My school has 3 of them, 12x1.2k.
Pro's: Well, they work well, they are fairly light and
portable (maybe around 50lbs each per
dimmer) so if you want to use them in more then one space, or if you have to move them to do work on them it is easy.
They have an
LCD screen and 6 buttons to control them, and it takes all of maybe 30 minutes to learn exactly how to use every feature on them.
They have a
dimmer test function at the touch of a
button, and you can bring any
dimmer up from 1% to 100%, and leave one up and test another one (if you have work lights/
house lights on dimmers 1-5 you can bring one to 100%, 2 to 100%,
etc without needing to use your light board).
There are individual
circuit breakers on the front of the
dimmer, large enough to see from a distance if you lost a
circuit. There is also a master
circuit breaker that shuts down all of the electronics on the
dimmer (but not
power to the
dimmer, go figure). And, since there from
ETC, you get
ETC's tech support, which is amazing from the two times that I have called them.
Con's: Well, first off, a while back some of the Smartpack
Power Cubes didn't work. They shipped failed full-on. However, I got the teacher to
call ETC, and he got them to shop replacement
power cubes (of corse, he had them ship the 2.4k, so 2 calls later I had the correct 1.2k cubes). The replacement is easy, you open up the top of the dimmers (6 screws) gently lift out the old cube, and put in the new cubes (they even give you a dental mirror for free to make it easier to
line up all of the connectors). I should also mention that
ETC did not charge us a thing for all of this, though I should also mention that we got the dimmers new.
Other con's, I really can't think of any others. They are well made dimmers for a small-medium
venue or if you want one set of dimmers to move between two places. If you have a larger theater, go for a larger rack of dimmers. But if you have a small school, less then 75 instruments or so, they are very good dimmers, well made, and I am very happy with them.
Any other specific questions you want answered?