I had used some other Monoprice Stage Lighting Gear... and they performed well. My little 70-seat black box venue needed to start building-out the inventory, and the price point for these puppies seemed perfect. As a "try-out" I only purchased two of them.

As we were opening a silly farce of a musical, I was excited to use these for the augmentation of the huge amount of quick special lighting positions. Basically, the 2nd day of programming, one of the instruments wouldn't hold its pan/tilt information. I tried a "reset" (they don't have a "factory reset") and re-programmed the position pallets, etc. And while they were "on", they would consistently replay the positions as recorded. Once the power was cycled, they would not home to the same position, thus, not hit any mark!

The great thing is that Monoprice stood behind their gear. I got it replaced, only to have the second unit have the same problem but also the motorized Zoom wouldn't run the full distance. As I was replacing the 1st instrument, was arranging for the RMA of the second unit. As of this writing >>> both units are now performing as expected and "hitting their marks".

FYI >>> I'm running the ETC EOS/Nomad system, the same app used in 99% of all Broadway & West End shows, but on a PC.

The colors and optics are pretty good. Not the same as a main-mfr equivalent, but at a price point at nearly 60% less... I will probably buy more.

Great small footprint unit. Colors are nice.

Great price. Nice features and built well. The downside is the noisy fan for our small venue.

Color mixing is great and the light itself is very bright! The movement and zoom are very smooth. My one BIG complaint is the dimming curve - or lack of. These lights get down to about 10% and then hard blackout. If you need smooth in and out dimming, these will not work for you. Theatre/church use is pretty much out. I would’ve gladly paid a bit more to have better dimming functionality. Even if they upped the cost another $100, these units would still be WAY cheaper than the ‘name brand’ comparisons.

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!