A sleek UST projector with motorised lens cover

Verdict

Wonderfully designed, the XGIMI Aura 2 doesn’t just look better than the competition, it has a clever motorised lens cover that helps prevent dust build-up.

This projector also has an excellent throw ratio, so you can get a big picture without having to move the projector far back. Dolby Vision and IMAX Enhanced support, combined with the dual light system produce rich, detailed images.

Brightness is good, but a way off the best, so a dim(ish) room is best for viewing. The lack of Netflix and the choice of Android TV OS are both a little disappointing for what’s otherwise a well-priced UST projector.

Introduction

The XGIMI Aura 2 ultra-short throw (UST) projector has been a long time coming: the previous model, the Aura, was launched back in 2021. In the intervening years, XGIMI has finetuned its processing, updated the backlight technology, boosted the range of HDR formats, and as a result, made a far more attractive product.

In most regards, the XGIMI Aura 2 is a triumph of style and quality. The decision to use the outdated Android TV, which doesn’t support Netflix, is something of a shame.

Design

• Fabric finish with automatic lens cover
• Excellent throw ratio
• Three HDMI inputs

Most ultra short throw projectors, such as the AWOL Vision LTV-3500 Pro, look like a bit of tech, but the XGIMI Aura 2 is a more attractive proposition. Finished in a soft fabric, which the company says is waterproof, the Aura 2 is designed to look good, standing out for all the right reasons.

The design is as practical as it is attractive, with a motorised lens cover on top that slides out of the way when the projector is turned on. That helps prevent dust from building up on the lens, as well as protects it when it’s not in use. It’s a neat trick, as UST projectors end up projecting weird patterns when the lens gets covered in dust.

At 144 x 510 x 270mm, the Aura 2 is also considerably smaller than the competition, taking up far less space.

At the back of the projector are the three HDMI inputs, with one supporting HDMI eARC, in case you want to hook up an external sound system. There are also two USB ports.

With a throw ratio of just 0.177:1, the XGIMI Aura 2 doesn’t need much space to get a very big image. The maximum screen size is 150 inches, but you can get a 100-inch image with the projector placed just 0.7 inches away. That’s a better throw ratio than most of the competition, which needs more distance to get the same-sized display.

While the projector can be used against almost any surface, any UST projector is best served by an ambient light-rejecting (ALR) screen. These reflect the light from the projector, but not light from above, creating a brighter image that’s easier to see under almost any lighting conditions.

There’s a standard XGIMI Bluetooth remote in the box, which is the same model provided with the XGIMI Horizon Ultra smart projector. It’s a neat remote with responsive buttons with good feedback, and a built-in microphone for using voice commands.

Features

• 4K (XPR) resolution
• Dual light (laser and LED)
• Android TV

Although a brand-new projector, the XGIMI Aura 2 uses Android TV rather than the newer Google TV. That means that automated setup can only be done with an Android phone, not an iPhone, and, more crucially, that Netflix is not supported.

That seems like a strange choice, given the wider availability of Google TV, which supports Netflix natively. As it stands, you’re most likely going to have to buy a streaming stick that supports all of the apps you want, taking up one of those HDMI ports.

Going for the current Fire TV Cube could make sense, as it has an HDMI input on the rear, effectively giving you a spare input.

Once set up, what’s noticeable about this projector is that it has many of the same automated setup routines as the company’s smart projectors, including auto focus, auto keystone correction, and auto screen detection.

The upshot is that you can place this projector down, run through the configuration and have a perfectly square picture. That’s both good and bad, as the projector relies on these digital corrections, and doesn’t have adjustable feet.

Given that this projector is likely to be placed in one position and used instead of a TV, it makes sense to be able to adjust it manually to get a square picture. With the AWOL Vision LTV-3500 Pro, there are four adjustable feet, so the projector can be manually aligned with the screen, using digital keystone correction to finetune at the end.

Here, the Aura 2 doesn’t have adjustable feet. If your floor’s not straight, the unit you put it on sits at a slight angle, or your screen leans forward slightly, there’s nothing physically that you can do about it. Instead, the projector can adjust itself digitally, which results in less resolution being available for the final image.

In an ideal world, you would have both adjustable feet, and then the automatic adjustments for that final tweak.

As well as standard picture adjustments, the XGIMI Aura 2 has an option to adjust the projected image based on the wall colour.

There’s also a Wall flatness adaption feature that uses your phone’s camera to take a photo of the wall, adapting the projected image to cater for any irregularities. It works well enough, but wall corrections aren’t ideal and this is a device that is best used with a dedicated projector screen.

At 2300 ISO Lumens, the XGIMI Aura 2 has a brightness of roughly 2875 ANSI Lumens. That’s brighter than the Hisense PL1, but short of the LTV-3500 Pro’s 3500 ANSI Lumens and the Samsung Premiere 9‘s 3450 ANSI Lumens.

At this brightness, I found that the projector should be good to watch on all but the brightest of days.

By default, the projector is set to its highest brightness (10+), but this boost mode can be turned off to allow selectable brightness levels between 1 and 10. Of course, turning brightness boost off reduces the image brightness, but it also makes the projector quieter, running its fan at a lower speed.

As with the company’s Horizon Ultra projector, the XGIMI Aura 2 has a Dual Light lamp, combining RGB LED and Laser light sources, to give better, more natural colour reproduction while maintaining sharpness.

As with every other 4K DLP projector I’ve reviewed, this one has a 0.47-inch DMD chip, which has a native resolution of 1920 x 1080. Using XPR, the chip shifts four times per second, to build up a 4K image, locking the projector to 60Hz.

We’re now at the point where XPR is so mature that the quality is spot-on, and I defy anyone to tell the difference between this and a ‘true’ 4K image.

Standards support is brilliant on this projector. Dolby Vision is supported, as is the rival IMAX Enhanced (well, it will be when the firmware update comes out). And, there’s support for Dolby Atmos via the speakers.

There’s a wide range of picture adjustments available, and default image modes for Standard, TV, Movie, Sport, Brilliant, Custom and High Power with controls to adjust brightness, contrast, saturation, sharpness, gamma, and colour temperature, as well as choosing the colour space you want to use (DCI-P3 is the default, with the projector rated to cover 99% of the colour space).

There’s control over motion compensation, too. I’d normally say to turn this off, but as the XPR technology locks the 4K image to 60Hz, having a low level of motion compensation is handy.

Performance

• Sharp image
• Rich, warm colours
• Doesn’t quite have the ‘punch’ of brighter projectors
• Loud and clear audio
• Room filling sound

As I’d hope for a high-end projector, the XGIMI Aura 2 has Dolby Vision support. As Dolby Vision uses dynamic metadata, each scene has specific HDR information; with HDR10, HDR is defined across the entire film or TV show, so you don’t get the same range of detail in each scene.

IMAX Enhanced is coming with a firmware update later in the year, which will be supported by some streaming services, such as Disney+.

Image quality is generally excellent, although it’s worth using this projector with an ALR screen to improve contrast and black levels, and to reduce the impact from ambient light sources. At full brightness, used with an ALR screen, the Aura 2 is suitable to use in most light situations.

However, I did find that the image got washed out when faced with open blinds and the sun streaming through the front window; the brighter AWOL Vision LTV-3500 Pro coped better, as you can see from the shot below (XGIMI left, AWOL Vision right)

Bright, colourful vibrant scenes are a joy to watch, such as the opening forest scene in Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes. Natural colours and sharpness help bring it alive.

HDR content looks great, too. There’s detail through the frame when watching the funeral scene in Apes, although the contrast between the fire and the shadows isn’t as great here as it is with the AWOL Vision LTV-3500 Pro.

Similarly, brighter scenes don’t have quite the eye-searing pop that the brighter LTV-3500 Pro can deliver.

With Dolby Vision, the XGIMI Aura 2 can reproduce detail across a scene. Watching Guardians of the Galaxy 3, the scene where the High Evolutionary watches a child in a wheel, you get the detail right to the back of the image, even if the lights on the wheel don’t ‘pop’ as much as they do with a brighter projector.

Dark scenes are rendered beautifully, though. The GoT3 scenes with Rocket and his friends look great, and it’s easy to see what’s going on. Likewise, the opening of the new Apes film shows detail right across the baby chimp’s face.

As a likely TV replacement, you can’t always get the best input source, but the Aura 2 handles standard defintion footage as well as can be expected. Upscaling removes some of the fuzziness from the image, making low-resolution footage look as good as can be expected.

Motion handling is also up there with the best, whether that’s with wide panning shots or a fast-paced football game, the Aura 2 handles motion without judder.

DTS Virtual:X and Dolby Atmos are supported, with the projector having four 15W speakers. Surround sound is virtual, produced by processing. I found that there’s a general sense of being surrounded by sound, but lacks the positionality that discrete speakers can produce.

Sound is very good, with clear speech and a nice level of bass that adds warmth to music and some impact to special effects, even if there’s not quite the rumble that a subwoofer would give. I’d happily watch a film with just the projector’s speakers, although adding a full surround system is better.

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