Four thousand dollars used to buy a lamp-based home theater projector and a reasonable screen. In October 2026 it buys a triple-laser 4K projector with a gimbal, a variable iris and, in most cases, a streaming system with a licensed Netflix app. The band between $2,800 and $4,000 has also changed more in the past four weeks than in the year before it: XGIMI opened HORIZON 30 pre-orders on October 12, Hisense started selling the C3 family in the U.S. in early October, and JMGO’s Iris Ultra Max is shipping at a price $500 below its list.
Every price below was checked on October 16, on Amazon where the projector is sold there and on the manufacturer’s own store where it is not. Brightness figures are manufacturer ratings unless we say otherwise, and they come in three units, ISO, ANSI and plain “lumens,” that do not convert into each other neatly. Read them as rough rankings within a brand rather than a contest between brands.
The pattern in this band runs against intuition. The cheapest machines carry the biggest brightness numbers, and the most expensive one here, XGIMI’s TITAN Noir, is rated lower than projectors that cost $1,000 less. Above roughly $3,000, buyers are paying for contrast control, lens hardware and inputs rather than for lumens. If the room is dark and dedicated, that is the right trade. If it is a living room with windows, the brighter $3,000 machines make more sense.
The TITAN Noir is the odd one out, and deliberately so. It has no built-in operating system at all. XGIMI expects it to be fed by a streaming box or a disc player through one of three HDMI inputs, with a Gigabit LAN port and optical audio out for a proper AV rack. In return the company put its money into the picture path: a 0.47-inch DMD with pixel shifting, a dual intelligent iris with five manual steps plus a dynamic mode, a 7,000:1 native contrast rating, and a 0.98 to 2.0:1 optical zoom wide enough for most rear-shelf or ceiling positions. It is rated at 4,800 ISO lumens, weighs 7.5kg and accepts 1080p at 240Hz with VRR for gaming.
It is $3,999 on XGIMI’s U.S. store, back at full price after a September promotion that took it to $3,299. XGIMI also sells a TITAN Noir Pro at $4,999 and a Max at $5,999, so this is the entry point to the line. In Japan, as we reported when it opened on Makuake, the early tiers came in below what Kickstarter backers paid, so it is worth waiting for the next U.S. promotion if you are not in a hurry. For a dedicated theater with a separate streamer, this is still the most purpose-built machine on the list.
The only ultra short throw projector here, and the one to buy if the projector has to sit on a media console a few inches from the wall. The PX4 Pro is listed on Amazon at $3,997.97 with a 3,500-lumen rating, VIDAA with the usual streaming apps, Dolby Vision, HDR10+, IMAX Enhanced and active 3D.
It is also the best-measured projector in this group. ProjectorScreen’s bench test in August found about 2,088 lumens and 3,021:1 contrast with the iris off, rising to about 4,873:1 at the iris’s tightest manual step, where output fell to about 1,079 lumens. Hisense’s October firmware added a dynamic iris mode and a stronger anti-rainbow setting, though the two cannot be used together; we covered the update in September. Budget for an ambient-light-rejecting screen if you go this way, since a UST on a plain wall loses much of what it measures on the bench.
The C3 Ultra Max is Hisense’s gimbal-mounted triple-laser flagship, rated at 5,000 ANSI lumens with a 0.85 to 1.7:1 optical zoom. That zoom is one of the widest in this class and means the same unit can throw a big image from a coffee table or sit at the back of a long room. It runs VIDAA, has two HDMI 2.1 inputs with eARC on the first, Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4, and claims 240Hz at 1080p with VRR and FreeSync Premium. At 25.8 pounds it is portable only in the sense that it has a handle-like stand.
Amazon has it at $3,797.97. Hisense’s own store asked $3,999.99 when the C3 family went on sale officially in October, so Amazon is the cheaper route. The star rating on the listing is shared across Hisense’s whole projector family on Amazon, so it says little about this specific model.
This is the timing pick. Pre-ordered through XGIMI’s store before October 31, the HORIZON 30 Ultra Max is $2,999 with a stand or ceiling mount included; from November 1 it is $3,499. XGIMI rates it at 6,000 ISO lumens and 10,000:1 native contrast, using a dual iris, and it runs 4K at 120Hz with Dolby Vision, HDR10+ and IMAX Enhanced. Unlike the TITAN Noir, it runs Google TV with licensed Netflix.
Two caveats. Pre-order means waiting, and XGIMI has not given a ship date beyond open sales starting November 1. And the same projector sells in China as the RS30 Ultra Max for 10,999 yuan as of this week, about $1,450 before tax, as we reported in today’s news. That does not make the U.S. price a bad deal against its rivals here, but it does suggest it has room to fall. The full U.S. specs are in our pre-order report.
JMGO’s store lists the Iris Ultra Max at $2,999 against a $3,499 compare-at price. On paper it is the brightest projector in this guide at 6,500 ISO lumens, with JMGO’s MALC triple-laser engine, a dual iris built from a six-blade lens aperture and a nine-blade aperture in the laser combiner, and Dolby Vision that works at 4K/120. JMGO has not published a native contrast figure for it.
For a mixed-use living room that hosts films in the evening and games or sport in daylight, this and the HORIZON 30 Ultra Max are the two to compare. XGIMI states contrast and JMGO states brightness, so the choice comes down to which number you trust more until independent measurements appear.
The smaller sibling of the C3 Ultra Max costs $1,000 less and gives up 1,000 rated lumens. The C3 Ultra is rated at 4,000 ANSI lumens and 5,000:1 contrast with its iris lens, has a 0.9 to 1.5:1 zoom, and shares the Max’s VIDAA software, HDMI 2.1 pair, Wi-Fi 7 and 240Hz gaming mode. At 17.6 pounds it is much easier to carry between rooms. In a room you can darken, the brightness gap matters less than the $1,000.
All six machines above are triple-laser projectors, and some viewers see speckle or rainbow-like fringing on RGB laser sources. If you are spending less, or have not seen one before, a single-color laser projector is worth a look. Dangbei’s DBOX02 is $1,199 on Amazon, rated at 2,450 ISO lumens with native 4K output, and runs Google TV with an officially licensed Netflix app, so there is no separate streaming box to buy. It also has the deepest owner base of anything in this guide, with more than 400 Amazon reviews averaging 4.3 stars. For a bedroom or a living room you can dim, it covers most of what a $3,000 projector does at well under half the price, and the money saved goes a long way toward a good screen.
For machines between $1,500 and $3,000, including the older HORIZON 20 and Hisense’s PX3-PRO, see our best projectors under $3,000. Black Friday falls on November 27 this year. Before then, the date to watch in this band is October 31, when the HORIZON 30 pre-order prices end and XGIMI’s rivals find out what they are competing against.