The bitterness of poor quality is tasted long after the sweetness of low price is forgotten! Heard that one before?
Before I engage this rant please clearly note that it has nothing at all to do with the fact that the manufacturers are Chinese! Love the Chinese, hate their lights. Some products and components made in China are great, these lights aren’t one of them.
There was a massive amount of Chinese lights on the show floor at NAB 2011 and pretty much they all exhibited the same downfalls. I just can’t get past the fact that all these manufacturers showed pretty much the exact, I mean exact…sorry EXACT same light designs, did I say exact? Over a dozen booths showed the same 12”x12” yoke mounted panel with 5mm self lensing LEDS “ala Litepanels” 1x1 design. I know the Chinese are renowned for their ripping off of popular Western designs but really now how about just a drop of originality. Haven’t they figured out this design has been done to death and pretty much outdated already? Not one of them brought anything new to the design, well except for maybe low price.
I tried to ask each of them why their design seemed to be everywhere at the show but never really got a good answer. Some stated they were the originators of the design, some stated they used better components, some stated they had innovations like bi-colour or a dimmer and my favorite was the lady who told me that they built the original units for Litepanels and they were pissed off that they weren’t getting credit for it...hmmm.
Anyways these units not only look the same but share similar defects. Of primary concern is the poor colour quality, low quality electronics, questionably build quality and the lack of consistent performance between identical models of the same brand.
At one booth I measured the light output of their standard panel then checked another just two feet away and found a 100fc difference..me thinks somethin’s wrong so I double checked…same results. This new revelation sent me back to booths I had already checked to see if this variance between panels was a common issue. For the most part the panels of other booths were consistent between samples to an acceptable degree, 10-20fc between like samples seem reasonable given the unscientific testing environment. That being said a few manufacturers were way off the mark one even showed a 300fc difference, but as my review will show later I think this outfit was the worst LED light in the show.
The electronics of these units also is of concern, most seemed to use hardwired construction techniques with no modular design or removable connectors for ease of servicing. I couldn’t see every internal design but one the ones I could see everything just looked like a big ball of solder and black tape. The circuits also looked very basic, not much voltage protection or signal processing going on. For the units that used battery power I would have to wonder about low voltage protection as well.
Colour was a big concern for me since it was the impetus for this blog and well these “Crap Panels” did not leave me wondering. They SUCK! It’s pretty damn hard to make fair colour comments without test gear but when some of the panels are so blue that the booth staff describes the colour as “midnight sun” at 5600K I gotta start wondering ‘cause I live in Canada and I’ve seen the “midnight sun” many times and trust me it ain’t that blue. Take the colour comments as my opinion because they’re totally subjective.
Build quality is all over the map, stamped tin to machined aluminum, plastic nuts and Velcro to millions of tiny screws. With a few exceptions I don’t think these panels will cut it in a professional production environment. I think most of the raw enclosures are fine but it’s the human touch points where quality really falls apart. Dimmers, colour controls, yokes, power connectors and the such. All seem weak, under sized poorly mounted. One panel actually had the dimmer direct soldered to the PBC and the dimmer knob shaft was unsupported poking through a hole in the back panel, how long would that last…five minutes on any of my sets.
Never mind all my complaining the big issue really is service. NOT ONE OFFERED USA/CANADA SERVICE OPTIONS! So when your $200 light breaks what do you do? I’m sure the manufacturer thinks you’ll just fix it yourself or throw it away, or are they really marketing disposable lights? Now again, trying to be fair, I am including the Microbeam and IKAN LED panels in this “Crap Panel” category and these two companies offer service but they are just resellers and probably just suck up the costs of repairs in their customer service budgets. The true “Crap Panel” manufacturers offer no service PERIOD!
Still not deterred and want to buy a “Crap Panel”, good luck. Most manufacturers only deal via the web and language on their websites is an issue if you’re an English only speaker. My big wonder is payment, they don’t use PayPal but rather all seem to request the TTL system of advance payment in full via bank transfer. This is a system used mainly for business to business Western Union style transactions; problem here is you never really know who you are sending your money to. Two different exhibitors actually provided me with their personal bank account info for transfers rather than the company accounts listed in their brochures….run away silly Westerner save your money. I have heard of several people on DVinfo.net having good experiences with some of these dealings but I’m way to cautious to send money into the dark abyss without a way higher comfort level of whom I’m dealing with.
Enough negative chat for now, on with the reviews.
