This may sound like a step in the wrong direction in reliability, but trust me that it isn't compared to the 5Rs and a lot of other cheap movers out there. The Chauvet Q-spot 260
LED. The
manual says that it can be mounted in "any safe position". I have seen this
fixture in action and taken all of the covers off of it and examined it. It is well built inside, and seems like it would be able to handle being mounted sideways. I'd ask the manufacturer though. You can also look at the Q-Spot 560
LED, but I don't see a full user
manual for that yet so I don't know if it has the same "any safe position" restriction. I also don't like the gobos in the 560 as much and there aren't as many of them, but the output is brighter and it has an
iris. And at the price of the 260s you can have a spare
fixture or two out on the
road. It looks fairly simple inside and the parts should be relatively easy to swap out,
especially compared to the Elation 5Rs. It also has direct drive on almost anything. That means minimal belts to slip and gears to strip and set screws to come loose. Again, I can't speak for the 560 because I haven't seen it or opened it up yet. But I have seen the 260 in operation and opened it up.
As for output, the Q-Spot 260
LED is pretty much spot on with an MSD250 in the middle of its life (when the output gets a tiny
bit less but before the color temp goes down noticeably). The
fixture used for the comparison was a Studio Spot 250, so not just any random DJ
level fixture that doesn't use half of the output of the MSD due to inefficient optics (I have seen those and it makes me wonder why bother with the MSD if you aren't gonna use it's
power). With gobos and colors in the Q-spot 260 still held its own.
Why yes, I did just recommend Chauvet over Elation.
EDIT: As a note, any
fixture can burn out in the pan department due to being hung sidways - but with a lighter
fixture like this there's less of a chance of it. Do so at your own risk. I've heard of reputable fixtures (in fact, I've even heard this about the 101s) having their pan motors burned out due to being hung sidways. I haven't experienced this personally or seen it in
fixture that I've teched, but I do know that it happens.