- Aputure just sent me out their brand new
Amaran 200d to review and I kinda broke it.
(objects hitting)
(plastic cracking)
(grumbling)
(upbeat instrumental music)
Aputure just released four brand new lights
that are geared towards making high quality,
single-source LEDs more affordable
and more accessible to content creators.
There's the 100d, the 200d,
the 100x and the 200x.
I've got the 200d here.
The D stands for daylight,
so it's a 5,600 Kelvin light, just like the 100d
and then the two X models are bi-color,
so you can change the color temperature on them.
They also released a brand new Light Dome SE
which is a cheaper version of their Light Dome 2
that doesn't have the quick release function
for all of the rods.
I would definitely recommend it, if you don't set up
and tear down your light dome often.
It's also slightly shallower than their Light Dome 2
so it fits in smaller spaces.
The 100d goes for $200 US,
the 200d is $300 US
and then the X models are $50 more than their counterparts.
Now, if you've ever gone shopping for lights like this,
I just want you to let that soak in for a second
because that's a fantastic deal.
When comparing those prices to the Aputure 120d
which comes in at $750,
or the 300d which comes in at $1,100,
this is pretty awesome.
And while it is very exciting for me
to have a budget friendly option to recommend
to those of you who are looking for lights on a budget,
they definitely had to do a couple of things
to make these more affordable than the other options.
And as far as me breaking the 200d,
that's gonna be important in a little bit.
So, this is the package that you get the 200d in
and the light is directly inside there.
Unlike the 120d Mark 2 or the 300d,
it doesn't come with any kind of a fancy carrying case
or anything like that, it's basically just the light,
the power supply, inside a box with some foam to protect it.
You can use this box as a carrying case
if you wanna keep it around, but it doesn't quite look
as nice as the other ones that you get
from the higher end models.
Once you pull the light and the power supply out,
you'll notice that there is no option here for battery.
The 120d and 300d are capable of taking
either V-Mount or Gold Mount batteries.
This one is plug-in power only,
but it does come with a reasonably long cable
and I appreciated the little extra
of it having a locking cable.
And as far as the light output goes.
the 100d definitely keeps up with the 120d
and the 200d actually is brighter than the 300d,
which is absolutely insane
to get that much light output for $300.
When testing the 300d Mark 2 against the 200d,
I noticed that the 200d doesn't really get down
to 1% intensity.
As soon as you click from zero to 1%,
it seems to blast at about
what I would think of as like 15%.
By the time that you're at 25%, they seem pretty even
and they stay pretty consistent all the way
through 50, 75 and 100% brightness.
I did notice that the 200d
has a slightly greener tone to it
and it also has a narrower beam.
This example is using the same reflector,
the same distance from the background and the 200d circle
is still smaller which may be where they're getting
the extra brightness from.
And the new lights actually have an advantage
over the 120d Mark 2, in that they connect with Sidus link,
the app that Aputure makes,
so you can control all of your lights, right from the app.
That being said, if you're like me and you're someone
who likes to use the handy dandy old remote,
you're out of luck on that one.
The new lights don't work with this remote.
The controls are super simple, there's an on and off switch
and then there's a knob to turn up and down the brightness.
And, if you click that knob in,
it'll move in larger increments.
On the X models, the ones that are by color,
you actually have two knobs,
one to control the color temperature
and one to control the brightness.
Now, back to me breaking the 200d.
One of the big things that I noticed,
right when I got this thing out of the box,
is that it is not built the same way
that the 120d Mark 2 and 300d Mark 2 are.
There's a lot of plastic in the construction,
although it does feel nice and hefty.
The Mount itself is metal, which is great
and there's a metal piece inside
where you would mount it onto your light stand.
So, they've added reinforcement where it needs it,
however, I wouldn't be throwing this thing around,
I'd definitely take good care of it if you got it.
But, if you're somebody who's gentle on your gear,
or it's gonna be set up and not really
moving around a whole bunch, it shouldn't be an issue.
Where I ran into a problem was with the mount.
When I first got it about 20 seconds after I got it
out of the box, I went to throw it up on a light stand
and I started to tighten this up
and I tightened it too much and the plastic on the outside,
right by the actual screw itself, started to crack.
Now, there is the metal piece on the inside
and that doesn't seem to be compromised at all.
The light has functioned flawlessly
for the last couple of weeks that I've had it,
so, had I been a little bit more careful with it,
I don't think it would have been an issue.
That being said, even though it looks like Thor's hammer,
I'd probably be a little bit more careful with it.
Now, there's one other thing
that you definitely wanna know and this might be
a deal breaker for some of you.
Like I said, even after I broke it I still been using this
for a couple of weeks now and it's done
an absolutely fantastic job.
The quality is the same as I would expect
from any aperture light.
It's got so much power, but the fan,
the fan in this thing
has a weird electrical whirring sound
going on with it.
It doesn't sound like a nice, soft hiss,
like you would expect from a small fan,
it's got this other sound to it.
(fan whirring gently)
And at first, I thought it was maybe just mine
and I hit up Aputure and I was like, what's up with this,
and they were like, that seems weird,
something's wrong there and then,
a couple other people posted their reviews
and they had the same thing only with the 200d model,
it didn't seem to be happening on the 100d.
But just today I went over to Curtis Judd's review again
because he had mentioned this.
In the comments, he mentioned that he talked to Aputure
and they said that they were gonna have a firmware update
that should fix the noise.
That being said, I filmed a bunch of stuff with this
and as long as I have my mic in good placement
and this isn't too close to the microphone,
it definitely didn't pick it up,
but I could definitely hear it more in the room
and it was just a different type of sound
than the other ones were.
Hopefully we'll see that firmware update soon
and it'll fix the noise for us.
Guess you have to do it over Bluetooth, maybe.
Overall, I'm very excited,
I absolutely love my Aputure lights,
both my one 120d Mark 2 and my 300d Mark 2,
but it's really hard to recommend those to content creators
who maybe don't have the bigger budgets.
I'm so glad that Aputure decided to go with something
that was made for content creators
for a smaller budget crowd and I'm excited to see
what everyone's gonna do with these.
One more small piece of business,
in case you didn't catch it,
I launched my Patreon last week.
I'm super excited about the community
that we're building over there.
If that's something that you're into,
it's an opportunity for you to get exclusive access,
extra content, lots, presets, music, all sorts of stuff.
So I'll leave a link to the Patreon,
as well as to all the new Aputure products
down in the description and as always,
I wanna hear from you, what do you think about
the new aperture lights?
Leave a comment down below and on your way down there,
hit that Like and Subscribe button
and the bell notification so you don't miss out
on future reviews and tutorials.
Thank you so much for watching and I'll see you next time.
(objects hitting)
(grumbling)
(upbeat instrumental music)