Over six years ago, I made a video on this light,
the Aputure Amaran F7,
and I think I called that video something like
"The best small LED of all time!" (laughs)
or something like that.
And I stand by a lot of the, you know,
praise I had for that light,
but there are some things
that have come to annoy me about it.
But there was never really a proper successor to it
that is until now,
with these, the Amaran Ace 25 lights
which are kind of a spiritual successor to the F7
but with a lot of improvements.
But before we go further, I should provide some disclosure.
I have an ongoing financial relationship with Amaran.
They sponsored the entire last season
of the studio tour series.
I would say the majority of the lights in the studio
are Amaran lights,
many of which were provided at no cost.
So I'm definitely a fan of the brand,
but I am unable to provide you with an objective review.
So instead I will provide you with a hopefully accurate
but enthusiastic overview of these lights
from a likely biased user.
So let's talk a bit about the build and the features,
and I'll show you what you get in the box.
There is an X and a C,
an Ace 25x and an Ace 25c,
X for bi-color, C for full color.
And then each one also has a kit variant.
These two that I have here are the non-kit version.
So here's what you get with a non-kit version.
You get obviously the light panel itself,
and then you get a dome diffuser
which just magnets onto the front.
You get a USB-C to C cable,
a little soft carrying case for it.
And then the Ace Lock mechanism,
which this one is for cold shoe your camera to the Ace Lock,
which is pretty cool
and we're gonna talk more about that.
Now, they come in different colors.
I have the pink version and the white version.
There's also a green one and a charcoal one
and maybe a silvery one.
And I believe you can get each color
and each combination with each kit
and everything if you wanted to.
The kit variants are the same as all this,
but you just get a few extra things.
So you also get a magnetic grid attachment
that can go on here that the dome diffuser
can also go on top of.
And then you get a little mini tripod selfie stick thing
and a nicer full carrying bag
that it can all go inside.
This Ace lock thing,
there's this magnetic bar along the bottom
and then you take this module here, and you just clip it in.
And now you have a little cold shoe.
So you can turn the light into an on-camera light.
And it tilts forward and backward,
press the button and it comes right off.
And then now the light can be on table.
And what's cool is if you got more than one of these,
I can just take the light and then just plug it in like that
and then say I had a camera over here,
I can just take it off here and put this back on my camera.
And now I'm running on camera mode,
or again, like I said, tabletop mode.
The panel also has a very strong magnet underneath here
that has sort of a silicone layer on the top of it,
so it's not gonna scratch anything
and it will stick to things quite confidently.
And even get them to stick on round C stands.
So mounting versatility is fantastic.
On this slide there's also a quarter 20 on the top
in case you want to just use it conventionally like that.
And there's a quarter 20 on the bottom
of the Ace lock adapter.
So you know you can attach it
to light stands or something like that.
And I believe that Amaran is planning to continue
with this Ace lock idea on future lights as well.
So they're gonna try and build a little bit of an ecosystem
around being able to do this hot swapping thing.
And then on this side of the light,
there's only four things to worry about.
You've got your USB-C port, which is for power delivery,
for charging, and for actively powering it.
I was able to get it from zero to 90% in 45 minutes
and then it slows down for the last 10%
to, you know, preserve the life of the battery.
At around an hour and a half you're gonna be at 100%
but you can get within 40 minutes,
you can be ready to use this light.
And then you also have a power switch, which I like.
I prefer this over needing to hold a button
or doing weird button presses.
You just flick the switch up, the light comes on,
flick it off.
It's a switch.
Everybody knows what a switch is.
And then a sort of control button here,
which has a few different functions, we'll get into it
and then a wheel for, you know,
going through options in the menu,
which is quite satisfying.
Really the controls are very intuitive.
You'd pick this up in two minutes and know how to use it.
Let's go over some of the menu options while we're in here.
So here's your basic CCT screen.
If you're in the by color mode,
you've got your intensity there,
which you can adjust in 1% increments
or you can switch over to the temperature mode.
And on this one, the X,
the color temperature ranges all the way down
to 2,700 Kelvin up to 6,500 Kelvin.
But on the C, the full color unit,
it has a wider range up to 10,000 kelvin on the cool side,
and down to I think it's 2300 on the warm side.
And you also have a green magenta adjustment
on the full color one, which is nice.
So if you need to green up or magenta up your light.
And then obviously in the full color one,
you're also gonna have HSI and RGB controls.
I would like to mention
that the color on this light is fantastic.
Not only is it very intense,
but the saturation is fantastic.
Even at 1% you still get very, very rich colors
regardless of the hue that you set.
Now of course, if you don't wanna cycle
through the RGB colors manually like a bozo,
they do have an effects page
which of course feature all your usual suspects
for different effects options.
And then going through the rest of the menu,
you've got your Bluetooth controls
for setting it up to work with the app,
which we'll touch on in a second.
And then custom, I like this,
this is for custom button control.
So that button on the side that used to access the menu,
you can also use it as a function button,
by holding it or double tapping it.
And here you can set what you want that to be.
So maybe you want the hold function
to be you reset your Bluetooth or you go into RGB mode,
or you put on a certain effects
or you enable boost mode, things like that.
I think it's pretty cool that you can use that button
as a multifunction button as well.
So boost, typically this light is a 25 watt light,
but you can enable boost
and it gets it to be about a 32 watt light.
It will hamper your battery life obviously,
but it's there if you need it.
And then my personal favorite is fan control.
Typically, it's in smart mode,
but you can enable silent mode which will limit
the output of the light to 25%.
It'll still go to 100,
but 100 will now be only 25% of what 100 was before.
And then the fan won't kick on,
unless you run it for a really long time.
It'll stay in silent mode.
I love having this option,
I wish all lights gave me this choice
that way if I only need a little bit of output,
I don't have to worry about any noise at all.
And of course you also have the option to use the app.
Now these lights will work
with both the Aputure Sidus Link app
and also the new Amaran app.
You get the choice that way.
If you want to add it to an existing Aputure array,
it's perfectly fine.
But if you wanna just build a new Amaran setup,
the app is here.
And I have to say this is the first time
I really put much time into the Amaran app
because I was already set up with the Aputure system.
I really like it, it's very intuitive,
it works really well, the setup was a breeze.
And the interface is definitely designed
I think to be a little bit more
just like friendly and approachable.
It's like there, there's your temperature,
there's your green magenta, some quick and easy buttons.
you can swipe between your fixtures along the top.
Change the temperature very easily like this
and of course you can turn the light off and on
along the bottom there.
It's just a great app.
It just worked really well, seamless, I love it.
Good job.
Okay, now let's talk about battery life,
power delivery, all that stuff.
So I did a rundown test between both the X and the C.
They were at 100% battery
and I ran them at 5,600 Kelvin, 100% output.
And they both lasted just over an hour,
I think like an hour and three minutes.
And boost mode you might get like 50 minutes apparently.
And so, and they die within like a second of each other.
So that that means that you know,
there's a reliability there, which I like.
I also like the display when you are charging
it shows you your battery life percentage
and also you know the power that you're drawing.
This screen is like high quality
and I like the graphics and the colors
and just a nice screen.
You don't ever see that high quality of a little panel
on the back of a small LED.
So I think they did well with that.
And what's great is that when you do have
an adequate USB power source provided,
it won't discharge the battery
even when you're running boost mode.
I've seen it draw, you know,
upwards of 40 watts from my battery bank
and the battery stays at 100%
even when I'm running boost at 100%, which is fantastic.
Which means that theoretically you could use them
as a light on mains power if you ran a USB cord.
So for example, shameless plug,
but that's funny 'cause it's a plug.
A new cable that I'm working on with Kondor Blue
is our 15-foot USB-C power delivery cable,
which you could just plug into the light here.
And then now this light is essentially
running on mains power.
You can see that it has a charging indicator
and it's connected to like a 60 watt GaN charger.
So no matter what I do, this thing will run infinitely.
And this is the whole setup.
This is dope and I'm gonna show you when I connect it
over here for the practical demonstration.
This is all you need if you wanna run
a small little key light, with infinite power.
And then when you unplug it, you still have 100% battery
that you could take on the go.
This is smart, it's clever, I like it.
Okay, let's talk about actual metrics.
In typical operation, which is the 25 watt mode boost off,
you're gonna get about 1,350 lux at one meter
and that'll last you about an hour and 10 minutes.
I measured 1,370 lux.
This is at 5,600 Kelvin at one meter.
So very close, slightly more powerful than what they said.
And I got an hour and three minutes.
So again, pretty close.
And then if you put in boost mode it goes to 32 watts.
They said you'll get 1,630 lux
and it'll last about 50 minutes.
Again, I got 1,680 lux.
So again, a little bit more
and again, just slightly less runtime than they suggested.
Now if you put it into silent mode,
it becomes a 6.5 watt light,
which will last you four hours and 40 minutes.
Fan doesn't operate, which is great.
And I got 330 lux in that mode at one meter,
which means that the power outputs scale
logically, which I like as well.
So if you put it at 50%,
you're gonna get half the output measured
as the intensity reads on the back.
25%, quarter of the output,
10%, one 10th of the output.
It's great that it works logically like that
'cause it makes the silent mode easy to understand.
And for comparison to some other lights,
the old Aputure Amaran F7
will get you about 1,560 lux at one meter.
So boost mode on this,
is brighter than this bigger F7 panel.
And an MC Pro, which I would say this light,
you know, fits somewhere in between size-wise,
is about 400 lux at one meter.
So this light in silent mode
is just a little bit less output than an MC Pro.
So that's pretty cool that you can put it in silent mode
and you have an MC Pro,
or you can put it in boost mode
and you're out powering the F7.
It's very versatile in that regard.
Now I've talked quite a bit about the silent mode,
but let's talk about if you do have it at 100% output,
what that fan actually sounds like.
So let's get it to 100%.
Now the fan has a kick on right away.
It waits for the temperature to rise
and then it will speed up.
It is extremely quiet in this studio.
The microphone is literally right here, right outta frame.
So that's what it sounds like
with the microphone pointed at the fan.
(fan humming)
And now I'll just hold it, you know,
at a reasonable distance away.
At about this distance,
it's starting to blend in a little bit with the room.
I can hear it here.
The frequency of this fan noise isn't particularly annoying.
It would easily be cleaned up with noise reduction
if you did need to have it
like really close to the microphone.
And if the light was over a meter away,
I really don't think it'd be bothersome.
Okay, let's talk about the last couple metrics.
Now, the color ones for color quality.
So they have a CRI listed of 95 plus
and an SSI of 73.
I used my spectrometer right there to validate that.
And I got slightly better.
I got a CRI of 96 and change, almost 97
and an SSI in daylight of 75.
And an SSI in tungsten of 85, 84~85.
So those are great results.
For a panel like this, those are perfectly adequate results.
Nothing to write home about like,
"Oh my god, it's a 90 SSI."
But 75 SSI daylight for a panel like this,
basically means no complaints to be had.
But when we talk about pricing,
that's when this thing is a bit of a standout.
So you know, we compared to the MC Pro now.
No shade of the MC Pros, I love the MC Pros.
They're very versatile.
I have a whole kit of 'em and they serve a purpose.
But these things as an individual light are like $199.
And even the F7 you can't buy anymore,
but when I bought this thing, I think Canadian,
I spent close to like 150 Canadian on it.
When I found out that the Ace 25x,
was gonna be 69 bucks
after like hearing all this,
I was like, "Wow, that is a really, really good price."
And you know what they say,
there's no bad or good product,
there's only a bad or good price.
This is an excellent price,
which I think elevates this product
to be definitely a better buy than the F7,
if you still could.
And for somebody who only needs
like one or two lights,
where the MC Pros really shine is like in kits
and using them like set up that way.
If you only needed to buy one sort of small little light,
I would buy this over the MC Pro as a single,
you're getting multiple lights in a sense inside of it.
And you could buy three of these almost,
for the price of one MC Pro.
And then the full color version is gonna be 99 bucks,
which again, $100
for the full color version of this, is fantastic.
But something I didn't do that I said I was gonna do
is I wanted to show you a practical demonstration.
Let's say that you're a content creator
who needs a little bit of a key light,
but you don't have an elaborate studio,
you don't wanna set that thing up.
And this is like that small compact thing
that's in your camera bag for your on-camera light.
I think you could set up a little bit
of a key light set up with this,
that would actually look quite good
and offer an interesting value proposition
when you consider, you know,
the price of an umbrella on Amazon is like 10, 15 bucks.
You can get a cheap little light stand
and then stick this thing on there
and you got yourself a little bit of a key light
that looks surprisingly good.
Here, lemme set it up and show you as the last thing.
Now I am gonna use the full color version
and there is a value here
that I think is worth the extra 30 bucks.
Which is that if you are going to use
some random umbrella from Amazon,
having the green magenta adjustment
and the more refined color control, will allow you to one,
compensate for a modifier
that maybe isn't as pure white as it should be.
And also let you better match whatever scene you're in.
If you're trying to get a little bit
of daylight outta the window
or some weird fluorescents, you could do a lot more
with the full color, having the green magenta.
That's what I'm gonna use for this demonstration.
Our background lights are still the same,
so that didn't change.
I've turned off my key light, so there's nothing right now.
And if I turn on this light behind the umbrella,
looks like that.
I didn't put much effort into this, I just put it there,
the angle could probably be optimized a little bit.
But as you can see, I think I'm getting
a decent little catch light in my eyes.
It's a decent little wrap going.
It's like this distance away,
you can see it's just entering the frame
a little bit right there, and it looks great.
And again, you could do this,
you know, for as cheap as $70 plus
like for under 100 bucks probably
with the light stand and the umbrella.
And I think this is a great little key light,
like it's not bad.
Anyway, that's it.
I don't think I have anything else to say about this light.
It's great, it's really versatile.
I'm impressed by everything.
The build quality is fantastic.
It's got a strong magnet, I love magnets.
And I'll put a link in the description
if you wanna pick one up.
Alright...
I'm done.