Dual iris laser projector offers theater blacks

No matter how many lumens a home projector throws at the wall, dark scenes still go gray. But XGIMI thinks a pair of mechanical irises can change that, and a fresh Kickstarter campaign suggests that thousands of home cinema enthusiasts are willing to bet on it.

The Titan Noir series centers on what XGIMI calls the Dual Intelligent Iris System, two physical iris modules that adjust continuously based on scene content. Unlike digital dimming, which simply darkens the whole image in software, these irises act directly on the light path before it reaches the lens, the same basic principle used in commercial cinema projectors for decades. The claimed result is a native contrast ratio of 10,000:1 on the top-end model, a meaningful improvement over typical home projectors, though still short of the pixel-level black control of an OLED TV.

All three models share the same triple-laser RGB engine design covering 110% of the BT.2020 color space (the wide-gamut standard used in professional streaming and broadcast mastering), with Dolby Vision, HDR10+ and IMAX Enhanced support. A 15-element lens system stores up to five focus positions, enabling quick switching between standard 16:9 widescreen and the wider 2.35:1 cinemascope format without manual adjustment.

XGIMI has also incorporated Anti-RBE technology to reduce the “rainbow effect” – the brief colored flickers that single-chip DLP projectors can produce by cycling through red, blue and green light sequentially, which some viewers find fatiguing over long sessions. The imaging chip is Texas Instruments’ new SST DMD, built for higher thermal loads. For gaming, the projector targets 1-ms input lag and 240 Hz at 1080p, with AMD FreeSync (a technology that synchronizes a display’s refresh rate with the graphics engine to reduce image tearing) and compatibility with PS5, Xbox, Nintendo Switch and cloud platforms, on screens up to 300 inches diagonally.

XGIMI

The Titan Noir Max enters a market that isn’t short of ambition. Its most direct rival is the Valerion Visionmaster Max, a premium 4K long-throw projector with a 15,000:1 dynamic contrast, though that drops to 4,000:1 native. Further up the price ladder sits Sony’s XW6100ES, a native 4K laser projector used as a reference point for image accuracy in this tier. Hisense competes with both the PX3-PRO and the newer XR10, the latter shown at CES 2026 in the same breath as the Titan Noir. XGIMI is also competing against itself, its own Horizon 20 Max sits just below the Titan Noir series in current rankings.

Kickstarter pledges start at US$2,499 for the base Titan Noir (4,800 ISO lumens, 7,000:1 native contrast), $2,699 for the Pro (6,000 lumens, 8,000:1 native), and $2,999 for the flagship Max (7,000 lumens, 10,000:1 native). Retail prices are set at $3,999, $4,999 and $5,999 respectively, a discount of 37% to 50% for early backers. All three carry an estimated delivery of June 2026.

XGIMI

The company is also offering the Ascend as part of the campaign goodies, a motorized 100-inch screen that rises from the floor synchronized with the projector’s power-on. It packages an eight-speaker, 170-watt Dolby Atmos system tuned by Harman Kardon and claims to reduce laser speckle – the grainy shimmer coherent light can cast on diffuse surfaces – by over 92%. The Ascend is available for $1,299 standalone, or bundled with the Max for $3,999, with an estimated delivery of September 2026.

At this point we’d generally advise caution when backing crowdfunding campaigns. Indeed, XGIMI flags three risk factors that could spoil the party: the manufacturing precision required by the dual iris system, international shipping and customs complexity, and potential supply chain delays.

However, for a company with XGIMI’s infrastructure and track record, the odds of delivery are better than most crowdfunding projects. It’s claimed the number-one position in the global home projector market for two consecutive years, with more than seven million units sold across 100-plus countries. Still, it’s not the same as ordering direct from a webshop so keep that in mind if you choose to add your name to the list of backers.

Source: Kickstarter

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