The XGIMI AURA 2 is a 4k HDR ultra-short-throw (UST) projector. It's capable of projecting on large surfaces from a very short distance: it projects a 90" image at a distance of 5.4" and up to 150" at 15.3". It's a big projector but comes with full auto keystone technology and autofocus, making it quick to install. The projector utilizes a dual LED and laser light source, and is rated to last at least 20,000 hours. It comes with Android TV 11, with Chromecast and Magicast built in, alongside three HDMI ports. One of its HDMI ports doubles as an eARC port, with support for DTS and Dolby advanced audio formats. It also supports Dolby Vision and is IMAX Enhanced-certified. Finally, it has a 60W Dolby Atmos Harman/Kardon sound system.
Our Verdict
The XGIMI AURA 2 is a great projector for watching movies. It's bright enough for rooms with a few lights and bright enough to project somewhat vibrant colors. Its contrast is great, so it excels in darker rooms. It's a fully featured projector with Dolby Vision, IMAX Enhanced certification, and Dolby Atmos support. It's also very accurate right out of the box, requiring few adjustments for an accurate image.
Great peak brightness, with bright and punchy colors.
Great contrast for a solid dark room experience.
Ultra-short-throw capabilities, so you can place it very close to the wall or screen.
Packed with features, including Dolby Vision support.
Excellent pre-calibration accuracy.
The XGIMI AURA 2 is a good living-room gaming UST. Brightness is quite high for its class, and the LED-laser light source gives games very saturated color, so the image holds up even when some lights are on. The contrast is great and looks fantastic in a dimly lit room. The projector is very accurate out of the box, so you don't need to get it calibrated if you care about your games looking as the artists intended. Unfortunately, the unit is limited to 60Hz, so it doesn't offer high-refresh modes to further reduce latency. Thankfully, latency is satisfactory at 60Hz; enough for slower game genres, but look elsewhere if you want to play fast-paced or competitive titles.
Great peak brightness, with bright and punchy colors.
Great contrast for a solid dark room experience.
Ultra-short-throw capabilities, so you can place it very close to the wall or screen.
Packed with features, including Dolby Vision support.
Excellent pre-calibration accuracy.
No high refresh rate support; limited to 1080p or 4k @ 60Hz.
The XGIMI AURA 2 is a bright projector that holds up well in living rooms and other moderately lit spaces. It puts out plenty of light for a large 100" image, and its brightness is very uniform, so you don't see obvious hot spots or dim corners. Colors stay punchy as long as you keep direct sunlight off the screen, and in a dark room, it has more than enough output to make highlights stand out.
Bright enough for most living rooms.
Very uniform image with no obvious hot spots.
Still needs some light control; not ideal for very bright, sun-filled rooms.
Contrast is a strength of the XGIMI AURA 2. In a dark room, it delivers deep, satisfying blacks, so movies and TV shows have good depth and separation between bright highlights and darker backgrounds. It maintains this strong performance in most real-world scenes, although in the very darkest content, the black floor is still slightly raised, so shadows don't look quite as inky as on the very best home-theater projectors.
Deep blacks in dark rooms.
Strong contrast in most real-world scenes, giving good image depth.
Changelog
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Updated Jan 21, 2026:
We mentioned the newly reviewed Hisense PT1 in the Color Gamut section of this review.
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Updated Jan 14, 2026:
We've modified the text in our Brightness and Native Contrast text boxes as a result of our latest test bench, and added a Sequential Contrast test. We've also added Brightness and Contrast performance usages in the Verdict section.
- Updated Jan 14, 2026: We've converted the review to Test Bench 0.11, which renames our Contrast test to Native Contrast, and adds a Sequential Contrast test box. We also added new Brightness and Contrast performance usages in Our Verdict. See the 0.11 changelog.
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Updated Oct 03, 2025:
We made some minor adjustments before our official TBU 0.10 launch.
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Differences Between Sizes And Variants
We bought and tested the XGIMI AURA 2, which succeeds the XGIMI AURA. While they have similar feature sets, the AURA 2 is brighter, has more HDR formats, and has a more modern feature set. The table below shows the primary differences between the two units.
| Model | Luminance (Lumens) | HDR Formats | Light Source | Bluetooth | Smart OS | Auto Keystone/Autofocus |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AURA 2 | 2400 | HDR10, Dolby Vision, IMAX Enhanced | LED + Laser | 5.2/BLE | Android TV 11 | Yes |
| AURA | 1800 | HDR10 | Laser | 5.0 | Android TV 10 | No |
Our unit was manufactured in August 2024.
Popular Projector Comparisons
The XGIMI AURA 2 is a great ultra-short-throw (UST) projector and a clear improvement over its predecessor, the XGIMI AURA, thanks to its higher brightness and more accurate picture. It's still expensive, but it's one of the stronger UST options in its class, with the main alternative being the Hisense PX3-PRO. The Hisense has a wider color gamut and more complete gaming features, but the XGIMI usually sells for less and is an excellent choice if you're mostly planning to watch movies.
Check out our recommendations for the best 4k projectors, the best projectors for home theater, and the best short-throw projectors. If you'd prefer to shop for a cheaper product, look up the best projectors under $1,000 instead.
The Hisense PX3-PRO and XGIMI AURA 2 are closely matched. The XGIMI is a bit brighter and far more accurate out of the box, but the Hisense has a much wider color gamut. While they both have a ton of features, the Hisense has more features for gamers, alongside an option to game at high refresh rates. Still, the XGIMI's input lag is far lower at 60Hz than the Hisense, giving it the edge for console gaming at lower refresh rates.
The XGIMI AURA 2 is better than the Formovie THEATER. The XGIMI is brighter and is far more accurate out of the box. It's also smaller than the Formovie and has full auto keystone and autofocus support, making it easier to move from room to room.
It's very close, but the XGIMI Horizon S Max is a bit better than the XGIMI AURA 2. They're very similar in image quality, but the Max has the edge in colors. Its biggest advantage over the AURA 2, however, is in portability: the AURA 2 is a massive unit, while the Max is smaller and has a fully rotating stand.
The XGIMI AURA 2 and NexiGo Aurora Pro are closely matched. While the XGIMI is a bit better overall, the NexiGo is an attractive alternative for those who prioritize image pop over accuracy; its pre-calibration accuracy is far worse than the XGIMI, but it has a far wider color gamut. Still, the XGIMI is brighter, and has a fully functioning smart OS. In contrast, the NexiGo's smart OS is barebones, and the unit requires a smart dongle if you want to access any streaming apps.
We've independently bought and tested over 70 projectors, and we've published all the detailed results for each so you can decide which one to buy. These have all been tested under the same standardized methodology, allowing you to compare them side by side. We still have all these projects in our lab so we can continually go back and compare them to ensure our reviews are still accurate. All our test methodology is also public on our website, so you can validate the results yourself.
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Test Results
This projector's peak brightness is great. It's bright enough to look punchy on a big screen and holds up well in moderately lit rooms, especially if you control direct sunlight. Brightness uniformity is excellent, with only a small difference between the center and the corners, so you don't see obvious hot spots or vignetting. White and color light output are also very closely matched, which helps colors stay vivid instead of washing out. It's a clear improvement over the XGIMI AURA.
In the table, you can see that all picture modes sit in the same general brightness range, with 'High Power' being the brightest. We used the 'Custom' Picture Mode for our calibration.
| Picture Mode | WLO | CLO |
|---|---|---|
| Standard | 1644 lm | 1661 lm |
| TV | 1638 lm | 1639 lm |
| Movie | 1558 lm | 1574 lm |
| Sports | 1642 lm | 1644 lm |
| Brilliant | 1478 lm | 1479 lm |
| High Power | 2090 lm | 2102 lm |
The XGIMI AURA 2 has great native contrast, which translates into deep blacks in a dark room. In our near-black and very dark test scenes, the projector doesn't perform quite as well as it does with brighter content, but letterbox bars and night scenes look convincingly dark. As scenes become brighter, the contrast gradually decreases, but it remains strong enough that highlights still stand out clearly against mid-tone backgrounds.
Overall, its contrast performance is a clear step up from the original XGIMI AURA.
Our XGIMI AURA 2's pre-calibration accuracy is excellent in the 'Custom: Recommended' Picture Mode, with Color Temperature set to 'Warm' and Picture Color Temperature set to 'Standard.' Blues and greens are slightly overrepresented in most whites, and reds are slightly underrepresented in near blacks and bright whites, resulting in an overly cool color temperature; however, it's still close to the 6,500K target. As for gamma, the projector is too dark in darker scenes but is too bright in brighter ones. Color accuracy is also great, although all colors have minor color mapping issues.
The unit has a 'Professional Grade Color Accuracy' feature, but it reduces the projector's max brightness by about 50 nits. On our unit, the 'Custom' Recommended' Picture Mode was slightly more accurate while also being brighter.
After calibration, the XGIMI AURA 2 projector's accuracy is almost identical to its pre-calibration state. Still, the unit's color temperature is now exactly on target, so it's still an improvement overall.
The XGIMI AURA 2 has a very good color gamut. It covers most of the Rec. 709 color space used with SDR content with minimal color deviations. It also does a decent job with the wider Rec. 2020 color space, although here, most colors are off-target, especially greens, cyans, and purples. If you're looking for a wider color gamut, especially in the Rec. 2020 color space, check out the AWOL Vision LTV-3000 Pro or Hisense PT1 instead.
The XGIMI AURA 2 is a dual light source projector, using both an LED lamp and lasers. The projector's light source is rated to last for at least 20,000 hours. It's an ultra-short-throw (UST) projector, capable of projecting a 90" screen at a distance of 5.4" up to a 150" screen at a distance of 15.3". The projector doesn't do true 4k, as it uses pixel shifting to create a higher-resolution image. This offers better quality than 1080p but doesn't look as good as native 4k.
The SPD confirms a hybrid LED + laser engine: narrow laser spikes (blue/red) with a broader green "LED hump." In practice, you get vivid primaries, long light-source life, and stable color without lamp swaps, with less speckle than pure-laser designs.
This is an ultra-short-throw model with fixed optics and autofocus/auto-keystone. There's no lens shift. Here are a few common throw distances:
- 80″ → ~12.6"
- 90″ → ~14.1"
- 100″ → ~15.7"
- 120″ → ~18.8"
- 150″ → ~23.6"
The XGIMI AURA 2 projector isn't meant to be portable, as it doesn't have an integrated battery. It's also big and heavy, although not nearly as much as its predecessor, the XGIMI AURA. Unlike its predecessor, this projector has full auto keystone and autofocus, simplifying the setup process.
The AURA 2 is a big, hefty unit. If you'd prefer something smaller, consider the XGIMI Horizon S Max instead.
Fan noise is well-controlled for a bright UST. In normal viewing, it's easy to mask with a soundbar or AVR.
The projector has three HDMI ports, one of which doubles as the eARC port. It also has Bluetooth 5.2/BLE and Wi-Fi 6 support.
The projector supports a ton of resolutions at 60Hz, but it unfortunately doesn't support 120Hz or more at any resolution, so it's not optimal for fast-paced gaming.
With Game Mode and Ultra Low Latency enabled, the input lag is sufficiently low for a satisfactory gaming experience with most games, except for those that require fast-paced action. Unfortunately, the projector doesn't support faster refresh rates, so there's no way to further reduce the input lag for competitive titles.
The projector passes through a ton of different audio formats, although unfortunately, DTS-HD MA/DTS:X aren't supported over eARC on this unit, which is a bummer as they're often used as the audio tracks on a lot of Ultra HD discs. Thankfully, ARC and optical carry legacy Dolby Digital and DTS 5.1.
