Everyone told me not to "waste" my money on this kind of light, but I stupidly ignored their advice and, well, I guess I got lucky. These instruments were every
bit as good as "name" brand choices that cost up to ten times as much. They are light, bright, and quiet. They stay cool to the touch at full
intensity. While there is a
bit of a discrete cut-off at the low end, when you go from
intensity 1 to
intensity 0, it is actually much less of a change than I see in those "name" brands.
Among the warnings I got were these: they fail frequently. Well, not yet, and I've used them for a couple of shows. Not thousands of hours, but over a hundred each. No failures. If that does worry you, though, buy a spare. At this price, it's still a terrific deal.
Another warning: They won't be UL or CE approved. Well, it turns out that UL approval is not all that common for theatrical lights, and that this light is CE approved. (People warned me also that "CE" is often faked, and one can easily verify this by looking at the "CE" identifiers on other products. I did as much research as I could and came to the conclusion that the vendor is asserting these light genuinely meet the CE standard. As I understand it, that is reported by all who say so on the honor
system, so trust is at your discretion, industry-wide.) Coidak does actually list some of their other products in the UL database, so they do meet that
level when they want to. But, again, UL listing is not universal in theater lights.
Another warning: They will have bad color. Well, they are a
bit red/blue at 100% on all LEDs, but they are consistent from one
instrument to the next, and my experience has been that color varies noticeably from one manufacturer to another. Matching colors among lights is just part of the game, no matter who makes yours. With a
bit of tweaking, I was able to get all the colors (including real white, and a warm "amber" white) I wanted.
The one complaint I have about these lights is that they have no
pass-through power socket. Each one has a permanently attached three-prong AC
plug.. Some lights use a twist-and-lock
power cord that connects to an "in" side to
power the light, and that can be connected to an "out"
socket on the same light to pass
power along to the next one. Since lights like these are low
power (my Kill-A-Watt says these pull just under half an amp at full
intensity), you can run quite a few on one
circuit. The twisting plugs have the advantage that you can't easily
shock yourself with them. Three-prong plugs make that easy, particularly if you are reaching into some
blind space in the hope of inserting one (a maddeningly common activity in low-budget theater). But, the plus side is that you can
plug these into any three-hole
outlet. The twisting cable requires an
adapter.
All-in-all, I'd knock off a quarter-star for the lack of a
power pass-through. But, to the nearest whole star, that's five out of five, so that's my score.
