Hisense C2 Ultra Review: The Best-Sounding Projector, Outmaneuvered on Price
It measures brighter than its rating, games at 240Hz, and has the only real subwoofer in the class. It is also no longer the value pick it was, because the projector above it got cheaper.
By Eran Yorkovsky · Founder, PickGrade
July 13, 2026 · Openly AI-powered
The Hisense C2 Ultra was, for most of the past year, the easy recommendation in the bright all-in-one class. It measured brighter than its rating, it had elite color, it gamed at 240Hz, it had a JBL sound system with an actual subwoofer, and it undercut its rivals by several hundred dollars.
Most of that is still true. The last part is not, and it changes the recommendation.
It is a genuinely excellent projector
Hisense rates the C2 Ultra at 3,000 ANSI lumens. Tom's Guide measured 3,231. Projector Reviews measured 2,824 in Standard mode. Both are honest results, no green boost mode required, and they mean the same thing in practice: this is a projector you can watch with the lights on.
Color is the standout. The TriChroma RGB triple-laser engine (28 laser diodes, the same family as the flagship PX3-Pro) covers a claimed 110% BT.2020, measuring around 94 to 96%, with 100% DCI-P3. It supports Dolby Vision, HDR10+, HDR10, HLG, and IMAX Enhanced, which is the complete set. Reviewers consistently describe it as one of the most accurate out-of-the-box images available at any projector price.
The sound is the best in our lineup, and it is not close. A JBL 2.1 system with twin 10-watt drivers and a dedicated 20-watt subwoofer produces bass that no other all-in-one here can approach. If your projector is going to be the whole audio system, this is the one.
And it games. "Designed for Xbox" certification, a 240Hz mode, and roughly 12 to 15ms of latency make it a legitimate big-screen console projector, not a movie box that tolerates gaming.
Setup is a strength too: a 360-degree gimbal plus a 1.67x optical zoom fills 65 to 300 inches without cropping a single pixel, which is a wider range than most rivals offer.
Where it gives ground
Native contrast, around 1,600:1. This is the C2 Ultra's real weakness and it is a meaningful one. Dark scenes in a dark room lack depth, and dynamic dimming only partly disguises it. The Anker Nebula X1, which measures roughly as bright, has a 6-blade dynamic iris measured at up to 6,432:1. That is four times the contrast, and in a dark room you can see every bit of it.
Vidaa. It is fast, it includes Netflix, and it puts advertisements on your home screen. The app store is smaller than Google TV's. Nobody buys a $2,499 projector to look at ads, and this is the kind of thing that grates a little more every month you own it.
The 240Hz mode is 1080p. 4K tops out at 60Hz. Competitive players will still want a monitor.
The eye-protection sensor is over-eager, and will dim or interrupt the picture when nothing is actually in the beam.
The price problem
Here is the awkward part, and it is why we moved the C2 Ultra off our value pick.
The Nebula X1 has been selling around $2,199. The C2 Ultra sells around $2,499. So the projector with four times the native contrast, comparable brightness, better-balanced sound, and Google TV instead of an ad-supported platform is now the cheaper of the two.
That does not make the C2 Ultra a bad projector. It makes it a projector that has been outmaneuvered. Its remaining arguments are specific and real: the 240Hz gaming the X1 does not have at all, and a subwoofer the X1 cannot match. If either of those is what you are buying, it is still the right call, and it is still a projector we recommend.
But if you are buying on picture quality, the case has quietly evaporated. We lay the two out side by side here.
Who should buy it
Buy the C2 Ultra if you game on a big screen and you want the projector to be the sound system too. On those two axes it is the best all-in-one in our lineup, and the 1.67x optical zoom makes it forgiving to place.
If you mostly watch films and your room goes dark, buy the Nebula X1 and spend $300 less. If your room forces an off-center install, buy the XGIMI Horizon 20 Max for its lens shift. The C2 Ultra is very good at everything and best at two things. Know which two you need.