually be designed to go into the home theater. There are many models that think they are competing, but lack the basics of being able to be easily ceiling mounted to a good mount in the space. As I had heard this model could be ceiling mounted, I went ahead and pulled the legs off the body altogether and threw on a Chief RSMAU, which is their smaller Elite mount, and put it on my ceiling. I mounted it high enough that I could view both the XGimi and my JVC at the same time and could A-B my testing of both of them.

What struck me first was how much brighter the XGimi was compared to my JVC. I had just brough the XGimi in from outside testing, and had left the projector in 'burn your eyes out' mode, which was pretty good looking outdoors, but was terrible looking inside. With a quick click of the menu I brought it back to standard theater mode and it was still a good deal brighter than my JVC, but much better looking on my large screen. I will say that the setup switching from a 110" diagonal screen that I had just used for outdoor/garage testing was an easy switch to the larger screen. I went into the menu settings and zoomed out and used lens shift to position the image exactly where I needed it to appear on the screen. No digital zoom. No keystone correction necessary. The Chief Elite mount helped tremendously in getting this alignment exact.

The first night was hockey night. I fired up ABC's coverage of the Stanley Cup Finals. Carolina vs. Vegas. For those who regularly watch hockey, this was one of those occasions that is really special on the massive screen front projection offers. The motion was about as good as anyone could hope for from live sports. The image processing was good, and I put the projector into 'Sports' mode to get a feeling for what that experience was like out of the box. It was excellent. It was not HDR content, but SDR, and the white of the ice popped without being blinding in the room. I could turn a few lights on if I wanted to, but prefer to watch with the lights out most of the time and it really let the image quality shine through. The puck whipped around the rink and was easy to follow on screen. After watching sports for a while on the JVC, the added light output and the ease of switching from Sports to Movie mode was really nice. The sharpness of DLP really made itself known as well as it not only handled motion better than the JVC, but it also was sharper. Not night and day, but visibly sharper to my 55 year old eyes.

I spent several nights watching different shows and movies and finished things off watching the new Avatar: Fire and Ash movie in HDR 10. This was a format that my JVC could work with as well as the XGimi. No question, the XGimi just slapped the JVC around with how much better it handles HDR content than the JVC. With the XGimi in movie mode, it was extremely similar looking to the JVC with SDR content and TV viewing. Great black levels, excellent motion handling, enough light for the large screen. But, with HDR content, the scenes that needed that extra pop got exactly that from the Titan Noir Max. The sun shining through the sky and reflecting off the water gave moments of needing my eyes just a moment to get everything dialed in. The jump from bright skies to dark scenes didn't show any obvious pulsing of black levels that I could see. I had dynamic black enabled and it appeared to be doing the job it was supposed to do without showing on screen as a pulsing effect which is quite common from motorized dynamic iris setups. My JVC has a dynamic setting that I have enabled, and I sometimes catch it opening up or closing down as I am watching a movie. It is distracting, but so much is good about the JVC, it was always worth it, but to have no pulsing visible at all was outstanding.

On the technical side, I see RBE. I have used the BenQ w1070 for nearly 10 years before I got my JVC. I have the BenQ HT2050a along with the LG CInebeam Q projectors, and I can see RBE on all of them. I recently installed the Valerion Visionmaster Max in a client's home, and could see RBE on that. So, yes, I could see RBE on the Titan Noir. No shock. Fortunately, I don't see RBE all the time, but only in really high contrast scenes, like credits. During the movie, I saw less RBE than I typically would see from the BenQ w1070 that I was using for years. It was on par with what I saw from the Valerion. Clean almost always. I did engage the RBE reduction mode, and it really did make rainbows disappear completely for me, but without it engaged, the image was not producing enough RBE issues for me to feel that engaging it was worthwhile.

The remote control was backlit on certain buttons, but not all of them. This could be considered a hit or a miss. I will say that the top left button that lights up is the focus button. Which frankly is wasted. It would be better to allow that button to be assigned to one of the four user assigned buttons. With the projector permanently mounted, it is far more necessary to get to the different picture modes and image presets than it is to focus the projector over and over again. Otherwise, the remote was easy to work with. I will say, it was a bit of an out of the box failing that the first power on screen (out of the box) asked you to select a language, but when you pressed the 'enter' button, it did not advance to the next menu. You had to select a language, then scroll to the end of all the languages to go to the next menu. Maybe this was by design, but it was very confusing since nothing else in their menu system acts that way and it wasn't clear how to advance. It made things worse that I had the projector far from my screen and it was overshooting the screen. It would have been much better to ship the projector with the smallest image size the projector can deliver from optical zoom, and then allow people to adjust size and even lens shift before it asked for the language, but I that may be confusing for some people as well. Since my first setup was outdoors in a mixed sun/shade area it may have made things more difficult as part of the setup. So, that could be on me. Once I was past the language selection, I made my way into the setup of the projector and could easily zoom in and out and use the lens shift to move the image around on screen.

This was something that I found to be simply outstanding. The optical zoom and optical lens shift were great. My first setup outdoors had the projector on a table sitting on the ground. The ground certainly wasn't level, so I adjusted the feet of the projector to get it level with the screen, then could use lens shift to get it completely squared up to the screen. It took only a few minutes to get my setup working outside, due, in large part, to the motorized zoom and lens shift.

In the theater, I was able to compare noise levels between my JVC and the XGimi. I didn't break out the sound meter, and I must say that fan noise just bugs the heck out of me when I'm watching a movie. For that reason, I keep my JVC in eco lamp mode. With the XGimi on laser power 5, I couldn't hear it over the JVC. The JVC is as quiet as a typical laptop may be. Not noisy at all. Almost a whisper. But, the XGimi was much, much quieter. Not quite silent, but so incredibly quiet that when it was ceiling mounted I absolutely couldn't hear anything from it at all. If someone had it sitting on a shelf over their bed, they could fall asleep with the projector on and not even hear the fans from it at all. It is the quietest projector I have ever heard since the Sony HW45ES, and I believe the XGimi beats the Sony.

Downsides? The power brick is a headache. I wish they had thought a bit more about that in the main projector design. I wouldn't mind connecting it to the side of the projector, or almost anywhere, but it is a large brick sized power adapter. Similar to what you might get with a high end laptop. Fortunately, I had a shelf I could set it on, so it wasn't a big deal with my setup, but it will be more of an issue for some people. I do know XGimi sells a couple of ceiling mounts that account for this, but it would have been nice to see it as part of the projector design itself in some manner.

I did not spend time with the internal speakers. From my brief use with them, I found them to be adequate, but I immediately defaulted to my surround system for audio.

I have included some photos of the projector in action along with photos of the remote, connections, and ceiling mounting setup.

After seeing the Valerion, I jumped on board early with the Kickstarter for the XGimi Titan Noir and will be receiving my own unit in just a few weeks I expect and got it on their Kickstarter...
https://xgimi-titan-noir-series-4k-projector.kckb.me/nextprojection

I want to thank Brian again for allowing me to play with this for the last couple of weeks and I encourage anyone who is considering a purchase of the XGimi Titan Noir Max, to hit up ProjectorScreen.com to pick it up from them...
https://xgimi-titan-noir-series-4k-projector.kckb.me/nextprojection

This is the video I put up showing the XGimi Titan Noir Max in my garage with some tweaked settings to get the most out of it in the space...
https://youtu.be/eLpDNp-h9CQ?si=rJBdbssuuyWBgutj

This is the video showing it in the garage with the garage door open and closed to get a good idea of just how much light from an open garage door can impact the on screen image...
https://youtu.be/hdGjerkwGrg?si=FjSlx0GbSeiAv4fe