AWOL Vision put a price on the LuxVision on 3 September: $5,999 in the United States, €5,999 in the eurozone and £4,999 in Britain, with shipping around October. XGIMI detailed the AURA 3 Pro and AURA 3 Max the same day and confirmed a Kickstarter opening on 20 October. IFA opened in Berlin the next day with both machines on the floor and, for the first time, with the four figures the two companies had been withholding printed on their own websites.
Those blanks were the story here last week. XGIMI was collecting $50 refundable deposits against a page that printed ▮▮▮▮ ISO Lumens and ▮▮▮▮ Native Contrast in gold type. AWOL’s LuxVision page promised “████ lumens” and “Native ████ contrast” beside a seven-step dynamic iris. Everything else on both pages was published in full. Both have now been completed, and the two machines turn out to be far closer on paper than they are on price.
AWOL rates the LuxVision at 6,000 ISO lumens from an RGB triple-laser engine, with native 10,000:1 contrast and 110 percent coverage of Rec.2020. The throw ratio is 0.18:1, which puts a 120-inch image about seven and a half inches from the wall, and the machine runs 4K at 120 frames per second with variable refresh rate, auto low latency mode and a claimed 1ms of input lag. Three HDMI 2.1 ports, a DisplayPort and a four-channel HDMI multiview mode sit on the back. Dolby Vision is supported in games as well as films, alongside IMAX Enhanced, Filmmaker Mode and 3D.
The part AWOL is actually selling is mechanical. The LuxVision carries a one-touch vertical optical lens shift with a 142 to 152 percent offset range, which the company calls a first for the category. Anyone who has installed an ultra short throw knows why that line is in the press release. A UST is normally aligned by shoving the cabinet forwards and backwards a few millimetres at a time, and when the geometry still does not land, by reaching for digital keystone correction, which fixes the shape by throwing away pixels. Optical shift moves the light path instead of the image, so the projector can sit lower or further back without the picture losing resolution. It is the least glamorous specification on the sheet and probably the one installers will care about most.
XGIMI’s AURA 3 Max comes in under the LuxVision on both of the figures that were blanked out. It is rated at 5,700 ISO lumens and 8,000:1 native contrast. The AURA 3 Pro, the cheaper of the pair, is rated at 4,100 lumens and 7,000:1. Both are 4K/120-capable with VRR and ALLM, both run Google TV, both carry an 80-watt Harman Kardon system with Dolby Atmos, and both handle Dolby Vision, HDR10+, HLG, IMAX Enhanced and Filmmaker Mode. The Max throws at 0.163:1, tighter than the AWOL, reaching 120 inches from about 20 centimetres and topping out at 200.
The mechanism behind the contrast number is what XGIMI wants discussed. The AURA 3 uses what the company calls a dynamic dual iris: two aperture units in the optical path, adjusted automatically, closing down to deepen blacks in dark material and opening again when the scene needs light. Around it sits an X-VISION image processor and an anti-rainbow stage for 2D-to-3D conversion. The Kickstarter opens on 20 October, and the campaign price for the Max has been briefed at $2,399; the $50 deposit XGIMI has been taking since 1 September knocks a further $200 off whatever that campaign price turns out to be.
Three of the loudest contrast claims of this season now come from moving parts. AWOL has a seven-level dynamic iris. XGIMI has two of them. JMGO, whose Iris Ultra Max opened American preorders at $2,999 a week before the show, puts six blades inside the lens and nine more where the three laser channels are combined, and rates the result at 10,000:1. A year ago the contrast argument in this category was about laser architecture and panel choice. It is now, in large part, about apertures.
One thing worth flagging before those numbers get copied into comparison tables. All three companies describe the result as native contrast, and none of them says whether the rating was taken with the iris wide open or stepped down. Native contrast conventionally means what the imaging chip and the optics deliver with nothing modulating the beam; an iris that closes on dark scenes is by definition a dynamic device. The two ideas are being printed in the same sentence across the whole category, and the only thing that settles it is a meter in a dark room.
Line the two IFA machines up and the gap is not where the price suggests it should be. The LuxVision claims about five percent more light than the AURA 3 Max and 25 percent more contrast, and it costs roughly two and a half times as much. Whatever else the extra $3,600 buys, it is not brightness.
Some of it is the lens shift, which XGIMI has not matched. Some of it is connectivity, where three HDMI 2.1 inputs plus DisplayPort and multiview is a specification aimed at people running a console, a media server and a PC into the same wall. And some of it is the route to market. AWOL showed the LuxVision at CEDIA in Denver, the trade show where custom installers do their buying, and it is going on sale in October at a retail price in three currencies. XGIMI is going to Kickstarter, where the buyer pays first and waits, and where nothing is on sale in the ordinary sense until the campaign delivers. The company has strong reasons to keep doing it — its own IFA page leads with the $19.37 million the TITAN Noir raised, which XGIMI bills as the most funded projector campaign on the platform — but a crowdfunding pledge and an October ship date are not the same product, and the price difference partly reflects that.
The comparison also runs the other way on sound. XGIMI publishes 80 watts and a Harman Kardon badge. AWOL’s LuxVision page does not mention a speaker, a wattage or an audio format anywhere, which for a machine sold as a television replacement is an odd thing to leave out. Each company has now printed the numbers the other was hiding, and each has left a different gap.
Neither product page carries a price. AWOL’s $5,999 exists in the press release that went out on 3 September, not on the page a shopper lands on. XGIMI’s $2,399 exists in press briefings and coverage; XGIMI’s own product page still shows the specification table, the deposit button and no figure. Four blanks have been filled and two more have opened, in the one field that decides most purchases.
What is on the table now is a pair of claimed specifications, and claimed is doing real work in that sentence. ISO 21118 at least defines how a brightness figure is produced, which makes 6,000 against 5,700 a comparison worth something. Native contrast measured around an iris is not defined in any comparable way, so 10,000:1 against 8,000:1 means very little until somebody puts both machines on the same screen in the same room. That becomes possible for the LuxVision in October. For the AURA 3, it depends on when a campaign that opens on 20 October actually ships. Until then the ultra short throw shelf stays where it was, and the two most interesting machines in the category are both a set of claims and a deposit button.