AMARAN Ace 25c and 25x Review: Part 1… Product Shots & What On Earth Is Going On Here?

I will admit it. I do not get the pricing of technology sometimes.

There are times where the pricing seems to escalate with no end in sight. Take cars for instance. I like my cars. After my second new car purchase not long after I graduated college I swore never to buy new again. The price was $17k (A toronado red VW Passat GL that I adored, have owned two more since, and still have the last one.), between tax and interest I would pay over $20k, and then it dawned on me as the wheel left the lot that the car was now worth $15k at best. So I was immediately in the hole over $5k. That day I decided to let someone else take the initial depreciation hit and after they grow bored with it I will swoop in and drive it until it drops. Many purchases since I have yet to pay $20k for a vehicle. With the new purchase price of family sedans reaching $30k-$40k plus, I do not see myself ever investing in a new car again.

And then there are times where more and more features are added while the price tumbles. Flat screen monitors for example. Recently my wife needed one to work from home. Having used laptops for years at home it has been ages since I bought one. Went shopping for one and… $70… for a name brand monitor… what? I am of a vintage where I remember when these things were quite pricey. Flat screen TVs stun me also. They sit out front on the floor of electronics departments priced barely more than the stands to hold them.

Task at hand. Small LED lights.

I have two very similar LED lights that I purchased a year or so apart a while ago. Both were less than $100. Around $50-$70 I think. They have served me well for years. From video lights for my sporadic and sparse Youtube output…

… to product shots at home…

Product Shots: Answering A Question I was Not Asked.

…to an LED in my backpocket for feature pics at weddings.

While I will still use these tiny lights for the latter, due to their pocketability, they will be formally retired for the former use cases.

Why? I am glad I imagined you asked.

I choose to blame Gerald Undone. I really like his content. He is always an interesting watch and I enjoy his attention to detail. I was minding my own business being perfectly happy with the lights I had and then I stumbled upon this video about the new AMARAN Ace 25c and 25x lights.

If you did not watch most of all of it let me break it down this way…

They kick my little phone sized LED lights in the teeth.

But here is the thing. They barely cost any more than what I paid for my lights while adding a TON of features I had not expected at a reasonable price point. This makes no sense. So far there are no downsides I can muster up. Ok, I will start with the features.

They are purdy.
- Ok. Not a feature. But it matters.

It has a built in fan.
- One that you can control. For instance it is not that noisy but if you want to reduce the fan noise you can choose to do so with a lowered output.

The Ace 25c brings a full color range that I had not expected at this price point.
They are built like… you guessed it… an Apocalyptic throwing weapon in a pinch.
- Easily passing the stun a zombie with a shot to the bridge of the nose density test.
Did I mention that they look good?
Have not bothered to compare output stats to my existing LEDs, but these blow them out of the water in the field.
They have created a mount system that starts out with a hotshoe adapter with a threaded mount point.

Has a threaded mounted in the body also.

Comes with a magnetic dome light modifier.
- There are also optional accessories like a stackable magnetic grid adapter.

They… have… magnets…
- When I saw Gerald turn around and stick one to the shelf behind him… The mother of all take my money moments. If it was not a lock up to that point, that did it.
- The magnetized surface is padded so as not to scratch surfaces.

<ahem> There is an app to remotely control these from your phone… What?!?!?
- This may be common. I do not know. But this is cuss word awesome. And you can control just about everything. Everything that matters anyway. The app not only allows you to control more than one light, it even allows you to control two different lights at the same time… What?!?!? I will stop myself here, but this works flawlessly so far.
Fantastic screen and button/switch/dial control setup.
- Was off to the races whizzing through the menus immediately. Same applies to the app I mentioned above.

45 minutes of power and can be powered off of a chord while in use.
Some other things that will come to me later… and they look good.

So, I keep saying at this price point. What of it? The bi-color Ace 25x is only $69. That is about what I paid for the lights I have. The full color 25c? $95. That is a great value.

For my first test I recreated my product light set up mentioned in my post link above. Lights and camera WB set to 5000k. One light sitting on its side on one side and the other either placed on the other side…

…or held above in hand.

This should have been light work for the lights and it was. Being able to set both lights to 5000k and set the light lever from the app was fantastic. I can really see how this would be beneficial while shooting video with them mounted on stands with modifiers. Something these lights could handle easily. They are so bright that I believe I will also test them as constant lights for stills photography. It should be great for a portable lighting setup for my film cameras.

So… I guess I need to do another Youtube video now…. Yay.

Definitely looking forward to trying them out for stills photography.

Anyhoo. More to come. Added a few more sample product pics below.

Happy capturing.

-ELW