The best 4K projectors for 2025, tested and reviewed

A 4K projector is the ultimate tool for cinephiles or gamers who want to get the most out of their ultra-high definition films and games without getting into multi-thousand-dollar screens and burdensome furniture. Only the most expensive TVs can even come close to the literal scale of a projector’s maximum screen size, and then you deal with the challenges of anchoring a 110-inch flatscreen. Moreover, 4K projection technology has evolved enough to fall significantly in price over the past couple of years. Spending a lot for the absolute premium models is still possible, but most of our recommendations will set you back under $2,000. A 65-, 75-, or even 85-inch 4K TV could still be the most cost-effective choice, but there’s no denying that 4K projectors—like our best overall, the feature-rich XGIMI Horizon S Max—have become much more accessible and versatile. The best 4K projectors will allow you to achieve the dream of bringing a movie theater into your house with no compromises.

How we chose the best 4K projectors

There are more 4K projectors than ever, and our recommendations come from extensive research and hands-on testing. We watched movies and played games on these devices to see how they held up during fast-paced action and casual viewing alike. Our tests were conducted by projecting images onto a wall from approximately nine feet away. Games were played on a Nintendo Switch, while videos were watched using both the projector’s internal operating system (if applicable) and Roku Streaming Stick 4K.

The best 4K projectors: Reviews & Recommendations

Whether you’re upgrading from a TV or Full HD projector, our 4K projectors for movies will be a significant upgrade and a massive step toward creating the ideal home theater system.

Best overall: XGIMI Horizon S Max

Specs

• Lumens: 3,100
• Ports: 1x HDMI, 2 x USB
• Speakers: Yes
• Price: $1,899.99 list price (as low as $1,699)

XGIMI’s Horizon S Max is the follow-up to the XGIMI Horizon Ultra—our previous 4K projector pick, still available for as low as $1,499—and it’s an improvement in many meaningful ways. Aesthetically, it’s more of the same … elevated. It’s still a fabric and “eco-leather” covered rectangle. When the projector is off, the front shield you see above is up, protecting the projector’s lens from getting scratched or accumulating dust. The cover glides downward when the projector is turned on, revealing the lens. It’s a neat trick that never got old during months of testing. This generation, however, XGIMI mounted the distinctive cube onto a gimbal stand, which enables you to tilt it upward and downward (360 degrees horizontally, 135 degrees vertically) to ensure it hits your wall or projection screen at the right angle. This added flexibility is excellent whether you are projecting an image that’s 40 inches or 200. 

Changing angles changes the image, of course, so the company also bumped up the Horizon S Max’s ISA (Intelligent Screen Adaptation) from 3.0 to 5.0, which meant that it could use automatic keystone correction more quickly when the projector was moved and adapt its color profile based on the color of the wall. Most importantly, however, the output of its Dual Light 2.0 system (a combination of laser and LED sources) is brighter at a claimed 3100 ISO lumens, allowing us to comfortably watch videos and play video games in rooms with significant light bleed. 

In real-world use, these changes made watching TV shows, movies, and playing video games on the Horizon S Max a delight. There was a high level of fidelity when watching native 4K content through Netflix and YouTube or playing Nintendo Switch games at 1080P. The projector’s processor was fast enough that navigating through menus to cycle through different display or audio settings never felt like a slog, nor did it take long for apps to launch. The Horizon S Max supports all the latest video formats, including HDR10, HLG, Dolby Vision, and IMAX Enhanced, with 110%BT.2020 Color Gamut and 1,000,000:1 dynamic contrast. Some turn themselves on automatically based on how the video you’re watching has been mastered and encoded, but you must enable IMAX Enhanced deliberately. Truth be told, we never ran into any visual issues during our testing, which included watching “The Great British Baking Show,” “Chef’s Table,”  plenty of YouTube videos, and playing the latest Nintendo Switch games. 

The added brightness helped greatly since it allowed us to use the projector at almost any hour of the day rather than waiting until night. We still wouldn’t recommend replacing your TV with a projector in a room with a ton of natural light, but the Horizon S Max can hold its own under pretty challenging lighting conditions. XGIMI has also exceeded my expectations when it comes to software updates, as its changes have made the color accuracy of IMAX Enhanced mode specifically noticeably better over time. The company is committed to providing regular improvements, which is encouraging given its high price. 

Our complaints about this projector come down to XGIMI’s decision to ship the Horizon S Max with Android TV 11 and only one HDMI port, which both present some limitations. Android TV is a fine operating system—and, connected through Wi-Fi 6, we could get in and out of apps and settings fluidly—but the lack of native Netflix on the platform was bothersome. This means you’ll need to connect a media streamer to the projector to view content from that service, at which point you’ve used up its sole HDMI port. 

You can connect an HDMI splitter or use the Netflix app built into your 4K Blu-ray player or game console if it has one, but then you can’t easily connect the projector to a speaker system. The audio system built into the Horizon S Max is still a 2×12-watt speaker array developed by Harman Kardon with support for DTS-HD, Dolby Digital, DTS-Virtual:X, Dolby Audio, and Dolby Digital Plus. The speakers are plenty powerful for casual viewing and gaming. However, you’ll want to connect the projector to a set of external, properly positioned speakers for projectors if you’d like the true cinematic experience. And that will take up that one HDMI port. The workaround is connecting the Horizon S Max to an A/V receiver, which has multiple HDMI ports for sources and channels for discrete speakers. But maybe you don’t want all that wiring. And at that point, this projector needs to stay in a fixed location with a lot of space. The previous-generation flagship XGIMI projector had two HDMI ports, and we hope to see this return in the future. 

Despite these faults, the Horizon S Max is an excellent self-contained home theater system thanks to its visual processing system and built-in speakers. It’s possible to fully enjoy your favorite shows and movies without any accessories—unless Netflix is your streaming app of choice. If you play games, the projector’s native 4K resolution will allow you to experience them in their full fidelity. Finally, if you’re setting up a home theater system with a traditional A/V surround sound system, you’ll have eliminated our only complaints and can enjoy the Horizon S Max without interruptions.

Best splurge: AWOL Vision LTV-2500

Specs

• Lumens: 2,600
• Ports: 2 x HDMI, 1 x Ethernet, 1 x AV-in, 1 x Optical
• Speakers: Yes
• Price: $2,999

AWOL Vision’s LTV-2500 is an incredible indulgence for the most persnickety media viewer—especially those without a lot of space. This is a short-throw triple-laser projector, which means it can create up to a 150-inch screen while being only a foot or so away from your wall. The projector has a significantly larger footprint than any of our other recommendations, but the fact that you don’t need to keep it several feet away from your wall means it can fit neatly on top of any entertainment center. If you’re swapping out a TV for a 4K laser projector, the LTV-2500 will provide the smoothest transition, which is especially helpful if you’ve already set up an AV receiver with a surround sound system. If you don’t have speakers set up, you’ll appreciate that the LTV’s audio system can play back Dolby Atmos surround sound audio natively.

The LTV-2500 supports all the most popular video technologies, from HDR 10+ to Dolby Vision, with 2,600 lumens plus support for over 1 billion colors and 147 percent of DCI-P3, and it also actively supports 3D video. If you have a pair of active shutter 3D glasses, a Blu-ray player that supports 3D movies, and a cache of 3D films, you can enjoy them in their full fidelity. This is surprising, considering how badly 3D movies sold. Still, it’s a welcome feature if you’d like to play your entire movie library in the highest possible quality with every feature intact.

This projector doesn’t run an operating system, but AWOL Vision includes an Amazon Fire Stick 4K Max, which you can use to stream content from any popular streaming service. It’s a pain to burn one of its two HDMI ports on a media streamer, especially given the LTV-2500’s high price, but this won’t be an issue if you connect a game console or other multifunctional device with access to Netflix, YouTube, and other services. If you’d like to set up a home theater system with a 4K projector but don’t have a lot of room, AWOL Vision’s LTV-2500 is the best choice. And if you don’t mind spending another grand or two, the AWOL VISION LTV-3000 Pro and AWOL Vision LTV-3500 Pro are increasingly brighter, sharper, and sonically bold.

Best value: JMGO N1S Pro

Specs

• Lumens: 2,250
• Ports: 2 x HDMI 2.1, 1 x USB-A, 1 x 3.5mm headphone jack
• Speakers: Yes
• Price: $1,999 list price (typically $1,399)

The JMGO’s N1S Pro is a cheaper alternative to our best overall pick, as its standout feature is that the triple-laser projector is suspended on top of its stand, allowing you to tilt it upward and downward up to 135 degrees easily. And its gimbal allows for a 360-degree horizontal pan. This comes in handy if you’re trying to position it just so or want to project your video onto a ceiling for a limited time. In our experience, the N1S Pro’s flexibility was a huge asset. Moving it was simple, but the 4K projector never tilted on its own; JMGO managed to tweak its torque to avoid accidents.

We tested the N1S Pro and its 2,250 CVIA lumens/HDR10 support/1600:1 FOFO contrast ratio during extended play sessions of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, and it allowed us to take in the verdant green hills, snowy peaks, and harsh deserts of Hyrule in their full fidelity. The projector was bright enough to compete with light leaking through curtains in our testing space, with no big picture quality loss, thanks in part to Auto Adaptive Brightness, Auto Keystone Correction, Smart Object Avoidance, Auto Screen Fitting, and more smart features. Video from streaming services and Chromecast looked sharp, and native Netflix on Google TV is a nice touch. 4K videos from professional YouTubers were a treat for the eyes, however. Where sound is concerned, the 10Wx2 speaker system was solid, though it couldn’t quite match the fidelity of the speakers built into XGIMI’s Horizon S Max. Nor could its brightness. Still, if you’d like an affordable 4K projector that’s easy to tweak and whose eye-catching design isn’t just for show, JMGO’s N1S Pro is more than worth a look.

Best for bright rooms: Hisense C2 Ultra

Specs

• Lumens: 3,000
• Ports: 1x HDMI 2.1, 1x HDMI 2.0, 2x USB 3.0, 1x LAN
• Speakers: Yes
• Price: $2,499 list price

If your space is tight and room is bright, the Hisense C2 Ultra projector will do you right. This gimbal-mounted standout (watch on the ceiling if you want) delivers a level of nits (nearly 2,000) that can equal (maybe even rival) a flagship OLED/QLED TV. Used in a loft with two tiers of windows, the top ones unreachable (you try closing blinds 19 feet up), the 3,000 ANSI lumen output of its 0.47″ DLP with RGB Laser still manages to cut through the environmental challenges. Watching a Premier League match during the day, there’s still enough peak brightness, contrast, and color gamut coverage (close to 100 percent BT.2020 in the real world) to present the action. And once night sets in and the bleed recedes, that TriChroma really shines throughout 4K content (with HDR10, HDR10+, HLG, Dolby Vision support).

No matter what you want to throw—well, cast—at the C2 Ultra, it’s capable of displaying it on a screen ranging from 65 – 300 inches (diagonally). Variable 0.9~1.5 optical zoom (plus autofocus and intelligent angle/wall color adaptation features) helps ensure optimal throw and image alignment. There’s Wi-Fi 6e with plenty of streaming built into Hisense’s bespoke VIDAA platform, plus AirPlay 2, as well as two HDMI 2.1 ports with ALLM & eARC support. This makes a lag-free Designed for Xbox gaming mode possible at 240Hz/1080p—a standout feature among our picks. Two USB 3.0 ports are there for additional media dongles/drives. No matter the source, native 4K or upscaled, the result was consistently crisp and captivating. Helping this was a JBL 2.1 system featuring 10Wx2 stereo with a 20W subwoofer in the base, plus Dolby Atmos, DTS-HD, DTS Virtual:X support.

Much like any TV, you’ll want to tweak the factory settings a bit, as Filmmaker Mode is typically the best baseline and motion smoothing is usually pumped up (the dreaded soap opera/big box showroom effect). If you’re looking for compact clarity, this home cinema centerpiece delivers both visually and sonically powered by as little as one cord and the truth.

Best budget: XGIMI Horizon Pro

Specs

• Lumens: 1,500
• Ports: 2 x HDMI, 2 x USB-A, 1 x Ethernet, 1 x AUX, 1 x Optical
• Speakers: Yes
• Price: $999 list price

XGIMI’s Horizon Pro is a step down in performance from the rest of our picks, but it’s still a solid choice if you need a 4K projector on a slightly lower budget. It has an eight-watt dual speaker audio system courtesy of Harman Kardon, is packed with every necessary port, and runs on Google TV. While it matches its more expensive technical sibling in luminosity, its speaker system is weaker, and it uses previous-generation video hardware so that color reproduction won’t be quite as good. You’ll still get a great-looking clear picture, but projectors have progressed since the Horizon Pro’s launch. Still, it has all of the essential features you’d need from a 4K projector, from support for HDR, AI brightness adjustment, and a competent auto-focus system. If you’re looking for a home theater upgrade that won’t break the bank, you’ll find it here.

FAQs

There are many factors to consider when deciding which 4K projector is right for you. Here are the factors we considered most important when writing this guide:

Luminosity

The brightness of a projector’s bulb is measured in lumens; the higher its luminosity, the brighter its picture—though there are different scales (ANSI vs. ISO), so keep an eye on the spec specifics. Luminosity is important because it allows your projector to overcome light pollution from the sun, lamps, or fluorescent sources. Light pollution washes out a projector’s ability to project a picture, making it look washed out or harder to see. A brighter picture is also easier to see regardless of how much external light is in the room, so you need to gauge your environment, especially if you need a projector for daylight viewing. If you have a dark(er) space, a projector’s luminosity is outranked in importance by its resolution, but all models here are 4K, offering 3840 pixels across and 2160 up and down.

Throw distance

A projector’s throw distance determines the picture size based on how far it is from a wall. “Short-throw” style projectors can be very close to a wall while still making a large picture, making them ideal for smaller spaces. Meanwhile, a typical long-throw projector works best when installed between eight and 13 feet away from your wall. Be mindful that wall space is key regardless of what type of 4K projector you get. You won’t get as much out of your projector if you don’t have enough room. This tool can help you evaluate your throw distance-to-screen size ratio.

Maximum screen size

Every 4K projector we recommend can project a picture over 100 inches diagonally, with most capable of reaching 300. Maximum size will ultimately be determined by its throw distance and how much wall space you can provide. Because these projectors have such a high resolution, you shouldn’t deal with any significant loss in picture quality, even on an ultra-large screen.

Port selection

A 4K projector’s ports (sometimes known as inputs) will determine the types of components (e.g., game console, Blu-Ray player, streaming device) you can connect to it. Our 4K projector recommendations have at least one HDMI port—most have two—which means you can plug just about any audio or video gadget into it. Many of our recommendations also have a headphone jack or other audio out port, which allows you to connect them to external speakers for better sound.

Speakers

All 4K projectors in this guide have built-in speakers, which is helpful if you prioritize portability. Many of the speaker systems on these higher-end projectors are surprisingly robust, so you won’t need to plug in an external set to get good sound. If you want the full home theater experience, you’ll still need an A/V receiver and surround sound speaker set.

Smart features

One of the standard features of premium 4K projectors is the ability to stream movies and TV shows from the most popular services directly from the device itself. Hardware makers have partnered with Google to allow their projectors to run on Google TV, a software platform that competes with FireOS and Roku.

Final thoughts on the best 4K projectors

A 4K projector is still a luxury, but one that’s become significantly more attainable recently. We’re comfortable recommending them to anyone serious about setting up a home theater room in their home, even if one doesn’t set up a surround sound system right away. Setting up a 4K projector now means not having to think about a home theater upgrade for years since improvements to bulb brightness and color fidelity aren’t improving by leaps and bounds annually. If you’re looking for an entire home theater in a single box, a 4K projector is the best option.

 

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