XGIMI Aura 4K DLP Laser Projector
Projector Central Highly Recommended Award

Highly Recommended Award

Our Highly Recommended designation is earned by products offering extraordinary value or performance in their price class.

  • Performance
  • 4
  • Features
  • Ease of Use
  • Value
Pros
  • A sharp lens free of visible chromatic aberration
  • Good contrast and handling of HDR
  • Quality, metal Bluetooth remote with voice search
  • Game mode with decent low latency
  • Three HDMI inputs
  • Fast startup (12 seconds)
  • Virtually silent
Cons
  • No accurate preset Movie mode
  • Minimal calibration controls
  • Changing input is a hassle
  • No eARC
Our Take

The XGIMI Aura 4K sports an attractive price and a smooth Android TV experience. The limited calibration and tuning options hold back its image quality potential, but it has a sharp lens and creates a pleasing picture, and its good value is undeniable.

XGIMI Aura Front

With an attractive MSRP (and street price) of $2,499, the XGIMI Aura 4K DLP UST laser projector lowers the cost of entry to put a big, sharp, and bright projected image on your wall. The Aura is more "TV replacement" than it is "home theater in your living room." Its limited color calibration options make it impossible to achieve a truly accurate image. Still, fortunately, the native color temperature of the laser light source allows it to shine its brightest while offering highly watchable—if a bit cool—picture quality.

Features

The Aura is rated at 2,400 ANSI lumens. It is HDR capable and supports HDR10 as well as HLG formats. It uses a 0.47" DMD and has a 0.233:1 throw ratio, which are pretty typical specs for a midrange 4K UST today.

This projector relies upon a single blue laser-phosphor light source with a sequential color wheel and has a 25,000 hour rated life span (many competing models are only rated at 20,000 hours). Per XGIMI's specs, not only does the Aura not fully render the DCI-P3 gamut used in a lot of HDR mastered content (specs peg it at 80% coverage), but Rec.709 coverage is capped at 90%. So, while it supports HDR, there's little it can do to take advantage of HDR's wider color gamut.

The Aura has a modern-looking black and silver chassis. It measures 23.9 x 15.8 x 5.5 inches and weighs just under 25 pounds. There are four adjustable feet for leveling the projector, and it is ceiling mountable.

The system runs on Android 10.0 and has built-in Chromecast capability. If you have an Android phone, setup is super easy using your Google account; just ask the assistant to set up a new device and confirm the code on the screen, and it takes care of the rest, including connecting to home Wi-Fi.

The projector supports various streaming apps, including favorites like Vudu, Hulu, and YouTube. Sadly, while the Netflix app is present, it won't actually work, as with many other projectors running the Android TV platform. Instead, I got a warning that the app was not usable with my account. The workaround is to try casting Netflix to the projector from a laptop, but as usual, I recommend getting a 4K streaming stick (or puck) of your choice or using a gaming console to stream Netflix. Using an external streamer also offers higher-quality audio since this projector lacks eARC and cannot pass Dolby Atmos from its apps to an external sound system.

XGIMI Aura Angle Up

The Aura has three HDMI 2.0 ports, one with ARC, and three USB 2.0 ports for signal input. There is a LAN connector for hardwiring your network, though most users will likely connect via Wi-Fi, and the Aura 4K comes equipped with dual-band 2.4/5GHz, 802.11a/b/g/n/ac. It has a 3.5mm stereo headphone jack, but when you plug into it, the main speakers are silenced, so it cannot be used to feed a signal to an outboard subwoofer. There's also an optical digital output if you can't use the HDMI ARC feature.

Video format support extends up to 4096x2160 at 60 Hz, and as you'll read, a dedicated game mode allows for relatively low latency gaming (at least compared to many other DLP-based 4K UST projectors).

XGIMI Aura Remote

The Bluetooth voice remote is premium and made of metal, with rounded edges that make it comfortable to grip. I wish it was backlit and charged with USB instead of needing AAA batteries, but it's still a good remote. A dedicated button will summon Google Assistant and allow voice searches through the remote's built-in mic.

This projector was tested with a 100-inch, 0.6 gain ambient light rejecting lenticular screen that's designed for UST projectors (Epson SilverFlex Ultra). To achieve the 100-inch image, the projector sat approximately 12 inches from the wall (about 11 inches from the front of the screen). When factoring the projector's 15.8-inch deep chassis, that puts the front of the unit about 28 inches out from the wall, so you'll want a deep enough TV stand or credenza to hold it, or else you'll have to pull the furniture away from the wall. You can check the lens-to-screen throw for other image sizes using the ProjectorCentral XGIMI Aura throw calculator.

While I strongly recommend using UST projectors with a dedicated UST ALR screen, it is possible to shine this projector on a bare white wall or an inexpensive white screen and get a decent result. Considering the cost of the projector and the cost of a decent UST screen, I expect some buyers may take this approach. This only works well in a darkened room, but it does work!

One upshot to projecting directly on a wall—or on a non-ALR white screen—is you can go larger than a 120-inch UST ALR screen, which is currently the largest commonly available of that type. The Aura supports a projected image up to 150-inches diagonal (with a 17.3-inch gap to the wall) or as small as 80 inches diagonal (which looks very TV-like because it's so bright).

The Aura has built-in forward-facing speakers like most consumer 4K UST projectors. There are four speaker drivers, branded Harman Kardon, and each gets 15 watts of power. The Aura natively supports DTS-HD, DTS Studio Sound, and Dolby Audio up to Dolby Digtial Plus. I'll comment on the audio quality below in the Performance section.

3D playback is included but the Aura only supports full HD frame-packing on some source devices, otherwise you are stuck with side-by-side or top-and-bottom 3D, neither of which provide full HD resolution to each eye. Also, you have to activate 3D on this projector manually; the projector cannot detect a 3D signal automatically. But, it does support 3D, which not every UST does, and it works with any DLP Link glasses.

While I typically recommend avoiding the use of digital keystone or geometric correction, that's part of what XGIMI offers as an ease-of-use feature, with an 8-point control. Better to put in the time and get the positioning right with physical adjustments. As for focus, the remote has a dedicated button for it.

Performance

SDR Picture Modes. This projector offers a total of five picture modes—Movie, Football, Office, Game, and Custom. However, I found that only Game and Custom were worth focusing on because the other picture modes allow for almost no adjustment, and you can get the best result by tweaking the Custom mode. But, since Game mode offers low latency, it is helpful for that specific purpose.

Before diving into the settings I settled upon, it's worth noting that the Movie mode is entirely inaccurate for home theater purposes and appears to use the same color settings as Game and the Custom mode defaults. Also, the Football and Office picture modes offer no adjustments whatsoever, and I saw no specific need for either one.

In terms of accuracy, the Movie mode's measurements are more what I'd expect to see in a so-called "Standard" mode, which typically leans toward blue, and not something labeled "Movie." But, this approach starts to make a little more sense when you realize these settings are the settings that also produce near-maximum brightness. Ultimately, though, the Movie setting is not an easy "set it and forget it" fallback option for home cinema like it is on some projectors. If you want something close to an optimized picture from the XGIMI Aura, you will have to wrestle it out of the limited color controls the company provides in the Custom mode.

XGIMI Aura lifestyle1

The native color temperature of the Aura's light source appears to be around 9,000K, or at least that's the color temperature when it is at its brightest using the Performance brightness setting and measured with Portrait Displays' Calman color calibration software and an X-rite i1 Display Pro Plus colorimeter. The High brightness setting is slightly warmer and only the tiniest bit less bright (2%). It measures 8,500K, which is still quite a bit on the blueish side but also akin to what you see with many a TV's default settings. The overall color balance looks good, and your eyes adjust to it pretty quickly. So that's the lamp/brightness mode I chose.

My instinct with any projector is to judge it by how closely it can get to a neutral 6,500K color temp and gamma 2.2, and through what felt like blind luck, I was able to get it close to this calibrated ideal. I think projectors like this also ought to be judged on what they can do when allowed some leeway and treated as a casual lifestyle device, and that means accepting the cooler color temp as a price to pay for the added brightness that's demanded by high-light environments. The XGIMI Aura 4K is attempting to offer quite a lot at its aggressive price point, and I want to give credit where it's due.

You can nudge the Aura in the right direction to achieve accurate color balance. An adjustment to the 1-point color controls yielded a surprisingly close-to-precise result, with a color temperature of 6,540K and near-perfect gray balance, plus a gamma of 2.11. The cost? Peak brightness is only two-thirds what it is with uncorrected color, with 100 nits coming off the center of the 100-inch screen instead of 150 nits (measuring 100% white). So consider this tweaked Custom mode your "Home Theater" setting where you can control the light, and if you need to go bright, change over to Movie mode.

Looking at a 20-point grayscale and gamma measurement from Calman, the color accuracy held tight for the entire range of brightness, and the gamma did not fluctuate excessively. While UST offerings from the likes of LG, Epson, Samsung, Hisense, BenQ, and Optoma will all calibrate to a higher degree of accuracy, this is still "in the ballpark." The main issues are you must take whatever you get for gamma, and there are no CMS controls to tune the color points, either. But in practice, once adjusted, the Aura's picture looks very pleasing and sufficiently accurate for casual viewers.

XGIMI Aura Overhead

Moreover, it's worth giving the settings I used a shot. Given the consistency of DLP projectors, the following settings may work well on other Aura units. To bring the color much closer to accurate, go into Image Mode -> Custom -> Color Temperature -> Custom menu and change the defaults (50) to Red: 59, Blue: 25, Green: 33. You should be ballpark accurate at that point; maybe a slight tweak up or down would get it perfect for you. No harm in trying; going back to factory defaults is easy enough, and there's not much in the menu system that you can screw up anyhow.

Now, a 1-point color adjustment is barely forgivable, and only so because the projector responds well to it. But, the lack of gamma control on this projector is maddening. While it appears I got lucky when I dialed in color settings, the gamma tracking in the default picture modes is incredibly far from accurate. I can say this projector avoids any situation where you might accuse it of putting out a picture that looks too dim, especially in the midtones. Instead, the gamma consistently measures between 1.75 and 1.9 by default, which is only appropriate for very bright spaces.

Fortunately, the 2.1 gamma that results from the tuning is appropriate for something between a bright and dim room and still works in a bright or a dark room. But it really highlights how XGIMI has not accommodated differing ambient light levels as some other projector makers have by providing an easy way to tune gamma and midtones.

Regardless, the XGIMI's 2.1 gamma after tuning likely describes the evening lighting in many living rooms. This UST does render every single stage of deep gray right to absolute black, and I found that with both video games and movies, SDR or HDR, Game mode or Movie or Custom, you can see detail in the deepest shadows.

Long story short, with just a bit more sophisticated color controls, this XGIMI could seemingly perform at a higher level. With the controls it has, it takes some tweaking to get the best picture out of it, and that picture is indeed high quality if a bit dimmer than the factory defaults. But depending on how you plan to use it and your budget, these issues might well be easy to overlook, and I can certainly imagine usage scenarios where the maximum brightness is more desirable than accuracy.

XGIMI includes additional controls for noise reduction, motion compensation, and dynamic contrast. I could not see Dynamic Contrast do much of anything, regardless of setting, but this projector consistently puts out a punchy image that does not need that sort of enhancement. Motion Compensation seems to work well when wanted, without making content look excessively smoothed and fake. The default Medium motion compensation setting offered the smoother panning and added detail in high motion scenes you expect. Crucially, I appreciate being able to shut the processing off, with the result looking appropriately cinematic in cadence and the projector reporting it is playing 24 Hz material.

So, for SDR, what it comes down to is a choice between Custom picture mode with color temperature set to Custom and Brightness set to Bright, which gives you the brightest possible image, but with a cool color balance, or tweaked in the Custom color settings for better neutrality at the cost of some lumens.

Or, if you are gaming, forget all that and go for the lower latency of Game mode, which is 43 milliseconds in both 1080p and 2160p at 60 Hz. While that may be a bit sluggish in hardcore gamer terms, it's pretty fast for a 4K DLP UST, sufficient for a lot of casual gaming, and a lot better than the 150 ms latency seen in the other picture modes.

HDR Picture Modes. The Aura does not have any discrete HDR picture modes. Each SDR picture mode has an option for HDR set to "Auto" or else turned off, and the HDR picture mode uses whatever settings are dialed into the SDR version of the same mode. This is a nice, logical approach that I wish other projector makers would standardize upon; it makes it so that once you dial in color settings that work for you, they'll work in SDR and HDR just the same.

While the Aura's projector's calibration adjustments are limited, a saving grace is that it somehow wrangles a great image out of 4K HDR content. It may be a "baked in" take on how HDR should look, but it's a good one. Of course, this HDR is not like a high-end TV's HDR; the highlights don't have that high-nit zing to them, but the overall brightness and perceptually rich colors—despite the limited color gamut—make it very easy to watch quality UHD HDR on the Aura and simply enjoy the smooth and artifact-free 4K image. It looks good even if the room is not perfectly dark.

XGIMI Aura lifestyle2

I performed my critical analysis of HDR performance using the Spears & Munsil HDR Benchmark Ultra HD Blu-ray and the HDR demo material found within. The first thing I noted, consistent with every other 4K UST I've seen tested or tested myself, is the obvious clipping of highlights in 4,000-nit and 10,000-nit content. HDR10 clips with 1,000-nit peaks, consistent with a fair amount of today's HDR content, look fantastic, though—at least in projection terms. Especially with Custom color temperature adequately dialed in and despite the drop on peak brightness (which is not all that severe).

HDR in Game mode is its own animal because consoles and PCs let you calibrate the look of HDR for a given display, so an individual manufacturer's "tuning" of how it renders HDR is less critical. The main thing to note is that despite the color gamut limitations of the Aura, HDR games do look a little more colorful and a bit punchier than they do in SDR. It's not the dramatic difference you see with a Rec.2020-capable triple-laser UST, but it's a notable bump in color intensity that adds a sense of enhanced realism to many scenes.

SDR Viewing. For any display, measurements and specs tell a story, but the proof is in how you react to what's on-screen. And to my jaded eyes, this projector finds its groove when playing broadcast TV content like sports and shows. The impression I get is of a projector doing an excellent job at suppressing noise and artifacts while upscaling HD to 4K.

Using optimal settings in Custom mode, HD SDR looks good, even if the meter says it's not fully color accurate, with no apparent tint or hue shift, especially in crucial skin tones. It's a subjective impression, but this projector is really "TV-like" in a good sense and seems to know how to handle broadcast HD in a flattering manner, whether I was watching a Sixers game, the new episodes of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, or catching the new South Park special.

The SDR versions of the Spears & Munsil UHD HDR Benchmark disc test clips all played with a picture fidelity that defies the crudeness of the adjustments used to achieve it. Motion is smooth and natural, and the detail this projector puts on screen is impressive. In many ways, the lens is what makes or breaks a UST, and the XGIMI has a good one. In all, this projector can do justice to SDR, either with a TV-like bright picture or a somewhat dimmer image tuned for home cinema (almost all projectors behave this way).

XGIMI Aura Front Down

Black levels with this rig are decent, within the range you'd expect from a DLP projector or even a little darker based on my measurements, and certainly not the worst I've seen. You have to turn the lights pretty low before the projector itself becomes the limiting factor; with ambient light, the black levels are as dark as they are ever going to look with any projector. Of course, the Aura is beaten by the better dedicated home theater projectors, but among DLP USTs, it's hitting par for the course on deep shadows and black rendition.

HDR Viewing. The Aura manages to make HDR look good, and when you factor in its price relative to the competition, this achievement alone is worth celebrating. The main thing I noted is richer color, and while XGIMI rates DCI/P3 coverage at 80%, the reality is that some colors, basically from yellow through red and magenta to blue, get quite saturated. The projector's weakness is in cyans and greens. Now, you've likely noticed that the sky in most places is actually a blueish cyan, and plants are definitely green, so you lose a little punch in nature scenes. But elements like fire, neon, a yellow sunset, a red Coke can, or a deep blue sea...these colors stand out and are notably more vibrant than in SDR.

The same clips from the Spears & Munsil disc played in 1,000-nit Rec.2020 HDR10 4K instead of Rec.709 SDR 4K looked better overall, with more punch that created a deeper and more three-dimensional look. There's one specific clip where a deer looks at the camera, and the definition of its face makes it look tangibly real in HDR, whereas it's flatter in SDR.

The scene from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2, with Voldemort and his army on a moonlit hilltop, has become a de facto litmus test of how displays handle complex dark scenes (on UHD Blu-ray). I've seen many a display crush the shadows and barely render any image whatsoever. An accurate reference display will uncover tremendous detail in the deepest shadows of this tricky scene. And it was at this moment I realized what a good job XGIMI did with its handling of HDR. The Aura rendered the scene with fidelity to shadow detail that rivals what I've seen from top-tier triple-laser UST projectors; you can see the folds in the robes and the hills in the background, though only in a dark room (the same is true for any projector, and also for many TVs).

XGIMI Aura HarryPotter
The Aura's shadow detail performance with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 rivals that of more expensive UST laser projectors. (Photo Credit: Warner Bros. Pictures)

My new go-to movie for UHD streaming demos is the recently reimagined Dune, particularly a scene later in the film with the giant sand worm taking up the whole frame. It's a dark scene that also trips up displays that don't have good HDR handling, but on a big screen in a dark room the XGIMI renders all those teeth, delivering the menace the way the director surely intended.

Black levels are no different in HDR than SDR, which is to say decent and what you'd expect from better DLP. If you are spoiled by a Sony or JVC home theater projector, what you see here will not float your boat. But this is a $2,500 4K laser projector that can legit put 2,200+ ANSI lumens up on screen and makes it look good, and that's a whole different ballgame.

Game Viewing. The Game Mode of this projector essentially locks you into a predefined batch of settings that make sense if you think of it from an engineering perspective but can seem frustrating to an end-user. Of course, there are no picture processing options since that would add latency. But there are no controls available for adjustment whatsoever. In Game Mode, it's take it or leave it. And for what it's worth, I'll take it!

My impressions playing the Xbox Series X with my standard gaming rotation of Grand Theft Auto Online, Forza 5, and Microsoft Flight Simulator are of a projector that can render fluid motion quite well at 4K 60 Hz, renders exceptional detail from corner to corner, and with HDR, adds just enough "pop" to the color to make—for example—the vehicles in Forza look like they have real paint jobs, gleaming and glistening and glowing in the digital sunshine.

XGIMI Aura lifestyle3

Even SDR gaming looked good to my eyes, with the world of Los Santos rendered in incredible detail, and I had no issues seeing in shadows, for example, when moving around in the nightclub—unlike my experience with some other UST projectors in this price range where the shadow detail is lost.

Arcade-style games look great, too, and I enjoyed some old-school rounds on Pac-Man, which is playable with the 43-ms delay. But hey, I've never been able to get past the fifth level even on the real-deal arcade machine, so I'm not sure less latency would help.

3D Viewing. As mentioned above, you have to turn on 3D manually when you play 3D content, and the Aura 4K works with standard (i.e., generic) DLP-Link glasses.

3D does work on this projector, but in my case it was limited to side-by-side or top-and-bottom formats—no full HD frame packing. XGIMI says it will do full HD 3D depending on the source device, but this wasn't the case with my Sony UBP-X700 UHD Blu-ray player. The issue with side-by-side or top-and-bottom is that it cuts the vertical resolution in half, but it is 3D, and ultimately it looked good if a little soft. I checked out Tron: Legacy, Gravity, and Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk in 3D. The color accuracy is outstanding, shadows are not crushed, and the overall brightness of the 3D is very good. I saw no ghosting or parallax issues, either. Even at the lower resolution, I'd say 3D was good enough for the occasional movie and works with PCs for gaming.

Blank Wall Viewing. This is the first review where I'm commenting on using a UST without a dedicated ALR screen. It's never going to give you the performance you get with the right screen. However, I have to admit that in this case, I found it more compelling than expected. Not during the daytime with shades open. But shut off the lights, darken the room, and things turn around quickly.

The main reason I can see for skipping the UST ALR screen is to project an image larger than the 120 inches where these screens currently top out. And the higher gain of a blank white wall or white screen helps in the sense that the larger picture will, if nothing else, be as bright as a smaller image on the 0.6-gain ALR screen. The other reason you might go screenless is for a temporary install, where the projector is used to entertain in a space that does not otherwise have a display (in which case the built-in speakers come in handy, too).

With lights out, black levels are surprisingly close to what I saw with the screen, and no question, the wall's higher gain made for a brighter image with a lot of punch to it. And, although it may be an unintentional bonus, the eggshell white of the paint on my wall, which is a bit "warm," actually counteracts the blueish Custom mode default (which is the brightest setting). It may not be a calibrated home theater, but for something temporary, wow, it looks good and is easy to set up!

My wall does have some orange-peel texture to the paint, and this is visible from close up, but on my couch from about 12 feet away, it's barely detectable. Of course, the screen looks smoother. But for a zero-effort installation, the image projected right on the wall looks great. The effect is quite awesome, whether it's for impromptu movies at a birthday party or playing video games or live sports with a 150-inch image! If only the Eagles were doing better, watching football games this way would be truly glorious.

There's one more cool option when projecting on a blank wall, which is to use the UST to create a relatively small image, akin to a 75-inch TV. Why do this? Because the smaller projected image is very sharp and bright. You can fit the picture within a smaller piece of blank-wall real estate. So while the Aura is hardly "portable" in any real sense, this is a projector that is easily adaptable to a new space, as long as you have something to watch and a neutral wall to shine it on.

Audio. A change in my thinking about how one might use a living-room UST projector—from a permanent install with a dedicated screen to a device that might sometimes be moved around and used to project on a wall—has also caused me to reconsider the value of the built-in sound system. The whole idea of using it as a lifestyle, semi-portable device hinges on a UST having decent built-in sound. It need not perform miracles, but since these are front-facing speakers, there's an opportunity to match what a soundbar offers.

The XGIMI Aura 4K's four Harman Kardon speakers do a fine job comparable to a decent budget soundbar. There's no deep bass because there's no sub, and as mentioned above, you can't hook one up to the 3.5 mm headphone jack because it automatically mutes the speakers and there's no menu setting to reactivate them while plugged into the jack. But, even without a subwoofer, there is surprisingly decent mid-bass which is enough to keep voices and dialog from sounding thin. And fortunately, the speakers do achieve a decent virtual soundstage, with clear dialog, and music doesn't sound strained. The main issue for home theater use, I suppose, is explosions, which don't have the heft that a sub imparts. But the speaker does a great job for regular TV content, better than most TVs can muster.

XGIMI Aura lifestyle4

Without eARC, the audio out options are either optical digital (S/PDIF) output of regular surround-sound or a standard HDMI ARC connection with the option to use bitstream or PCM. Anyone seeking Dolby Atmos or DTS:X as part of the viewing experience will need to use an external source connected directly to a compatible audio system.

Conclusion

The value proposition of this projector is rather attractive because, at $2,499, it is an extremely affordable laser UST. But that price does not include a screen, and you can buy a lot of TV for that money these days. Due to the limited color and calibration controls, it's not the best option for home theater if the goal is fidelity to the artist's intent. It also falls short of numerous competing USTs in terms of color gamut.

Nonetheless, the Aura is a well-made projector that has a sharp lens and runs silently. It's got decent built-in sound and a nice remote. And, quite frankly, if you just use it to project a 150-inch image on a white wall in a dark room without having to install anything whatsoever—just plug-and-play—this projector's place in the UST ecosystem becomes a bit clearer. At that point, it becomes a lifestyle device that you might even use in more than one place. Not that it's portable, per se. But it gives you an easy way to have a giant TV image almost anywhere you can find a white wall.

The compromises made with the XGIMI can and should be weighed against the projector's raw capability since it is quite watchable in its brightest setting and does not lose much brightness when the color is tuned. That is, it's a good deal after it's optimized based on lumens-per-dollar. It does many things right while leaving out some capabilities that would make it a direct competitor to pricier UST offerings from some more established projector brands. But while the Aura might not be suitable for a serious home theater enthusiast, it's a device that's able to entertain an entire family with a larger-than-life picture, one that TVs cannot match for an immersive sense of cinematic scale and scope.

Ultimately, this projector barely earns our Highly Recommended designation, with this caveat: It's not because of how well it handles color correction, but rather despite it. The XGIMI Aura 4K does get the fundamentals right, from its good looks and quality remote to its brightness and sharp lens, a workable Game mode, and most crucially, how well it renders HDR. While it cannot strongly compete with more expensive UST 4K offerings, it is a good performer at its price point and an excellent value.

Measurements

Brightness. Measurements were taken in Performance brightness mode.

XGIMI Aura ANSI Lumens

Picture Mode Lumens
Movie 2,195
Football 2,195
Office 1,404
Game 2,195
Custom 1,427
HDR Movie 2,195
HDR Football 2,195
HDR Office 1,404
HDR Game 2,195
HDR Custom 1,427

Brightness Uniformity: 71%

Fan Noise. I found the Aura to be virtually silent. Its fan noise is at least as low as the noise floor in my room (35 dBA) and is unmeasurable from one meter away. There is a fan in there; I can hear it if I put my ear up against the chassis. But nobody will ever hear the fan in this projector under normal use, even in its brightest mode.

Input Lag. With a Bodnar lag meter, I measured the Game mode input lag for 1080p/60p SDR and 2160p/60 UHD at 43.1 milliseconds, a better than typical result for a DLP UST.

Connections

XGIMI Aura Connections
  • HDMI 2.0b (x3)
  • Analog audio out (3.5 mm mini jack)
  • Optical Audio Out
  • Network (RJ-45)
  • USB (x3)
  • Wireless Networking

Calibrated Settings

Calibrated image settings from any third-party do not account for the significant potential for sample-to-sample variation, nor the different screen sizes and materials, lighting, lamp usage, or other environmental factors that can affect image quality. Projectors should always be calibrated in the user's own space and tuned for the expected viewing conditions. However, the settings provided here may be a helpful starting point for some. Always record your current settings before making adjustments so you can return to them as desired. Refer to the Performance section for some context for each calibration.

SDR and HDR

Picture Mode: Custom

Brightness: 50
Contrast: 50
Saturation: 50
Sharpness: 50
Noise Reduction: Medium
Color Temperature: Custom

Red: 59
Blue: 25
Green: 33

Active Contrast: Medium
Motion Compensation: Off

Lamp Brightness: Bright

For more detailed specifications and connections, check out our XGIMI Aura projector page.

To buy this projector, use Where to Buy online, or get a price quote by email direct from Projector Central authorized dealers using our E-Z Quote tool.

 
Comments (5) Post a Comment
Harrison Posted Dec 28, 2021 9:47 AM PST
Thanks for this review. What other 4K UST projector(s) would you recommend one cross-shop at this $2,500 street price?
Victor Posted Dec 28, 2021 4:52 PM PST
My friend is looking for a ust projector just to watch movies on weekends he told me I am wondering if this would be the one for him plus he doesn’t want spend more then $3,000 dollars
Brandon Posted Dec 28, 2021 5:30 PM PST
Appreciate the inclusion of the elusive 3d info! I would put this on my list if the full-3d wasn't so picky on it...
Troy Posted Jan 30, 2022 8:15 AM PST
I bought this projector around Thanksgiving. I was considering 3 other UST projectors - the Epson LS500, BENQ V7050i, and the Optoma P2. Then this just released. I chose it because of the price and it's ability to go to 150". I am using a 145" FlexiGray screen from Carl's Place. The picture is stunning to me and both lit and dark rooms. So far, I am extremely happy with the purchase.
Philippe Posted Jun 30, 2023 11:57 PM PST
Hi,

According to new specs HDMI eARC is available on the XGIMI Aura

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