Pros & Cons
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- Unusually high brightness for its price class
- Delivers 1080p resolution at a low price
- Doesn't show rainbow artifacts
- Able handling of HDR content
- Gimbal mount for easy vertical adjustment of picture height
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- Severe loss of shadow detail using default settings
- No 3D support
Xgody Gimbal N6 Pro Specs
| Dimensions (HWD) | 7 by 8.2 by 5.7 inches |
| Engine Type | LCD |
| Inputs and Interfaces | Bluetooth |
| Inputs and Interfaces | HDMI 1.4 |
| Inputs and Interfaces | USB 2.0 |
| Inputs and Interfaces | Wi-Fi |
| Maximum Resolution | 1920 by 1080 @ 60Hz |
| Native Resolution | 1920 by 1200 |
| Rated Brightness | 700 |
| Warranty | 2 |
| Weight | 3 |
You'll find no shortage of inexpensive 1080p projectors to compete with the Xgody Gimbal N6 Pro ($159.99). However, almost all of them—including the Dangbei N2 Mini and the excellent Aurzen Eazze D1G—deliver roughly 200 lumens of brightness, according to our testing. The N6 Pro, which is widely available for less than its list price, claims a staggering 700 ANSI lumens, and it's unquestionably the brightest projector we've seen in the sub-$200 range. That high brightness, along with a highly watchable picture (after adjustments, at least), makes it a strong contender for a bargain-basement-priced pick, while its built-in streaming and gimbal mount sweeten the deal even more.
Design: A Low-Cost Light Cannon
Like most cheap LCD-based projectors, the N6 Pro is built around a single LCD. It produces color using a white LED light source plus a red, green, or blue filter on each cell in the display chip. Each triad of the three colors serves as a single pixel in the 1080p image. Because the design shows all three colors at once, it can't show the red/green/blue flashes known as rainbow artifacts that result from rotating through the colors one at a time, as with DLP models. Of course, the light source is the star of the show, responsible for the high brightness that's the N6 Pro's biggest selling point. Its rated lifetime is 30,000 hours.
The physical design of the N6 Pro matches most modern, high-end, room-to-room portable projectors, but shrunk down to mini-projector size. The projector itself is permanently mounted on a gimbal stand that lets it pivot vertically far enough to project straight up to the ceiling (and tilt back even further), as well as slightly down. Xgody says the maximum downward tilt is 15 degrees. The N6 Pro has no gimbal for horizontal adjustment, but the projector is light enough, at 3 pounds, to turn easily with one hand. The overall size of the projector, pointed straight ahead, is 7 by 8.2 by 5.7 inches (HWD), including the mount.
(Credit: M. David Stone)One drawback to this single-chip design is that most projectors that use it—including the N6 Pro—can accumulate dust specs on the LCD chip, which appear on screen until you clean them off manually. Opening the projector to clean the LCD may sound intimidating, but it's easy to do, and Xgody provides a video showing how. If you have any reservations about doing it yourself, you can check out Xgody's demo on YouTube. (The cleaning process is near the end, starting at the 7-minute mark in the clip.)
Setup is reasonably standard. Autofocus and automatic keystone correction are on by default, and options for obstacle avoidance and screen matching are also available. I turned off the auto keystone for my tests, since it can lower brightness and introduce artifacts in some scenes, but if you need to tilt the projector, you'll probably want to keep it on. Note also that the autofocus works better than the manual powered focus, which adjusts in increments that tend to skip over the best setting. Connection options include Wi-Fi for streaming over an internet-connected network, and support for AirPlay and Miracast. You'll also find an HDMI port on the back and a USB port for reading files from USB memory sticks.
(Credit: M. David Stone)Xgody provides streaming from the internet through Whale OS, which requires little setup beyond accepting the terms of use. It's built on Android rather than Android TV, and it includes preinstalled menu shortcuts for Netflix, Disney+, Amazon Prime Video, and other popular apps, as well as a store for downloading more.
The onboard 5-watt mono speaker delivered good-enough quality in our tests for casual use and enough volume for a medium-size family room. If you want better quality or higher volume, you can connect an external sound system using the 3.5mm audio-out port or Bluetooth. The projector also offers a Bluetooth speaker mode, although it's somewhat hidden. To launch it, you press a button on the remote that's labeled only with an obscure icon consisting of four small squares.
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Image Quality: A Few Tweaks Required
No one would expect top-tier image quality from a projector at the N6 Pro's price. But considering that context, it does reasonably well. The menus offer five preset picture modes with no adjustments available, plus one user mode with settings for a few basics, including Brightness, Contrast, Saturation, and Color Temperature. I quickly discovered that all the presets lost significant shadow detail, even in darker areas of bright scenes, and made it impossible to see what was happening in dark scenes, leaving User mode as my preferred choice for viewing.
Cranking up the brightness setting (which adjusts black level) helped, but it still left too much detail hidden in our darkest test clips to tell what was happening. It also tended to wash out bright scenes, so I had to pick a setting based on how much image quality I was willing to sacrifice in them in exchange for better shadow detail. Raising the saturation setting helped counter the washout effect, letting me raise brightness a little higher than I would have otherwise.
(Credit: M. David Stone)The final result for SDR input was watchable overall. Most people would judge it somewhere between tolerable and decent, depending on how critical an eye they have. Color accuracy and contrast are both best described as good enough. However, the darkest scenes in our test suite still lost significant shadow detail, making the N6 Pro a poor choice for watching content with a lot of dark scenes, like the night battle episode of Game of Thrones. This isn't a major issue, since most movies and TV shows have few or no scenes that are that dark.
Xgody says that the N6 Pro's HDR10 support is through software decoding only, so it was no surprise that the player reported an SDR connection when playing 4K HDR discs. As also expected for software-only support, the projector offered the same picture modes for HDR and SDR input, and it kept the same settings for HDR that I'd already made for SDR. However, it handled the HDR input reasonably well. In particular, it held shadow detail far better in the HDR versions of the same scenes I tested, in both SDR and HDR formats; I had no problems making out what was happening. Other aspects of picture quality were essentially the same as for SDR in general description, at least, but the overall quality was significantly better.
(Credit: M. David Stone)As expected for this class of projectors, the N6 Pro offers no 3D support. As for its gaming prowess, that's a non-starter. The input lag was significantly longer than acceptable for any game where reaction time matters. I measured the input lag with my Bodnar 4K Lag Tester at 147.8 milliseconds for 1080p/60Hz input.
Image brightness for the settings I used, including the highest power setting for the brightest image, was what I expect from roughly 400 to 425 lumens. That's less than the rated 700 lumens, but still significantly brighter than the roughly 200 lumens typical of the competition. Using the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) recommendations, that translates to being suitable for a roughly 75-to-100-inch, 1.0-gain screen in a dark room. In my viewing tests, it was easily bright enough to fill my 90-inch screen with lights off for both SDR and HDR input. In a family room with the lights on at night, I settled on an 85-inch size for a quite watchable image that looked only slightly washed-out.
Final Thoughts
(Credit: M. David Stone)
Xgody Gimbal N6 Pro
The Xgody Gimbal N6 Pro stands out for its high brightness and built-in gimbal mount. You'll have to tinker with its settings to get acceptable image quality, but this budget-friendly mini projector is a stealth bargain if you put in the effort.