Hisense’s PX4-Pro ultra-short-throw projector goes on sale in the United Kingdom next month at £2,499, exactly what its predecessor cost, after reaching American retail in late July at $3,999.99 — five hundred dollars above what the PX3-Pro asked at its own launch. Australian buyers pay AU$4,499, also unchanged from the outgoing model. The projector is the same in all three markets.
The British and Australian figures were reported by What Hi-Fi in early August, together with a detail that had been missing since the projector was first shown at CES in January: the six-speaker, 66-watt array is tuned by Devialet, the French audio house Hisense also used on its $6,000 L9Q. The PX3-Pro’s speakers carried Harman Kardon badging, and its sound was the part of that projector reviewers liked least.
The American increase works out at 14.3 per cent over two years. The PX3-Pro arrived in August 2024 at $3,499; the PX4-Pro lists at $3,999.99 and has been trading at $3,998 since it went on sale. In sterling, nothing moved at all. Britain’s £2,499 also includes 20 per cent VAT, while the American figure picks up whatever state sales tax applies only at checkout, so the pre-tax gap between the two markets is wider than the raw numbers suggest.
None of the launch coverage carried an explanation for the American number, and the specification sheet cannot serve as one. British buyers are getting the same 3,500-lumen laser engine, the same Devialet array and the same gaming certifications for last generation’s money. Whatever pushed the US price up did not come from the bill of materials for the projector itself.
Cost pressure on consumer video hardware is real enough this year, and we have covered it from two directions: memory contract prices pushed Roku’s streaming stick to $79.99 while the cheapest smart projectors on Amazon run the same class of parts, and the large-panel side of the display industry has been repricing all year. But those pressures land on Hisense in Britain too. A single-market increase points at import costs, freight, channel margin or a simple read of what American buyers will tolerate — and Hisense has said nothing to narrow it down.
Brightness climbs from 3,000 to 3,500 ANSI lumens. Rated contrast goes from 3,000:1 to 6,500:1, with a seven-step iris doing part of that work. Maximum image size stretches from 150 to 200 inches, and the throw ratio tightens slightly to 0.2:1, so the cabinet still sits within a few inches of the wall. Hisense also moved the projector off Google TV and onto its own VIDAA platform, a change we looked at in detail when the US version went on sale, and one that will matter more to some households than any brightness figure.
The gaming specification is the part the rest of the segment has not matched. Hisense has AMD FreeSync Premium certification here — the first ultra-short-throw to carry it — with 1ms-class latency quoted at 2K/240Hz, 4K accepted at 120Hz, variable refresh rate, MEMC and Xbox Cloud Gaming running inside VIDAA. Ultra-short-throw projectors have historically been sold on screen size and cabinet audio, with gaming treated as an afterthought and input lag left off the box. A projector certified against a PC graphics standard is a different pitch, aimed at a living room with a console under the console.
The PX3-Pro is still listed at $3,499, so at list the generation change costs an American $500 and a Briton nothing. Five hundred lumens, a doubled contrast rating, Devialet tuning and a 240Hz gaming mode are worth that much to plenty of buyers. The number that decides it is one neither company publishes: how far the outgoing model gets discounted while stock clears. Every dollar off the PX3-Pro widens a gap that starts at $500 and makes the older projector the value play for anyone who watches films in the dark and does not own a console.
British buyers face none of that arithmetic, which is the quiet consequence of a frozen price. In their market the upgrade is free, and the PX3-Pro’s remaining stock has to be discounted to stay interesting at all.
The segment above and below both got busier while the PX4-Pro was in transit. AWOL Vision’s Aetherion Max lists at $4,499 with a 3,300 ISO lumen rating, and independent bench testing put its brightest mode at 3,031 lumens, with the picture modes most people actually watch landing between 2,213 and 2,334 — a reminder that a lumen rating and a lumen measurement are separate claims. Epson went the other way: its $3,799 model measured above its own brightness rating in testing, which is rarer than it should be. Nobody has put a meter on a PX4-Pro yet, so its 3,500 lumens and 6,500:1 remain manufacturer numbers.
The September on-sale date also drops the PX4-Pro into a crowded few weeks. CEDIA opens in Denver on 1 September and IFA in Berlin on 4 September, and both shows have projection on the agenda. A projector that arrives in British stores the same fortnight its rivals are announcing next year’s models is either confident or unlucky, and the answer usually shows up in how quickly the first retailer bundle appears.
Two things are worth watching from here. British reviews will arrive within weeks of the September on-sale date, and they will settle whether the Devialet partnership fixed the one thing the PX3-Pro was criticised for. The other is whether $3,999.99 survives the American discount season. If the PX4-Pro is trading at $3,499 by late November, the £2,499 that Britain pays all year will look less like a bargain and more like the price Hisense always intended to charge.