The MoGo 4 Laser makes a strong case for paying a premium for a mini projector if you're all about image quality. Xgimi's latest MoGo flagship model ($799 list) is a not-quite-3-pound, 1080p mini projector that has a lot in common with the MoGo 3 Pro. More important, it has everything we like about its less expensive sibling, while adding a built-in battery, higher brightness, and a wider color gamut (range of colors). All that is more than enough to make it a tempting alternative despite the higher price. It's also enough to make the MoGo 4 Laser our new Editors' Choice pick for a high-end mini projector, replacing both the Xgimi Halo+, our previous top pick for high brightness, and the Anker Nebula Capsule 3 Laser, our previous top pick for image quality.

Design: Compact, Capable, and Battery-Backed

Like much of its competition, the MoGo 4 Laser is designed around a native 960-by-540-pixel DLP chip; that chip leverages TI's XPR fast-switch pixel shifting to boost the on-screen resolution to 1,920 by 1,080. It also offers two key differences from the MoGo 3 Pro. It adds a built-in battery, and, instead of LEDs, it uses a tri-color laser light source, which increases the color gamut to boost image quality. Xgimi rates the gamut at 110% of BT.2020 (a.k.a. REC.2020), the standard for 4K UHD projectors and TVs, and it rates the laser life at 20,000 hours.

Physically, the projector has the same overall shape as a shorter-than-typical insulated water bottle, measuring 8.2 inches high and 3.8 inches in diameter. The projector itself sits on a base, while a vertical arm along the side connects the two, adding about half an inch to the diameter over the span of about an inch. The connecting arm lets you aim the projector at any angle up or down over 360 degrees, while the 2.9-pound weight makes it easy to adjust on the horizontal axis and move closer to or farther from whatever you're using as a screen to adjust image size.

(Credit: M. David Stone)

As shipped, the projector comes with a mini remote attached to the side, with a few critical control buttons, letting it serve as a semi-attached control panel. You can also remove it and use it as a second remote along with the separate full-size version.

When the lens is facing straight down, the projector can move up or down on the arm by about a half inch. The highest position lets the bottom edge just clear the base when the projector is rotated. In the lowest position, the base serves as a lens cover, while the arm covers the one HDMI port and the USB Type-A port. The only other connector is a USB Type-C port—used for power only—180 degrees around the circumference, just above the power button. For streaming, Xgimi includes fully integrated Google TV, with Wi-Fi as the only option for connecting to your network. In addition, you get support for mirroring using DLNA or Google Cast, from sources also connected to the network.

(Credit: M. David Stone)

One option you may want to consider with this projector is the $129 PowerBase Stand, which is similar to the one we strongly suggested for the MoGo 3 Pro. Unlike the MoGo 3 Pro, the MoGo 4 Laser has its own built-in battery, so rather than the stand adding the ability to use the projector without a handy AC outlet nearby, it merely extends how long a session you can run on a charge.

Xgimi rates the built-in battery at 2.5 hours in Eco mode, which the projector switches to automatically when using battery power. You can manually increase the brightness, if you like, but the battery won't last as long. (Xgimi doesn't offer a battery-life rating for higher brightness levels.) The stand weighs 1.8 pounds, doubles the battery life to 5 hours, and breaks into two pieces that are easy to assemble and disassemble, with the longest measuring 17 inches. Keep in mind that the stand also makes it easy to position the projector without having to move furniture around to support it.

(Credit: M. David Stone)

The onboard stereo audio system is built around a pair of 6-watt Harman/Kardon speakers and supports Dolby Audio, Dolby Digital, and Dolby Digital Plus. The combination translates here to punchy-enough sound quality for the projector's size, plus high enough volume to fill a small-to-midsize family room. For better quality and higher volume, you can use Bluetooth or the HDMI port's ARC support to connect an external sound system. You can also use the projector as a Bluetooth speaker for other audio sources.

The MoGo 4 Laser builds on two unusual touches we first saw in the MoGo 3 Pro: Ambient light Mode, and what Xgimi calls Creative filters. Ambient Light Mode offers low-level mood lighting, with your choice of color. The four optical filters attach magnetically to the lens—which means they can be quickly and easily snapped on—to add various visual effects to the image. They're designed to be used with the Xgimi Creative Optical Filter app, which you can download from the Google Play store.

Image Quality: Dial It In, and It Shines

The onscreen menu offers four predefined image modes for SDR input. One is labeled User mode, but all four offer the same wealth of settings. My preliminary tests showed that all modes lost significant shadow detail when set to their defaults because the Brightness setting was too low. Adjusting it properly significantly improved shadow detail without harming black level, and I didn't see a need to change any other settings. Three of the modes were essentially tied for the highest image brightness, but the fourth mode—Movie—offered the best color accuracy at the cost of slightly lower brightness, making it my preferred choice for the viewing tests.

For SDR input, the projector delivered nicely saturated, neutral color. I noted on-point contrast and both a suitably dark black and a strong sense of three-dimensionality in dark scenes. Shadow detail, after my adjustment, held well enough, so I could see almost all the detail I know to look for in the darkest areas in our test clips.

(Credit: M. David Stone)

At this writing, Xgimi's online specs say that the HDMI port doesn’t support HDR10, but that's a misstatement Xgimi says it will fix. In my HDR input tests, the picture mode menu changed to display four options labeled "HDR10." I didn't see enough differences among them to prefer any one over the others, so I stuck with the default choice. Here again, I saw a significant loss of shadow detail using the default settings. In addition, colors were noticeably desaturated. I was able to improve the first issue by setting the Brightness correctly, and fix the second by adjusting the Saturation setting.

Even after my adjustments, shadow detail didn't hold as well under HDR as for SDR, and color quality wasn't quite a match for the SDR version, either. However, the general description for image quality was essentially the same. Shadow detail held well enough to easily make out what was happening in the darkest scenes, and the color quality difference was subtle. Most people would either have to be familiar with what the colors should look like or see the images side by side to notice the difference. (We view the same scenes in both SDR and HDR versions to help make comparisons more meaningful and differences easier to see.)

(Credit: M. David Stone)

Very much on the plus side for anyone who sees rainbow artifacts easily (the red/green/blue flashes that single-chip DLP projectors tend to show), I saw only a few with the MoGo 4 Laser. However, some people see these more easily than others. If you're concerned about the issue, be sure to buy from a dealer that allows easy returns if the flashes prove annoying.

(Credit: M. David Stone)

The disappointing news for 3D aficionados is that there is no 3D support. But that's balanced by good news for gamers. I measured the input lag with my Bodnar 4K Lag Tester at 22.2 milliseconds (ms) for 1080p/60Hz input, short enough for all but the most serious gaming.

Although Xgimi rates the brightness at 550 ISO lumens, hitting that figure requires using the Performance setting for power and brightness, which adds an impossible-to-miss green tint to the image and raises fan noise to an annoying level. The default power settings are Standard for AC, which I used for my official tests, and Eco for battery power. In the lower-brightness Movie mode for SDR and the default HDR setting, the image brightness was close to what I expected, around 350 to 400 lumens. In a dark room, the MoGo 4 Laser delivered an image on my 90-inch-diagonal, 1.0 gain, 16:9 screen that was bright enough for use, but it was dimmer at that size than I prefer, leading me to drop the image to roughly 80 inches. In my family room with lights on at night, it delivered a watchable image at the same size.