Good things come in small packages as seen by XGIMI's MoGo 2 Pro, a compact portable projector that not only has outstanding color balance but adds in one of the best auto-focus and obstacle avoidance mechanisms available for quick setups. Its use of maintenance-free LED illumination, compatibility with HDR10 content, and the ability to tap into Android TV 11 program streams make it a viable replacement for a flat-panel at reasonable, TV-like image sizes. It's not without faults, including a somewhat confusing dual-menu system for picture adjustments and the lack of an effective, easily downloadable Netflix app. The latter is not uncommon among a lot of Android projectors, and there is a work-around, but it's so awkward that most will not bother to use it.

Read on to see if the XGIMI MoGo 2 Pro's balance of price, performance and portability make it a winner or just another tiny projector trying to punch above its weight.

Features

It's amazing how many features usually reserved for larger projectors are squeezed into the MoGo 2 Pro's small case. It leaves the original MoGo Pro projector in the shade with brighter imaging and an incredibly efficient auto-focusing and obstacle avoidance system.

The upgrade required a larger chassis, with the MoGo 2 Pro taking up 6.3 x 4.7 x 4.3 inches. Its 2.1-pound weight means that it can easily go from room to room, but the projector lacks a bag; XGIMI sells a variety of cases for its products. There's no way to aim the image upwards, but its vertical design may mean that this isn't necessary. Its threaded attachment point underneath can work with a tripod or XGIMI's floor stand that can raise the Mogo 2 Pro between 19 and 35 inches, as well as the company's stylish desktop stand.

Under its gray and gold tone skin, the Mogo 2 Pro has an LED illumination engine that has a rated lifetime of 25,000 hours of use, or many years under even the harshest duty cycle. The LEDs send red, blue and green streams of light to the projector's 0.23-inch, 1080p Digital Light Processing imaging target and on to the projector's high transmission coated lenses that absorb less light, yielding a brighter image.

XGIMI specs the MoGo 2 Pro to be capable of 400 ISO21118 lumens. In fact, our MoGo 2 Pro sample pumped out a maximum of 424 ANSI lumens in its Performance mode (ANSI is a close equivalent to ISO measured with the same technique). However, despite its name, it's pretty obvious the Performance mode is there just to let the projector make its spec. It biases the color balance way too far toward green, and ramps up the fan and LED output so high that it comes with an on-screen warning to make sure your room temperature is above 25 degrees C (77 degress F) and to not to use this mode for an extended period or risk overheating the projector and shortening its service life. Enough said. The more realistic Vivid setting provides accurate flesh tones and was able to deliver 313 ANSI lumens.

Part of a new generation of projectors that lack a mechanical focus adjustment, the MoGo 2 Pro excels with its sophisticated time-of-flight digital technology that enables auto-focus, auto-keystone correction, auto screen alignment, and auto-obstacle avoidance. This is now XGIMI's 2nd generation for this ISA (Intelligent Screen Adjustment) feature, with the ability to process much more data more quickly, and it can perform its auto-keystone and auto-focus functions without the need to interrupt the image with a target test pattern. The auto-keystone can be set to activate upon turn-on or after any movement of the projector and provided an aligned image regardless of the projector's physical position. Auto-focus continuously rolls the lens in and out, and in less than five seconds has sharpened the image better than I could dream of doing manually. The MoGo 2 Pro's obstacle avoidance technology automatically framed a smaller image to avoid projecting through a strategically placed table lamp in the light path, while its auto eye-protection lowered the output when I stepped into the light path to keep from damaging my vision. It all adds up to a projector that pretty much sets itself up in a matter of seconds, making it ideal for moving from room to room. The automatic control can also be turned off for full manual geometry adjustment with MoGo 2 Pro's four corner keystone correction.

Like most other portable projectors, the MoGo 2 Pro does without an optical zoom, but it does have a digital zoom function. The projector's 1.2:1 lens can create an image that ranges from 40 to 200 inches (measured diagonally), with a throw distance that ranges from 3.5 to 17.5 feet. From a practical point of view, it tops out around seven or eight feet and will be brighter with a smaller image. XGIMI recommends 60- to 120-inches diagonal for optimal performance.

The MoGo 2 Pro not only works with HDR10 encoded material, but also takes color accuracy to a new level for this genre. The projector's Cinema picture mode is said to follow the film industry's CIE D65 standard that's based on a neutral 6,500K color temperature, or roughly the quality of natural sunlight at noon. This is the video production industry's worldwide standard for color balance. Furthermore, the projector is able to reproduce a claimed 90% of the wide DCI-P3 color gamut used for HDR content, another unusual feature for this class of projector. Color measurements conducted by ProjectorCentral verified that the projector essentially met both claims.

The MoGo 2 Pro has only a single HDMI 2.0 video connection along with a headphone jack and USB 2.0 Type A port for using a flash drive or a wireless keyboard adapter. It worked well with a Logitech K400+ keyboard and could project a variety of files from a SanDisk USB flash drive, although .doc Word files didn't load. Its USB-C port is for power, although the projector lacks an internal battery for off-grid viewing. However, it is compatible with power banks for full portable use.

It comes into its own as a streaming projector with 802.11AC Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 5.0 systems with an Amlogic 950 quad-core processor, 2GB of system memory, 16GB of storage. The Android TV 11 platform provides access to a wide range of apps including Amazon Prime and YouTube to Fox News, CNN, and CNBC, and can be customized from the vast library in the Google store—I added Apple TV, MLB.TV, Kanopy's movie app and the Puffin TV Browser.

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That said, like a lot of Android projectors, it misses the mark by lacking an approved, native app for playing Netflix content. If you insist on having Netflix integrated, it requires side-loading of the app via a download tool and a desktop app launcher, something that many will shy away from. As usual, the easiest solution is to use a streaming dongle, like Google's $30 Chromecast with Google TV, which can directly tap into Netflix's programming and has a direct access button for the streaming service on its remote control. A streaming dongle does take up the projector's only HDMI port, however.

While small in size, the MoGo 2 Pro has a big voice with a pair of side-firing 8-watt speakers and a passive bass reflex driver in the back. There are Sound Settings for Movie, Music, Sport and News. The system played more than loud enough to fill a mid-sized room. It came into its own when watching and listening to Neil Young Heart of Gold on Kanopy, exhibiting surprising bass response, rich midrange and clear high-end notes. For larger rooms, it can wirelessly send audio to a Bluetooth external speaker, like my Pyle PSBV200BT sound bar. It also functions as a Bluetooth wireless speaker from other devices; I played Spotify music from my phone without an audio cable in sight.

Like many of its competitors, the MoGo 2 Pro has only an On/Off button on its case—everything else needs to be done through its small 6-inch, non-backlit remote control. It includes keys for the basics, including turning it on and off, running the auto-focus routine and adjusting the volume. In addition to the expected four-way control for working through the menus, there's a Home button for the Android TV 11 home page, but it lacks dedicated direct-access convenience keys for any streaming service.

The MoGo 2 Pro's menus take a little getting used to, and are downright confusing when it comes to accessing picture adjustments. The Settings wheel from the Android Home screen provides the usual access to things like Device Preferences, Remotes & Accessories, and a Projector Settings submenu that includes things like the settings for keystone, auto-focus options, or selecting front/rear/table/ceiling projection. There's also a Brightness mode option that does more than just adjust light source brightness as you'd expect; these are basically the traditional picture or color modes seen on most projectors. The options include Vivid, Cinema, Bright, Performance, and Custom. The Custom option delivers a submenu with separate red, green, and blue gain trims that were verified in the ProjectorCentral test lab to affect the RGB white balance (but not the gamut color points). There is also a 10-point adjustment in that menu for the projector's overall brightness.

There is also a Settings button on the remote that brings up an entirely different "Shortcut Settings" menu which provides duplicate or additional options for things like Keystone Correction, but also adds the Sound settings menu, a 3D video setup menu, and a separate Image Mode menu. The Image Mode menu has choices that also look like traditional pictures modes as seen previously in the Brightness menu, but with different names: Movie, Office, Game, and Custom. As with the selections in the Brightness mode menu, these each provide a slightly different color balance. Selecting the Custom option from Image Mode menu reveals traditional picture controls: Brightness, Contrast, Saturation (but no Tint), Sharpness, Noise Reduction, and a Color Temp control with options for Standard, Cold, Warm, or Custom. The Custom Color Temp submenu then reveals dedicated RGB gain adjustments for those colors.

Performance

XGIMI claims a color gamut covering 90 percent of the DCI-P3 standard used for HDR, and at least one mode (Cinema, from the Brightness Mode menu) that uses the industry production standard D65 color temperature for white balance. Both claims were verified with color measurements taken in ProjectorCentral's test lab by editor Rob Sabin, though he reported that care should be taken because the two menus interact. Setting the Brightness mode to Cinema and the Image Mode to Custom delivered something very close to industry accurate D65 white balance and a traditional 2.2 dark-room gamma. The measurements also show that the MoGo Pro 2 delivers the same wide color gamut, measured as 86.5% DCI-P3 and 128.6% Rec.709, with both SDR and HDR content. So SDR colors are somewhat oversaturated no matter which type of content is played. You can read more about this in Rob's lab notes in the Measurements appendix.

Fortunately, none of the modes except for the ghastly green Performance mode looked noticeably bad. Office was my choice for Web browsing, though the Custom setting's adjustments for brightness, contrast, color saturation and color temperature provide a lot of latitude.

The Game mode can only be selected with an HDMI input and doesn't allow use of keystone correction. Still, it can help improve your ability to avoid zombies in The Last of Us by reducing the projector's lag from 45.8 milliseconds to 33.6ms—a reduction of one-quarter—as measured using a Bodnar Video Input Lag Tester.

I recorded 313 ANSI lumens in the projector's Vivid mode, which looked surprisingly good with realistic flesh tones and rock textures while showing bright green grass during streamed baseball games. It was good enough for use in a darkened room but couldn't compete with sunlight streaming through nearby windows.

The projector put out 303 ANSI lumens in Cinema mode. While watching Crimes of the Future, the opening scene showed excellent flesh tones with lots of detail in the shadows of the boy's unruly hair and realistic shimmering on the water's surface. The blue sky was contrasted with untinted white clouds and the faithful appearance of the beach's sand and pebbles.

The MoGo 2 Pro's Bright mode didn't live up to its name with 308 ANSI Lumens of output. It yielded a clear image and lots of shadow detail, particularly on poorly lit faces. It had a touch too much green, however, for my taste.

With the HDR turned on, the images really popped when watching undersea diving videos in Cinema mode. The clownfish stood out from a patch of gray and green coral without appearing oversaturated. Later, textures on the surface of a featured sea turtle's shell were more prominently shown. Unfortunately, there are no brightness adjustments for HDR tone-mapping to accommodate different content as found on some projectors; the only options here for HDR are Auto detect and Off. The projector handled ProjectorCentral's 10-bit wheel animation test clip well with smooth action, no dithering and or hint of pink or other colors.

Even in its highest output mode, the MoGo 2 Pro remained cool enough to pick up and move to another place. It hit a peak of 102.5 degrees F in Performance mode, while its fan noise was among the loudest I've heard from a small projector. But in Vivid, Cinema and Bright modes, the fan was whisper quiet.

Conclusion

If you're looking for a replacement for your flat screen TV for watching movies and TV episodes, XGIMI's MoGo 2 Pro is a big step forward among small projectors. Its fast auto-keystone, super-sharp auto-focus and obstacle avoidance make it quick to set up and start streaming, and the projector's no maintenance design provides excellent imaging and color balance in all but its brightest mode. It may not be the brightest compact projector around its $599 price point—at current discount street prices, Epson's EF11 compact laser projector delivers 1,000 lumens of brightness. And while the Samsung Freestyle LED projector is less bright—ProjectorCentral measured it at just 234 lumens—it has an excellent smart TV platform that streams Netflix, Prime, and Disney+ from dedicated buttons on its remote. But the MoGo Pro 2's size, super-easy and fast auto setup, and great picture quality make for an overall strong combination.

Measurements

Brightness. Using the projector's Performance setting, I measured an output of 424 ANSI lumens as its peak brightness, although the images were severely distorted by an overall green cast. At the other end, the Vivid mode delivered 313 ANSI lumens and good color balance, while the Cinema mode imparted a bit more warmth to the image but measured accurately and put 303 ANSI lumens on the screen. The Bright setting delivered 308 lumens.

The projector's Eco Mode lowered the output by as much as 20% and is intended to be activated to extend play time if you're running the projector on a battery power bank.

XGIMI MoGo 2 Pro ANSI Lumens

Mode	Brightness
Vivid	313
Cinema	303
Bright	308
Performance	424

Uniformity. The brightness was very uniform with a variance of 90.1 percent. I could discern no visible hotspots or dull regions.

Fan Noise. In most use cases, the MoGo 2 Pro was among the quietest of pico projectors, with the cooling fan barely running. In Vivid, Cinema and Bright modes, it registered 40.8dBA when measured 36 inches from the projector; the room's background noise level was 40.4dBA. The exception was the Performance mode, which requires the fan to run at full blast. It measured 48.1dBA.

Input Lag. Using the projector's Game Image Mode, the MoGo 2 Pro reduced its input lag from 45.8 milliseconds to 33.6ms. I used a Bodnar Video Signal Lag Tester with a 1920x1080 signal at 60 Hz.

Power Use. The MoGo 2 Pro used 47.7 watts of power in its Vivid, Cinema and Bright modes and 48.1 watts in Performance mode. If it's used for 8 hours a day for 200 days out of the year, it should cost an estimated $12 to operate assuming you pay the national average 15 cents per kilowatt of electricity.

Connections

• HDMI 2.0
• USB 2.0 Type-A
• 3.5mm audio out
• USB-C for power

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.

Editor's Note: Given the XGIMI MoGo 2 Pro's claims of delivering accurate D65 white balance out of the box, as well as 90% DCI-P3 color gamut, we conducted measurements with Portrait Display's Calman software, a Klein K10-A colorimeter profiled against an X-rite i1Pro2 spectroradiometer, and a Murideo Six-G signal generator.

Unfortunately, the MoGo 2 Pro has a terrible, redundant menu system when it comes to picture settings, with two separate menus that offer different mode selections and similar control options that affect image color parameters that include color temperature and brightness. To make matters worse, these settings do seem to interact, with the Picture Brightness settings apparently taking priority over the Shortcut Menu's Image Mode settings. So for example, if you select Vivid as the Brightness menu mode and Movie as the Image menu mode, the Vivid mode's color balance will prevail.

With experimentation, I found that the best image quality results for dark-room viewing were had by setting the Brightness Mode menu to Cinema (recommended by XGIMI as the D65 mode), then setting the Image Mode menu to Custom. Out of the box, with a 1920x1080 SDR signal, this resulted in an average color temperature of 6,424K—very close to the 6,500K D65 target—and gamma that tracked just a bit bright in the blacks, averaging a little less than the 2.2 gamma target. Delta E errors for the grayscale, which should ideally be under 3dE, started out low in the darker area of the spectrum but ran up to a max of about 7dE at 100% white.

Fortunately, the Custom selection in the Image Mode menu provides a traditional brightness (black level) control that, with a couple of clicks down, helped fix the gamma. Similarly, this mode's red, green, and blue gain controls for color temperature allowed me to correct the slight push measured in both the red and blue elements of the grayscale. There are no bias controls to adjust RGB balance at the dark end of the brightness range, but they weren't needed, and the end result was a near perfect, neutral white and excellent 2.2 gamma tracking. Post- calibration grayscale DeltaE ran around or under 2.0 for the full brightness range.

The MoGo 2 Pro has no CMS or other color controls that could effectively move the color gamut points, which were fixed for all content and measured well outside the Rec.709 SDR targets, producing dE readings that were high for SDR but not terrible, typically around 6 for most primaries and secondaries. This manifested on screen as pleasantly punchy colors, especially reds, but they could be a bit too much to be natural on some Caucasian skin tones. Backing off the Custom Image Mode's color Saturation control solved that issue. The end result was a surprisingly good dark-room image for such a small and inexpensive projector.

For any picture mode, the Calman Color Volume analysis tool measured 128.6% Rec.709 color gamut and 86.5% DCI-P3, just a bit shy of the claimed maximum. The LED colors were very well-saturated and satisfying, and even after some backing off the color saturation control, reds in particular remained well into wide-gamut territory.

The following settings apply to the HDMI input. You can access the Main Menu settings while using the HDMI input by first selecting the Shortcut Settings button on the menu, then scrolling to the bottom for the All Settings wheel. —Rob Sabin

Main Menu

Brightness Mode: Cinema

Shortcut Settings

Image Mode: Custom
Brightness: 49 or to taste
Contrast: 50
Saturation: 46 or to taste
Sharpness: 50
Noise Reduction: Medium

Color Temperature: Custom
Red: 45
Blue: 46
Green: 50

For more detailed specifications and connections, check out our XGIMI MoGo 2 Pro 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.

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