As far as the Chauvet stuff goes, we had a demo of a Q-Spot 260
LED in our shop and I was blown away. The output was pretty much the same as an MSD250 (
fixture was a Studio Spot 250) less than halfway through its life, better in some colors. And the field was almost perfectly
flat, no
hotspot issues. The
gobo selection was surprisingly good for a chinese
fixture and the rotating gobos are easy to replace via a door on the top of the
fixture (good for people who do lots of custom projections). The
prism is nice and doesn't cut down on brightness too much, but there is a noticeable
drop (well it's being split 3 ways, it's not going to be quite as bright). I completely stripped the
fixture of its outer housing (head covers,
yoke covers, and
base covers) and checked it out. Surprisingly good
build quality, and everything looks pretty well put together. Almost all of the features are direct-drive, so no belts or other motion transfer to get in the way. Just a couple of belts (focus being one of them, of course) and the
fixture had a drive board in the
base and in the head.
LCD display was nice, and the locking
IEC connector was a bonus over the regular IECs and also means that I could do
power drops same length as
DMX drops in a re-useable small
truss loom.
As for the 300s, hopefully getting some hands on experience with those soon, I'll report back when I do.