I've reviewed a lot of Xgimi projectors over the years, and at this point I'll just say it: I'm a fan. Their remote is my favorite in the category. It's well laid out, backlit, and doesn't try to be a touchpad. Their ISA tech (the auto-everything setup that handles focus, keystone, and screen fit) has saved me from a lot of stepladder yoga. My daily driver is an Aura2 UST. It lives in my living room and earns its keep every night.
Last year I tested the original Titan, and it was one of those reviews where I had to keep checking my notes because I couldn't believe what I was seeing. Sheer power. Genuinely jaw-dropping for what Xgimi had been shipping up to that point. The catch was that I couldn't quite recommend it to most people. It was overkill. Too big for a typical room, too bright for a typical screen, and priced where you started asking why you weren't just buying a dedicated cinema projector instead.
Then the Titan Noir Max walked in.
This isn't "original Titan with the dial turned to 11." It's a deliberate redesign that addresses almost every quality-of-life complaint about the original. New optical engine. New imaging chip. A dual iris system I'll explain in a minute. Refined optics, and a clear philosophical pivot from "lifestyle projector that grew up" to "actual home theater instrument." At $2,799 on Kickstarter (or $5,999 MSRP), it's gunning directly for Epson's LS12000, JVC's NZ500, and Valerion's VisionMaster Max. That's heavyweight territory.
So I did what I always do. I tortured it. I set it up in the worst possible scenario: noon viewing, in Florida, with a motorized drop-down screen and a massive sliding glass window directly behind it. The kind of setup that makes most projector reviewers nervous. Then I spent weeks watching everything from NFL games to dark sci-fi to HDR demo content on it, in every lighting condition my house could throw at it.
Short version: this is the first reasonably priced home projector I've tested that genuinely handles both daytime and dedicated dark-room viewing without compromise. Long version: keep reading.
The Noir Max looks like what it is, a piece of serious home theater gear that doesn't apologize for taking up space. The chassis is silver-grey with a horizontal metal grille across the front, and there's a gold IMAX Enhanced logo on the Max specifically (the Pro and base models get silver). It's a small detail, but the gold logo is Xgimi's way of telling you which one is the flagship without putting "FLAGSHIP" in 40-point font.
It weighs about 17.8 pounds. You feel it when you pick it up. This is not a "grab it off the shelf and toss it in your bag" projector. It's the kind of thing you install once and leave alone. Four height-adjustable metal feet handle tabletop placement, and they come off cleanly if you're going ceiling-mounted. There's no tripod thread underneath, which is fine because nobody is putting this on a tripod.
One thing worth flagging for anyone planning a built-in installation: the ventilation exhausts out the bottom of the chassis. Those metal feet aren't decorative. They exist to let the projector breathe. If you set this flat on a shelf or in a cabinet without clearance, you're going to choke it. Xgimi sells an optional ceiling mount (with the power supply tucked inside it, which is a nice touch) and a floor stand. Honestly either is a smart buy depending on your room.
The Max-exclusive premium hardshell carrying case is included, and it's actually nice. Molded interior, sturdy latches, the kind of thing you'd want if you were demoing this at a custom installer's showroom. For a home buyer it's a bit of a flex, but at this price tier I'll take it over not having it.
Now, the remote. I've already given away how I feel about Xgimi's remotes. The Noir Max ships with a Bluetooth backlit unit that has dedicated buttons for the picture presets (Standard, Movie, Vivid, TV), which is a real improvement. Being able to flip directly from a calibrated cinema mode to a punchier sports mode without diving into menus is one of those small wins that adds up over months of use. Not every button on the remote is backlit, which is mildly annoying in a fully dark room, but you learn the layout quickly.
The whole design language here says "I am a dedicated theater piece." That matters because it tells you something about Xgimi's intent. The Horizon line is the living-room family, with gimbal mounts, lifestyle aesthetics, and Google TV baked in. The Noir line is the dark-room family. Different tools for different jobs.
This is where the Noir Max stops being a spec-bump and starts being a different kind of projector. There's one feature you need to understand before anything else makes sense, so let me start there.
Every projector has the same fundamental problem: the brighter you make it, the harder it is to produce deep blacks. Bright light bouncing around inside the lens assembly, scattering off the screen, hitting the walls and coming back, all of it raises the floor of what "black" can look like. This is why traditional dark-room cinema projectors (JVC, Sony) are not very bright. They sacrifice lumens to get the inky black levels cinephiles obsess over.
The Noir Max says: why not both?
Inside the projector are two physical iris modules, basically tiny mechanical apertures, like the iris in a camera lens. One sits in the imaging path (controlling contrast and shadow depth) and one sits in the illumination path (controlling raw light flux). You can set them manually across five stops (f/2.0 to f/7.0), or let the dynamic mode physically adjust them in real time as scene content changes.
Why this matters: most projectors that claim "dynamic contrast" are doing it digitally, dimming the image in software. The Noir Max is doing it optically, with actual moving parts. When a dark scene comes on, the iris narrows, less light makes it through the optical path, and blacks genuinely get darker, not "darker because the LCD panel is being told to lie about it." Combined with Xgimi's image processing (they call it DBLE, for Dynamic Black Level Enhancement), the claimed dynamic contrast is 100,000:1.
The practical impact is that the Noir Max can produce 7,000 lumens of headline brightness and still deliver dark-room-class black levels, by trading them against each other depending on what you're watching. It's the most important feature in the entire projector, and it's the thing that earns the price tag.
Under the hood, the Noir Max uses a triple RGB laser light source. Three separate lasers for red, green, and blue, with 50 individual laser chips (vs 40 on the Pro and 30 on the base). No color wheel, no phosphor conversion, which means no inherent rainbow effect and a much wider color gamut. Xgimi claims 110% BT.2020 coverage, which is bonkers. Most TVs don't get close to that.
The DMD (the chip that actually creates the image) is Texas Instruments' new 0.47" SST chip, which replaces the older TRP design that powered the original Titan. SST stands for Super-Structure Technology, and the short version is that it handles higher power densities without overheating, which is what makes the 7,000 ISO lumen rating possible in the first place.
One honest caveat: this is a pixel-shifted 4K projector, not a native 4K projector. The chip is 1080p, and it shifts the image diagonally fast enough that you perceive 4K resolution. This is industry-standard at this price point. Epson and BenQ do the same thing. If you're cross-shopping a JVC NZ500 or Sony XW5000ES, those are true native 4K with three-chip LCoS panels. In practice, I couldn't tell the difference at normal viewing distance on a 120"+ screen, but I want to be upfront about it.
Dolby Vision. HDR10+. IMAX Enhanced. Standard HDR10. HLG. Filmmaker Mode. Dynamic Tone Mapping. The Noir Max supports every meaningful HDR format on the market, which is genuinely rare at any price. Epson, JVC, and Sony all skip Dolby Vision on most of their projectors. If you watch a lot of streaming content (Netflix DV, Apple TV+ DV, Disney+ IMAX Enhanced), this matters a lot.
The X-Master Red Ring Lens Pro is a 15-element all-glass design with vacuum-coated layers, shared with the Horizon 20 Max and Pro. It gives you a 0.98 to 2.0:1 throw ratio, which is one of the widest zoom ranges in its class, plus ±130% vertical and ±50% horizontal lens shift. Translation: you can put this projector in a lot of different places and still hit your screen cleanly.
Lens Memory (the feature that lets you save zoom/shift settings for different aspect ratios, useful if you have a 2.35:1 scope screen) is promised via a future OTA update but isn't active at launch. If you're a scope-screen owner, factor that in.
1ms input lag at 1080p/240Hz, around 3ms at 4K/60Hz, VRR, ALLM, three HDMI ports with one eARC for audio passthrough. These aren't checkbox specs. The Noir Max is genuinely fast enough for serious gaming on a giant screen.
Two 12W Harman Kardon speakers with DTS Virtual:X. I'll cover what they sound like in the performance section.
The Noir Max ships without a consumer operating system. No Google TV, no Android TV, no built-in Netflix or Disney+. You need an external streamer, Apple TV, Nvidia Shield, whatever you prefer. I'll get into why I think this is the projector's one real downside, but I want to flag it now because it affects how you set the thing up.
If you've used a Xgimi projector before, you know what to expect. Their ISA auto-setup tech is the best in the business. Power it on, point it roughly at your screen, and it handles focus, keystone correction, screen edge detection, and obstacle avoidance in about 15 seconds. I've never had it fail me, and the Noir Max is no exception.
That said, and this is important, manual placement matters more on this projector than on a Horizon or an Aura. The Noir Max is heavy, it ventilates from underneath, and you're going to want it locked into one position. Use the ISA for fine-tuning, but plan your install properly.
My setup is unconventional and I'll explain why. I'm running the Noir Max onto a 100" UST screen. Yes, a UST-coded screen with a long-throw projector. The reason is the ambient light rejection. UST screens are designed to reject light coming from above and the sides (because their intended projectors sit on the floor), and that ALR layer also happens to help enormously with daytime viewing on any projector. The trade-off is a slightly narrower viewing cone, but for a single seating position aimed straight at the screen, it's a great match.
Behind that screen is a motorized drop-down mechanism, and behind that is a massive sliding glass window facing the Florida sun. This is the kind of setup that would make most projectors give up before lunch. I wanted to know if the Noir Max could actually do it.
A quick practical note on screen sizes: the Noir Max is genuinely too bright for a 100" screen at default settings. I've had to ride the iris and laser level controls to bring it down to something my eyes can tolerate in a dark room. The sweet spot for this projector is 150"–200". Anything smaller and you're paying for performance you'll struggle to use. If your screen tops out around 120", the Noir Pro or the base Noir would probably serve you better and save you money.
This brings me to the single most important practical concept for anyone considering this projector.
The Noir Max gives you two main controls for taming or unleashing brightness: the laser power level (1 to 10, plus a "Boost" mode) and the iris setting (f/2.0 to f/7.0). They interact, and they trade off against each other in ways you need to understand.
Iris wide open (f/2.0) plus high laser level gives you maximum brightness and lower native contrast. That's what you want for daytime viewing or sports with friends over. Iris narrow (f/5.5 to f/7.0) plus moderate laser level gives you lower brightness and much higher native contrast. That's what you want for dedicated dark-room cinema.
Real-world numbers from independent measurements: at iris 2 the projector pushes around 4,000 calibrated lumens with about 1,400:1 native contrast. At iris 5.5, brightness drops to around 1,600 lumens but contrast jumps to over 5,000:1. The dynamic mode tries to find the right balance automatically and does a surprisingly good job, but if you have specific viewing scenarios you can lock in manual presets and switch between them with the remote.
Once you understand this, that brightness and blacks are being actively traded against each other in real time, the whole projector starts to make sense. And once you set it up properly, the daily experience is just: pick your scenario, hit the preset, watch the movie.
Last thing on setup: because there's no built-in OS, plan on plugging in an external streamer from day one. I used an Apple TV 4K for most of my testing. That means two remotes, which I have feelings about that I'll save for the end.
Before I get into what I actually saw, I want to clear up a misconception that comes up in every projector conversation I've ever had.
Most people think more lumens is always better. It isn't. And it isn't, in different ways, depending on what you're doing.
For dark-room viewing, there is a point, relative to your screen size, where adding more brightness stops helping and starts hurting. Too many lumens on a 100" screen in a dark room and you get eye fatigue, washed-out blacks (because all that extra light is bouncing around your room and coming back), and an image that feels harsh rather than cinematic. Dedicated cinema projectors are not very bright on purpose. They're tuned for darkness.
But daytime viewing? Sunday afternoon with the game on and people over? You cannot have enough lumens. Every additional lumen helps. Every drawn curtain you don't have to close is a win. This is the use case where projectors have historically failed people. They were either bright enough for daytime and bad in dark rooms, or great in dark rooms and unwatchable in daytime.
The whole point of the Noir Max is that the dual iris system lets you have both. So that's how I tested it.
I watched a full NFL game on a Sunday afternoon. Sliding glass window behind the screen, sun coming in at the kind of angle Florida specializes in. Some of the window was shaded by the screen itself, but plenty of light was bouncing into the room from all directions. Living room conditions, not a theater.
It worked. Genuinely worked. Not "tolerable" or "watchable if you squint." Actually good.
Reds were deep and saturated. The team uniforms popped the way they should. Skin tones on the broadcast crew looked correct, not pushed-warm, not pushed-magenta, just right. The grass on the field had that vivid, slightly-too-green look that real outdoor HD broadcasts have. Detail held up well. You could read jersey numbers across the field, and the overlay graphics (down-and-distance, score bug) were crisp and legible. Black levels in the daytime aren't going to be JVC-in-a-batcave deep, obviously. There's too much ambient light for that. But my UST screen's ambient-light rejection did real work, and the iris-wide-open laser-cranked-up setting gave me enough punch that the image still felt vibrant rather than washed.
This is the first projector I've reviewed where I'd genuinely tell someone "yes, you can host NFL Sunday on this without closing every blind in the room." That's a new sentence for me to say about a projector.
I also tested a bright daytime movie (a kids' animated film for variety), and color volume was the standout. The cartoon palette looked like a TV, not like the muted color you usually get from projectors in ambient light. The Noir Max's 110% BT.2020 gamut and triple RGB laser are doing real work here.
I waited for sundown and dropped the iris to 4 and then 5.5 to see what the Noir Max could do in cinema mode.
Brilliant. Quietly, seriously brilliant. The dynamic iris is doing exactly what it's supposed to do. When a dark scene comes on, you can actually see the iris work (there's a faint mechanical sound if you're listening for it, but nothing audible from normal seating), and the blacks deepen visibly. I watched several reference HDR scenes I know well, including space sequences with starfields, dimly-lit interiors, the kinds of content that exposes every weakness in lesser projectors, and the Noir Max held up.
Black levels rival projectors costing several times more. Shadow detail is layered and clean, not crushed. Color in ISF Night mode is among the most accurate I've measured on a Xgimi product, with sub-ΔE 2 numbers in the critical primary colors. HDR tone mapping handles highlights without clipping, and Dolby Vision content (which is a real differentiator vs Epson, JVC, and Sony at this price) looks rich and properly balanced.
Without the dynamic iris, the Noir Max would honestly be too bright for serious dark-room cinema work. 7,000 lumens of marketing spec, even 4,000 lumens calibrated, is way too much light for a typical dark room. The iris is what makes this projector work for both worlds. It's the upgrade that makes the rest of the upgrades meaningful.
24fps cinema content plays smoothly without judder. I leave MEMC off for movies. On Low for sports it cleans up motion without introducing the "soap opera effect." Medium is fine for live action. High introduces visible artifacts on fast pans, so skip it.
Gaming is legitimately strong. ALLM kicks in automatically, the input lag is competitive with mid-tier gaming monitors at 1080p/240Hz, and on a 150" screen the experience is on a different planet from playing on a TV. I'm not a hardcore competitive gamer, but I played enough on this to know it would satisfy people who are.
Detail is impressive given the pixel-shifted 4K. The X-Master lens is sharp corner-to-corner. Text overlays are crisp without that slightly-fuzzy look that lesser projectors get on small fonts.
The built-in 2×12W Harman Kardon speakers with DTS Virtual:X are perfectly fine. If you imagine zooming out and using this projector on a coffee table six feet from a smaller screen, you'd genuinely enjoy the sound quality. Clear dialogue, decent stereo separation, no harshness. What you'd crave is some real low-end rumble. There just isn't enough cabinet for serious bass.
Here's the thing though: most people buying a Noir Max are going to mount it behind their seating position, on a ceiling mount or a high shelf, and use it with a proper home theater audio system over HDMI eARC. That's how this projector is designed to live. The internal speakers are a backup, not a plan. If you're using them as your primary audio, you're probably the wrong buyer for this projector anyway.
Xgimi's Anti-RBE technology works well. I'm moderately RBE-sensitive on some single-chip DLPs, and I didn't catch myself looking for it on the Noir Max. Operating noise is under 40 dB even at full laser power, and from a normal seating position you genuinely can't hear it. Boost mode is louder, but Boost mode introduces a green tint and weird black-level behavior, so don't use it.
Let's be honest about specs. The 7,000 ISO lumen figure is real but only achievable in Boost mode, which you shouldn't use because it looks bad. Calibrated in ISF Day mode with iris open, you're looking at around 4,000 lumens of usable, color-accurate output. That is still enormous. That is still more than enough for my Florida-sun-through-a-glass-window scenario. If you read "7,000 lumens" and expect that's what you'll get with a nice picture, you'll be disappointed. Plan for 4,000.
A handful of useful contrasts, not the whole field.
vs Xgimi Horizon 20 Max ($2,699): These look similar on paper but they're different tools. Horizon 20 Max is the living-room champion, with built-in Google TV, gimbal mount, and lifestyle design. The Noir Max is dark-room-first, even when (like me) you're forcing it to handle a living-room scenario with the right screen. Native contrast is 1,500:1 vs 10,000:1 with the iris. If your room has uncontrollable ambient light and you want a one-box experience, Horizon. Everything else, Noir Max.
vs Xgimi Titan (original, $3,999): The Noir Max is what the original Titan should have been from the start. Triple RGB laser instead of dual-laser phosphor. Dual iris instead of fixed aperture. Deeper blacks, wider color gamut, better HDR. At Kickstarter pricing, it's cheaper than the original ever was. If you were considering the original Titan, stop. Get this instead.
vs Epson Pro Cinema LS12000 ($4,999): This is the closest comparison and the toughest call at MSRP. Epson's 3LCD design means zero rainbow effect (huge for RBE-sensitive viewers), and they have decades of cinema-projector reputation. The Noir Max wins on brightness, Dolby Vision support (Epson skips it), gaming features, and dual-iris dynamic contrast. The LS12000 wins on long-term firmware maturity and the no-rainbow guarantee. At Kickstarter pricing the Noir Max wins this fight easily. At MSRP, it's a genuine choice and you should think about your own priorities.
vs JVC DLA-NZ500 ($6,499): JVC owns the deepest blacks in this price bracket, period. Native 4K LCoS, 40,000:1 native contrast, the kind of inky black floor that defines reference home cinema. But it's 2,000 lumens to the Noir Max's 4,000+ calibrated, no Dolby Vision, no real gaming chops, no IMAX Enhanced. If you have a true dedicated batcave and your entire viewing life is movies after dark, JVC. If you want one projector that handles cinema and sports and daytime use and gaming, Noir Max.
vs Valerion VisionMaster Max ($3,999): The closest spec-similar competitor. Valerion has Google TV built in (the Noir Max's biggest weakness), lens memory at launch, and a lower price. The Noir Max has more brightness, the dual iris, and stronger contrast in dark rooms. For 100"–130" rooms, the Valerion may be plenty. For 150"+ or true dual-purpose day/night use, the Noir Max takes it.
Here's what I keep coming back to.
The Xgimi Titan Noir Max is the first reasonably priced home projector I've tested that actually solves the daytime-versus-cinema problem. Not "is OK at one, terrible at the other." Genuinely good at both, because of one specific engineering decision (the dual iris system) that lets the same hardware deliver 4,000 calibrated lumens for a Sunday afternoon football game and category-leading black levels for a Saturday night movie. That's not a marketing claim. That's what I measured, and that's what I watched.
The original Titan was a brute. Impressive but impractical for most. The Noir Max is what happens when Xgimi takes that raw power and adds the engineering needed to actually make it livable. New SST imaging chip. Triple RGB laser with 50 chips. X-Master Red Ring optics. Dolby Vision and IMAX Enhanced and HDR10+ all supported. Anti-RBE that actually works. Gaming specs that are competitive with mid-tier monitors. The remote is still my favorite in the business, ISA setup is still class-leading, and the build quality finally feels like a flagship.
My one real complaint, and it's the only thing keeping me from calling this projector perfect, is the missing operating system. I understand why Xgimi made the choice. Bypassing Google TV's certification path gave them deeper hardware control and more freedom on the picture-processing side. I get it. But it cuts directly against Xgimi's biggest UX advantage. The Noir Max's remote is so good that the moment you have to pick up a second remote to launch Netflix, the experience takes a step backwards. I love the remote. I love not needing an extra piece of equipment. I wish this projector had Google TV.
That's it. That's the whole con list. One missing feature.
For everything else (picture quality, brightness without compromise, dark-room performance, HDR breadth, gaming, build, optics, color accuracy) the Noir Max delivers at a level that genuinely earns the price tag. At the Kickstarter price of $2,799, it's the easiest recommendation I've made in years for anyone with a real screen and an interest in projection. At $5,999 MSRP, you're now choosing between competing philosophies (the no-rainbow purity of Epson, the reference blacks of JVC, the same-price spec parity of Sony or BenQ), but the Noir Max earns its place on any serious shortlist.
Who's the right buyer? Anyone who watches projectors during the day. Anyone who hosts NFL Sunday and wants more than a 65" TV. Anyone with a dedicated dark room who want to approach 200" territory. Anyone upgrading from the original Titan, an older Epson 5040/6040, or any lamp-based projector. This is a generational leap.
Who isn't? Sub-100" buyers (too much projector, get the Pro or base). Anyone who refuses to use an external streamer. Pure batcave cinephiles for whom the JVC black floor is non-negotiable.
For everyone else, the Titan Noir Max is the rare projector that makes "watch the game in a sunny room at noon" a real answer instead of a polite shrug. It earns its Editor's Choice award without breaking a sweat. At Kickstarter pricing, it's the kind of value disruption that resets expectations for the entire category.
Go put a 150" screen on your wall. You'll thank me.
Tested with a 100" UST screen, Roku 4K. Review unit provided by Xgimi.
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