LED Stage Light Reviews
We recently examined several LED stage lighting units for a high school black box theatre with a 20’ high grid. The school is determined to have an all LED system, but doesn’t have the budget for top-of-the-line equipment. Our goal was to find a set of lower priced units with reasonable performance. It turned out to be harder than we thought. Here are our reviews:
Altman Pegasus LED Fresnel. This 140W white light LED Fresnel is a winner. The optics are very good, the intensity is great, and the dimming (when controlled via DMX) is very smooth all the way out. This unit uses standard 7.5” accessories, so the school’s existing accessories will fit it. This is one of the more expensive unit we examined, but the performance makes this fixture worth it.
Chauvet Ovation E-910FC. This 270W profile has very high color rendering (due to the Red, Green, Blue, Amber, Lime color mixing) and great intensity. The down side is that Chauvet’s optics are very poor. Whenever a shutter is used to shape the beam the multiple LEDs produce multiple shadows. This problem was evident for most of the second and third tier manufacturers. Although we didn’t test a template, we have to assume the same problem would occur, making this unit useless as a profile.
Elation Arena PAR Zoom. This 190W PAR has a motorized zoom, which simplifies making slight adjustments to the beam angle. The intensity was good, as was the dimming. The optics, however, were not. Each of the 19 LEDs has very good primary optics, but there is no secondary optic to homogenize the beam. This results in beam irregularities and produces multiple, clear shadows that would be unacceptable to an audience as close to the stage as they are in a black box theatre.
elektraLite 1018 PAR. This 216W PAR suffers from the same problem as the Elation PAR. There is no secondary optic, resulting in an unacceptable multiplicity of shadows.
ETC Source 4WRD Profile. This 155W white light LED profile is also a winner. The optics, intensity, and DMX dimming are all very good. This unit is $200-300 more than the other profiles we reviewed, but like the Altman Pegasus, its performance means that it can be used in the close quarters of black box theatres.
Osram Kreios Fresnel. This 80W white light LED unit has nice optics and an impressive zoom. The dim speed fading down to zero and up from zero is a little fast, but we think that can be managed by adjusting the dimming profile. Unfortunately, at only 80W this unit is too dim to be useful from a hanging height of 20’.
Osram Kreios Profile. Like the Osram Fresnel, this 100W white light LED unit also has nice optics and an impressive zoom. However, as with the Fresnel, it is better suited to smaller venues with lower hanging heights.
We plan on looking at other units, but our current thinking is that the school should have a base inventory of white light LED profiles (Source 4WRD) and Fresnels (Pegasus) that is supplemented with a small number of color changing profiles (ETC ColorSource).