XGIMI Horizon 20 Max 4K Lifestyle Projector Review

About The XGIMI Horizon 20 Max

XGIMI released the Horizon 20 Max with an MSRP of $2,999 and is a compact high performance lifestyle projector rated for 20,000+ hours of laser life. It packs a lot of light output exceeding its 5,700 max lumens claim, and putting out over 3,500 lumens at D65 white. The Horizon 20 Max has a “Dynamic Black Level Enhancer” which noticeably improves the black levels and increases the contrast ratio to over 20,000:1. In addition, it covers nearly all of the BT2020 color space (at high stimulus), and has great color accuracy. This projector is incredibly feature rich with everything you could ask for including Dolby Vision, HDR10+, Dynamic Tone Mapping, IMAX Enhanced, VRR, ALLM, DTS, Optical Zoom, Lens Shift, and 3D.

The XGIMI Horizon 20 Max offers a great gaming experience supporting 4K resolution up to 120Hz, or 1080P 240Hz with support for VRR and ALLM (auto low latency mode) detection. There is 1x HDMI 2.1 port, that also is an eARC port so if you have multiple HDMI 2.1 devices with an external audio video receiver (AVR) or soundbar, you can expand to support more devices at once. XGIMI claims an input lag of 1ms which isn’t accurate. However the input lag is still very low at 120Hz or 240hz, and reasonable at 60Hz. The Horizon 20 Max has fairly aggressive tone mapping in game mode to retain plenty of highlight details even in games that don’t give you control of the brightness.

There is a swivel and tilt stand attached to the body that simplifies aiming the projector. Along the back you will find all the connection ports including the two HDMI ports, two USB ports, optical TOSLINK audio port, 3.5mm audio port, and the power button.

The included remote is of high quality and has backlit buttons, with hot key buttons for YouTube, Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, and a “shortcut” key.

XGIMI Horizon 20 Max comes with GoogleTV built in, which is the preferred smart OS by many. Navigation is quick and layout of the apps and content is generally well regarded. Downloading new apps can be done from the home menu and/or voice search through the microphone on the remote. You can also sync to your Google cloud storage of your photos to play as a screensaver if you want to have a large display doubling as a digital photo album when not actively watching.

Initial Setup and Impressions

My testing of the XGIMI Horizon 20 Max was done on a 110” StudioTek 100 unity gain screen. 

The XGIMI Horizon 20 Max is a very bright lifestyle projector. While it exceeds its lumen claim in what we would consider an unusable “Bright” mode that is incredibly green, what is more impressive is the nearly 4000 lumens achieved after calibration to D65 white point in the movie mode.

This was netting about 300 nits measured off screen and a native contrast of 1,500:1. Enabling Dynamic Black Level Enhancement would increase the on/off contrast to 25,000:1.

The “Dynamic Black Level Enhancement” option, while offering a noticeable drop to black level and increase in contrast, does have some side effects. First, in brighter scenes there were multiple occasions in my testing where I could notice fast color shifting issues. Meaning the color performance wasn’t stable and would shift too green or pink for a brief moment, then switch back, and would repeat that a couple of times. It didn’t occur often enough to be a complete dealbreaker for using the setting, but it can be jarring if you are sensitive to color shifting.

Also Dynamic Black Level Enhancer is not available in Dolby Vision modes, and in all modes will gray out the laser level setting. With the brightness of this projector I wanted to have the laser set to 1-3 for SDR, which would mean I couldn’t have DBLE enabled, or if I did it would set the brightness too high. To further the issue, this is shared between SDR and HDR10, so there was no way to have it enabled in HDR10 and disabled in SDR, without manually adjusting it every time the content type would switch.

In addition to this, when changing different kinds of content that would trigger an HDMI handshake, in most cases I would get a notification that “Color Temperature causes Dynamic Black Level Enhancement to fail”. That would happen when changing dynamic range content (SDR to HDR10 or DV) and when leaving a game on the PS5 to go back to the home menu, then back into the game. I then could go back into the menu, turn it back on, and recheck that the color temperature and gain adjustments were still how I set them, and they were.

Due to these issues, I think for most the DBLE is going to be a left on, or left off type of setting. As for the laser setting in SDR, that would depend on your screen size, material, room, and preference. With a larger screen or lower gain screen, it may not be an issue for you. If you are trying to stay at 100 nits for reference SDR and don’t have a very large screen, then it could be problematic. 

There are some processing settings that do not seem to function or have any effect on the image. The “de-contour” setting for example which should reduce color banding or posterization, which would also be expected to smooth over fine details, had no visible effect between off, low, medium, and high. Same with MPEG Noise Reduction and Digital Noise Reduction.

I went right in to correcting the white balance and adjusting a few settings as needed from here before continuing with the evaluation. We will quickly go over some notes from the measurements, then move on to viewable performance on some of the available settings on the Horizon 20 Max.

Measurement Data

Measurements and calibration were done using Colorimetry Research CR-250 spectroradiometer and CR-100 colorimeter, Murideo 6G pattern generator, and Calman Ultimate software.  

In SDR after correcting the color temperature and gain to D65 white point, and setting the gamma to “dark” the Horizon 20 Max measured well with an average grayscale error of dE2000 1.4 and a gamma of just over 2.3.

Trying to measure with DBLE enabled was not possible as seen below, due to the dynamic nature of the setting.

Moving on to check rec 709 saturation, it measured an average dE2000 of 1.42, an excellent result.

And to conclude the excellent SDR color verification, the ColorChecker SG with added skin tones resulted in an average of dE2000 1.24. This is after only correcting the white point and adjusting the gamma.

Checking the grayscale and EOTF tracking in HDR10, there is solid RGB balance through the grayscale range and the EOTF has a moderate rolloff that starts around 20% stimulus resulting in a little darkening of the image but preservation of details in bright HDR scenes.

Again, trying to measure with DBLE enabled isn’t viable.

Saturation tracks very well in HDR10, both in P3 within BT2020, and in BT2020. Color luminance is low due to the EOTF under tracking.

The ColorChecker analysis chart really demonstrates the difference between with and without luminance error. This is expected with most projection, even at 300 nits as the tone mapping curve rolls off early to preserve more details.

As is common nowadays with laser projection we are seeing high coverage of the BT2020 color gamut. The XGIMI Horizon 20 Max covers up to 96%, at 100% stimulus.

Lowering stimulus to 30% we see a noticeable drop in coverage to 91% uv and 86% xy. This is not an exclusive issue of the XGIMI, but rather the segment of projection as a whole.

Testing further at 20% we see a drop to mostly rec 709 coverage.

Finally at 10% we see excessive desaturation, meaning very dark scenes will not be able to show much color. Again, desaturation in lower luminance range is common amongst projectors.

Moving on to Dolby Vision and checking DV Dark vs DV Bright, we can see Dark is the best and most accurate mode which tracks EOTF well (there is a menu in the settings to set your screen size and gain to adjust how it tracks). DBLE is not available in Dolby Vision modes, however DV Dark is the most accurate way to watch any HDR content on the XGIMI Horizon 20 Max.

Color accuracy is even better in Dolby Vision, especially including luminance.

The ColorChecker came in with an average dE2000 of 0.5-0.6 and ITP of 1.6-2.6, excellent result overall.

Overall Image Performance

Starting out with the Spears & Munsil 4k Benchmark demo (1000 nit trim) in HDR10, I very quickly noticed how great the overall image quality was. With great brightness, natural colors, good shadow and highlight detail. The XGIMI Horizon 20 Max didn’t disappoint and had a very well balanced image.

Evaluating the infamous “Horses In The Snow” scene for HDR highlight detail, everything is visible. The advantage of the aggressive rolloff of the EOTF is to retain details in high brightness scenes even with the lower relative brightness of a projector.

In the dark city view scene, even with a lower native contrast the Horizon 20 Max still presents a perceptually contrasty image with bright highlights. The black roof of the building in the middle looks plenty dark considering the brightness of the lights on the other nearby buildings. Though some of the darkest details are lost, as is further described below.

Looking at the alligator there is a very high level of detail and sharpness. The scales, and details on the rock were sharp and three dimensional looking.

Moving on to the desert scene with the bright blue sky, there are very seamless color transitions and no visible color bands. The sand is again, highly detailed, and plenty bright overall.

The yellow of the body on the butterfly is vibrant, saturated, and a very clean looking yellow. No odd tint or lack of impact as seen on some other displays.

Moving on to some test images, I exposed the camera to try and capture the black level as accurately as possible at various ADL or average display luminance levels.

In the full white/black checkerboard you can see the black areas raise more than in the next one which reduces the white luminance to lower the ADL. This is an example of how a native full on full off contrast number, or any other singular contrast number doesn’t paint the whole picture or contrast performance.

Looking at the dynamic range low in grayscale, red, green and blue, this shows the desaturation and sharp cutoff at low code values that was indicated above by the low gamut coverage at low stimulus levels. This is an area a lot of projectors struggle and would like to see improvement.

The Tone Mapping pattern shows defined details well over 4000 nits (hard to capture in the photo), as expected by the aggressive roll off of EOTF tracking. Also looked at the bright sun scene which retained its color while being plenty bright.

The HSV BT2020 pattern shows the full BT2020 gamut from dark to light, and the Horizon 20 Max shows most of the colors, just lacking some near black as they get darker.

Checking the opening of House of Bly Manor with the fog over the lake, there was some visible posterization in the low luminance transitions of color (camera accentuates the visibility of the posterization). As discussed earlier, the DeContour setting did nothing to improve this.

Checking a few scenes in The Witcher on Netflix in Dolby Vision, Ciri’s skin tone and blonde hair is spot on. The color accuracy of the XGIMI Horizon 20 Max really is excellent in Dolby Vision.

As the camera pans over the castle, I noticed no motion issues or skips. I am someone who does not like the Soap Opera Effect or motion interpolation/smoothing. That said at the lowest setting I didn’t spot any artifacts or issues, but motion smoothing is very preference based or subjective.

The following scene with the fire bit in the bottom corner of a dark image with candle light across the room. The small black bars were fairly consistent across the image, and the scene was well balanced with good contrast and bright highlights.

Gaming Performance

I tested the XGIMI Horizon 20 Max with a Sony PlayStation 5, and started out by setting the HDR luminance in the PS5 HDR calibration menu. The “Dynamic Tone Mapping” setting is not available in game mode, and in my test setup it would clip at 22 clicks (up from the bottom) though with visible tone mapping fluctuations. 22 clicks would be the PS5 sending 2688 nits, which is a hefty amount of tone mapping. I had better results lowering it to 16 clicks which is a little over 1000 nits from the PS5. There was less clipping and highlight fluctuation without darkening the non highlights too much. This may vary depending on your screen size, gain, and throw range.

Responsiveness was acceptable at 60Hz, and very good at 120hz. Note for the best input lag performance you can not have keystone correction active, another reason it is always best to aim and align the projector as level and full as possible during setup or installation. Overall image quality in game mode is very good, and color performance is excellent. The luminance output of this projector is very high and it gives great HDR impact and holds a high APL (average picture level) of brightness in bright games or scenes.

Settings

In SDR I would recommend the following settings:

• Ambient Adaptive Light Output - Off
• Projector Light Output - Set to level of comfort for your screen and environment (not adjustable with DBLE on, and shared between SDR/HDR10/DV. For most just set to 10 for DV and enable DBLE in SDR and HDR10)
• Luminance Boost - Off
• Picture Mode - Movie
• Brightness - 50
• Contrast - 49
• Saturation - 50
• Sharpness - 0
• Color Temperature - Color Temperature 2 or D65 (depends on screen and environment)
• Dynamic Black Level Enhancer - Preference, as described in review. For most, leave on for SDR, HDR10 and leave Projector Light Output at 10 which will gray out and auto adjust)
• Gamma - Dark
• Color Space - Rec.709
• MEMC - To Preference
• DNR - Off (no effect)
• MPEG NR - Off (no effect)
• AIPQ - Off
• DI Film Mode - Auto
• Max Vivid - Off
• Adaptive Luma Control - Off
• Contrast Control - Off
• AISR - Off
• De-Contour - Off (no effect)

In HDR10 I would recommend the following settings:

• Ambient Adaptive Light Output - Off
• Projector Light Output - (not adjustable with DBLE on, and shared between SDR/HDR10/DV. For most just set to 10 for DV and enable DBLE in SDR and HDR10)
• Luminance Boost - Off
• Picture Mode - Movie
• Brightness - 50
• Contrast - 50
• Saturation - 50
• Sharpness - 0
• Color Temperature - Temperature 2 or D65 (depends on screen and environment)
• Dynamic Black Level Enhancer - Preference, as described in review. For most, leave on for SDR, HDR10 and leave Projector Light Output at 10 which will gray out and auto adjust)
• Gamma - Middle
• Color Space - BT2020
• MEMC - To Preference
• DNR - Off (no effect)
• MPEG NR - Off (no effect)
• AIPQ - Off
• DI Film Mode - Auto
• Max Vivid - Off
• Adaptive Luma Control - Off
• Contrast Control - Off
• AISR - Off
• De-Contour - Off (no effect)
• Low Blue Light - Off
• HDR Dynamic Tone Mapping - On

In Dolby Vision I would recommend the following settings:

• Ambient Adaptive Light Output - Off
• Projector Light Output - 10
• Luminance Boost - Off
• Picture Mode - Dolby Vision Dark
• Brightness - 50
• Contrast - 50
• Saturation - 50
• Sharpness - 0
• Color Temperature - Temperature 2 or D65 (depends on screen and environment)
• Dynamic Black Level Enhancer - N/A
• Gamma - Middle
• Color Space - Native
• MEMC - To Preference
• Dolby Vision Screen Settings - Set Screen Diagonal Size and Gain as close to spec as possible, set screen size one higher or gain one lower to increase overall image brightness if not a fully dark room, or to preference
• DNR - Off (no effect)
• MPEG NR - Off (no effect)
• AIPQ - Off
• DI Film Mode - Auto
• Max Vivid - Off
• Adaptive Luma Control - Off
• Contrast Control - Off
• AISR - Off
• De-Contour - Off (no effect)

Final Conclusions

The XGIMI Horizon 20 Max offers a great value for a well featured and very bright projector that is very easy and flexible to set up. It is compact, quiet, has motorized lens shift and zoom, and the brightness it can put out for the price is superb.

There are some software hiccups which may or may not be addressable in future firmware updates, but none seem to be major deal breakers. Low luminance scenes can sometimes struggle a bit, but aside from those the color performance is excellent. Detail, sharpness, tone mapping, and overall HDR impact is pretty unmatched in this space.

The gaming features, 3D support, eARC, etc all add to make this a very versatile and well rounded experience that many would be very happy with overall. Only the most demanding of enthusiasts may want to look elsewhere due to the few issues it has.

At $3,000 or less, and nearly 4,000 lumens after calibration to D65, with such high color gamut coverage and great overall image quality, it is really hard to think of an alternative option in this space to consider instead of the XGIMI Horizon 20 Max.