The XGIMI Horizon 20 Pro is the middle model of the Horizon 20 family that XGIMI brought to Malaysia in July, and it is the first XGIMI projector we have had on our own desk. We shot a short video of it on our Instagram, and this review is built from that footage and a few days of living with it: movies with the windows open, a PlayStation 5 plugged into the back, and a lot of looking at a wall to find out what 4,100 ISO lumens means in a Malaysian living room in daylight.
Table of Contents
What it is
A 4K home projector with an RGB triple-laser light source rated at 4,100 ISO lumens, a 0.47-inch DMD chip, Dolby Vision, HDR10+ and IMAX Enhanced certification, Google TV built in, two 12W Harman Kardon speakers, and a 1.2 to 1.5:1 optical zoom lens with lens shift. XGIMI quotes 1ms input lag at 1080p and 240Hz, a 20,000:1 contrast ratio and a picture from 40 to 300 inches. It weighs 4.8kg and sits in a metal stand that doubles as a tilt adjuster. Those figures are XGIMI's own, from its product page. The rest of this review is what we saw.
Who it is for
Anyone who wants a wall-sized picture without building a dark room for it. The Horizon 20 Pro is pitched at the living room, not the basement cinema, and brightness is the whole argument. It is also, unusually at this price, a serious gaming display, which is where most of our footage went.
The picture
Brightness decides everything else, so it comes first. With the windows wide open in the afternoon, the picture on a plain white wall stayed watchable: colours held and the blacks went grey rather than disappearing. Close the curtains and it becomes a different machine, with the deep, saturated reds and greens that triple-laser projectors are known for.
HDR is where the certifications earn their keep. Dolby Vision and IMAX Enhanced are both on board, and on the film and game content we ran, the contrast and shadow detail were not what we associate with a projector in daylight. XGIMI's 20,000:1 figure is measured with its dynamic laser dimming on, so treat it as a best case, but on dark scenes the laser visibly dims and the black floor drops with it.
Gaming
This is the part of the video that drew the most comments, and it deserves them. We plugged a PS5 into the projector, switched to Game Mode, and the lag was simply not there. XGIMI's sheet says 1ms at 1080p and 240Hz, 2.2ms at 1080p and 120Hz, and 3ms at 4K and 60Hz. We cannot measure to the millisecond, but we played a fighting game and a UFC title at wall size and never once felt the picture was behind our thumbs. VRR is supported over HDMI 2.1.
The practical point: 240Hz only applies at 1080p. If you want 4K you get 60Hz, which is fine for most console games but worth knowing before you buy it to replace a PC monitor.
Sound
Two 12W Harman Kardon speakers with DTS Virtual:X and Dolby Audio processing are enough to fill a normal living room, and they are what we used for the whole test. Dialogue is clear and it goes louder than we needed. HDMI 1 supports eARC, so a soundbar can be added later, but most people will not rush to.
Setup and keystone
XGIMI's ISA 5.0 system handles auto focus, auto keystone, obstacle avoidance and screen alignment, and it does them quickly enough that we stopped noticing. Put the projector down, and the picture squares itself up within a few seconds and stays distortion-free from the sofa. Optical zoom and lens shift mean you can also do it properly, without digital keystone eating into resolution, which is how we would set it up permanently.
Google TV
Google TV is built in, so Netflix, YouTube, Disney+ and Prime Video are on the home screen from the first boot, with the usual Google Assistant remote. It is the same interface as a Chromecast or a Sony TV, and it means the projector needs nothing plugged into it to be useful.
Size and design
At 4.8kg and 249 by 298 by 190mm this is not a portable projector, and it is not trying to be. The fabric-wrapped body and the metal stand look more like a speaker than office equipment. Fan noise is rated at 28dB at one metre.
Price in Malaysia and where to buy
XGIMI Malaysia lists the Horizon 20 Pro at RM9,999 on its own online store, and that is the price we are quoting. When we checked on 9 September it was marked sold out there, and the brand's official Lazada store was carrying the Horizon 20 (RM8,499) and the Horizon 20 Max (RM14,499) but not yet the Pro, so the buy button below goes to XGIMI's official Lazada store. The distributor also runs a brand store at Sunway Pyramid.
The siblings matter. The Horizon 20 is the same design at 3,200 ISO lumens for RM1,500 less. The Horizon 20 Max steps up to 5,700 ISO lumens and 5.4kg for RM4,500 more. The Pro's 4,100 lumens is where daytime viewing stops being a compromise, which is why we would pick it over the standard model; the Max is only worth it if your room is very bright or very large.
Who should not buy it
If your room is small and dark, the standard Horizon 20 does most of this for less. If you want the sharpest 4K for a PC desk, a monitor is still the answer, since 240Hz only comes at 1080p here. And if you want something to carry to a friend's house, XGIMI's own MoGo 4 at RM2,999 is the one to look at.
Verdict
The Horizon 20 Pro is the first projector we have tested that we would use as the only screen in a living room with the curtains open. The brightness, the HDR certifications and the gaming latency are real rather than spec-sheet lines, and Google TV makes it complete out of the box. At RM9,999 it costs as much as a very good 75-inch TV, so the decision is whether you want a wall-sized picture that disappears when you switch it off. If you do, this is the one, and it set a high bar for our first XGIMI.
We shoot and grade our own tech video. The way we do it, on a phone, is taught in our Pocket Cinematic course.
