I caught these on a special deal of the day. For that price, they were definitely a killer deal. Quality control could be better, but that's what you get when going lowest price. Had to return one of two, and got the replacement in a reasonable time. The internal gears (for horizontal movement in this case) are prone to slipping occasionally, so the unit can lose its bearing until a Reset is done.

We have an 80 seat black box theatre with conventional lighting throughout. After renting several Elation zcl 360i Zoom movers for a show last year I decided it was time to start dabbling in having some in house options.. For the price, these can't be beat. They are similar in function to the Elations but as you can imagine at 1/5th the price there are tradeoffs mostly in refinements. The colour mixing is a little splotchy depending on beam setting, I assume due to variances in the LEDs. Beam spread is actually a little less diffused, but also more irregular. The biggest issue is the lack of 16 bit control over dimming. I expected this having looked at the manual so, no surprise. But, the "steppieness" of the dimming curve limits the usefulness of the device in many instances for theater. Having said that, it's the best overall I've seen in the sub $1000 price range and for its current sale price of $199, a steal. I'll put them up and find plenty of ways to use them!

I purchased these to replace four fixed-beam lights with gobos, product #612830. The fixed-beam lights were awesome, but I was looking to back-light my band, and needed the flexibility variable zoom offered. Fixed-beam fixtures work better with fog or haze as effects, and are intended to be looked at rather than used for lighting subjects, so I replaced them.

I also tried out a pair of the big brother fixture, product #612812, but those turned out to be just too much light for most of the smaller venues we play.

What I love about this fixture is that unlike other variable-zoom fixtures, the light pool is really uniform when zooming out and maintains a focused, crisp edge. The decrease in brightness when zoomed out is much less noticeable in this fixture than I've seen in others, so the optics have been optimized such that they almost resemble an ellipsoidal fixture in the crispness of the edge. Very attractive results to look at.

Since my intended use is for back-lighting rather than as beam effects, features such as pixel-mapping that you might find in fixtures costing a lot more matter little to me.

Pick up a set of these, and you'll find they're very versatile, both sitting on the floor for up-lighting or mounted overhead, for beam effects or to dynamically light a small-to-medium performance space.

You'll find no better bang-for-the-buck!