Hisense has formally launched its C3 family of triple-laser projectors in the United States, listing the 3,000-lumen C3 Pro at $2,499.99, the 4,000-lumen C3 Ultra at $2,999.99 and the 5,000-lumen C3 Ultra Max at $3,999.99. The company announced on October 6 that all three are available now through its own store, Amazon and Best Buy, which makes this the first time the C3 Pro has a confirmed U.S. price and channel. When the Ultra and Ultra Max went global in mid-September, Hisense said only that the Pro was “set to follow.”
The official numbers arrive three weeks after the market had already set its own. On Wednesday morning Amazon was selling the C3 Ultra for $2,797.97 and the C3 Ultra Max for $3,797.97, and specialist dealer ProjectorScreen.com still listed the C3 Pro at $2,297.97. All three sit exactly $202.02 under the new list prices. They are the same figures ProjectorScreen posted for pre-orders on September 15, before Hisense had said anything about price at all.
The hardware matches what Hisense outlined at the global launch. Each model uses a 4K UHD DLP engine with separate red, green and blue lasers, claims up to 118% of the BT.2020 color space, and quotes up to 5,000:1 contrast with a seven-level adjustable iris in the lens. Image sizes run from 65 to 300 inches. Every unit sits on an integrated gimbal stand and handles its own keystone, focus, screen fitting and obstacle avoidance. HDR support covers Dolby Vision and IMAX Enhanced, and the audio is a 56W 2.1-channel system with a built-in subwoofer, tuned by Devialet.
The steps between models are mostly brightness and lens. The Pro and the Ultra both use a 1.6x zoom; the Ultra Max goes to 2x and adds wider lens shift. Hisense’s U.S. release, as carried by TWICE and Notebookcheck, also says the Ultra and Ultra Max use “four dedicated laser imaging chips” for 5% greater efficiency. Hisense does not explain the phrase, and it does not appear on the spec tables dealers have been running since September, so we would not read much into it until someone opens one up.
The lens itself is still the detail that does not quite match the paperwork. Amazon’s new C3 Ultra listing advertises a 1.6x optical zoom in its title, while the product photo on the same page shows the lens ring printed “1.67X ZOOM.” Hisense Australia’s store already uses 1.67x. The American spec sheet has simply rounded it down.
The timing is unusual. Hisense announced its U.S. prices on the first day of Amazon’s Prime Big Deal Days, a 48-hour event that ends today, and the new list prices are higher than anything an American buyer has been asked to pay for these machines so far. Neither C3 listing on Amazon carried a deal badge on Wednesday, and neither showed a “List Price” strike-through. Amazon is simply selling them at the dealer price that was already in circulation.
That leaves the official MSRP doing a different job than usual. For most launches the list price is what early buyers pay and the discount comes later. Here the discount came first, and the list price looks more like a reference point for future promotions: a “$202 off” on the C3 Ultra in November would land back on a price Amazon is charging today. We saw the same pattern on day one of the sale, when badges promising up to 41% off usually measured from list prices nobody was paying.
The C3 Pro is the model to watch. A search on Wednesday turned up Amazon listings only for the Ultra and the Ultra Max, despite Hisense naming Amazon as a launch retailer for all three. ProjectorScreen lists the Pro as available at $2,297.97.
When the C3 family went global we noted that the C3 Pro’s dealer price, $2,297.97, sat exactly on the street price of its predecessor, the 3,000-lumen C2 Ultra, and suggested Hisense was holding the Pro back to let C2 Ultra stock clear. Three weeks later the older machine has made room. On Wednesday the C2 Ultra sold on Amazon for $1,897.97, $400 below where it was in mid-September, with Amazon showing a 24% markdown from a $2,497.99 list price.
That puts $400 between two projectors with the same 3,000-lumen rating. The C3 Pro’s case for the extra money is the newer RGB laser with the wider 118% BT.2020 claim, the iris, Devialet sound in place of JBL and Wi-Fi 7. The C2 Ultra’s is that it has been on the market long enough to be measured: independent testing found it delivered about 93% of its rated brightness. How much of the C2 Ultra’s lower price survives past today is the open question. The figure was recorded during Prime Big Deal Days and may not hold next week.
One more thing to know before reading the reviews on these pages. The new C3 listings display the same 4.2-star average across 192 ratings that the C2 Ultra page does, because Amazon has placed them in one variation family with several other Hisense projectors. Until the C3 models collect ratings of their own, the stars shown under them describe older machines.
Official pricing also changes how the American C3 Ultra compares with the one Hisense sells in Australia. At A$4,999, the Australian price works out to roughly $3,190 once the 10% GST is removed and the figure is converted at last week’s exchange rate. Against Amazon’s $2,797.97 street price, as we calculated last week, Australia was about 14% more expensive. Against the new $2,999.99 list price the gap narrows to around 6%. If American buyers pay list, the two markets end up close to the same price for the same machine.
For anyone already shopping, nothing about the launch changes the arithmetic. The C3 Ultra and Ultra Max can be had at their September dealer prices, the C3 Pro at its dealer price from a specialist, and the C2 Ultra at the lowest price we have recorded for it. The global launch details are unchanged, and the C3 Ultra vs JMGO Iris Ultra comparison covers the nearest rival at the $3,000 mark. What the launch does settle is that $202 is now the size of discount Hisense has built into all three prices from day one.