Testing Zhiyun fiveray m40w floodlight... Seems pretty good so far
It's a bit larger than the other ones I use but much brighter and has active cooling and supports PD charging...
Still doing rundown tests but the first real life number I have is 30 minutes at full brightness on battery which seems good for how bright it is.
Fan gets loud but u probably don't need to use full brightness often, so the 50% tests I'm going to do later might be more useful
EDIT: Wow; i had a montster and wrote too much
More Floodlight Testing Blather
It just ran for over an hour at full brightness while plugged into my 65w usb c PD charger... without the battery indicator going down, while remaining cool to the touch...
I redid the duration test with another light, the aputure al-mx, and at full brightness it ran for an hour on battery, which is longer than the zhiyun one does on battery, BUT it's significantly less bright. I don't have any way of testing brightness numbers myself, but the claimed max brightness of the zhiyun one is 1050lux @ 1 meter, and the aputure al-mx is 200lux @ 1 meter
My other previous favorite pocket floodlight, the Genaray PB64 (which I still think is the easiest to use and therefore my favorite) has the same max brightness spec as the aputure, but iirc much worse runtime due to overheating (smaller heatsink) [still charging it to do tests again if I have time]
Some positives & negatives
So: This new Zhiyun light seems to have some major advantages, but a few potential disadvantages over the other pocket floodlights I've triedPositives:
- Seemingly no runtime limit while charging
- Super fucking bright
- Supports PD so you don't need to also carry a non-pd ac adapter
- Potentiometer temperature and brightness control feels rly nice (Genaray also sort of has this)
Negatives:
- Much larger than my other lights (especially the little Genaray)... this will probably not be travel gear for me
- Fan super loud at high brightness
- Costs a lot more than the Genaray (but same as aputure, but I didn't pay full price for any of these so whatever lol)
The one specific test I still want to do
Volume is the thing I need to test, bc previously I've used the other lights at around 30% brightness... the Genaray runs for a long time at that brightness but has a subtle coil whine, and the aputure runs at that brightness for a really long time but does eventually die (idk how long, like 1+ hour)So if the zhiyun can run continuously at 30% brightness with little noise that's a major advantage. so that's the next test but I feel like it probably can
Conclusion / do I recommend it
So the thing is I was kind of hoping I would get this thing and be like Yes, this is the one I 100% like, I recommend this one now, because my problem with these little floodlights is while I love them and I use them all the time, none of the ones I've tried are like perfect enough for me to fully recommend them...The aputure has good enough runtime, is pretty compact, but is a little bit pricey, doesn't charge with PD chargers, and has some weird usability problems (due to the design of the front of the light it's hard to read the button labels when it's on, for example. Also the diffuser design just feels cheap)
The genaray is still my favorite of the ones I've tried bc it has really good value for the money, it's really small, and it has great usability bc it has a discrete battery level indicator LED as well as a backlit LCD for brightness + color info (and granular control over both via controls you can operate by feel) - but the runtime at high brightness is not great, and it's got problems for video bc it has a noticeable coil whine above 40% brightness. It also overheats a lot faster.
If you want a very fucken bright but moderately small light with a really long runtime the zhiyun m40w does seem like the best one I've seen at least in terms of specs on paper - I haven't seen any others in this form factor that offer both PD charging and active cooling that aren't significantly larger or more expensive. . .
But if you want the best pocket floodlight, well, this one is kinda big
so basically uhhhhh the conclusion is uhh "lights cool" I dont know which one to recommend and there are a lot of other similar products out there I'd like to test and compare but also I do not need more of these so I probably won't (specifically: Lume cube panel series, some little Godox thing I forget what it's called)
thank's bye
