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PLUS: Donate any amount and I’ll send you a link to the hi-res print version of my studio lighting book. ||
For many of you, the title likely tells you everything you need to know. If a 60W LED isn’t the type of light you’d ordinarily use, I doubt you’ll find any surprises here. But, if you think a very compact, full-colour continuous light has a space in your workflow, let’s see what it can do.
Disclaimer: As always, let’s clear the air here; I was contacted by ZHIYUN whereupon they offered to send over some of their lights. I don’t make a living or any direct money from reviewing products, so I’m typically pretty hesitant to accept them. Sure, ‘free-stuff’ sounds cool, but the cost of a light is very marginal compared to the cost of my time to test, retouch images and write a review! That said, ZHIYUN was relatively new to the lighting space and I’d recently heard of a few products they’d been putting out, plus I’ve been looking at single-point (S-fit) LEDs to compliment my LED panels so I agreed to take a look. TL;DR ZHIYUN have not and are not paying me to share my thoughts on these lights.
Who are ZHIYUN?
I wouldn’t ordinarily include the backstory and update you on the lore of a lighting company, but many of you won’t have heard of ZHIYUN and to be fair, neither had I 6 months ago. Established in 2015, ZHIYUN made its name with many award-winning image stabilisers and gimbals and in 2023 they announced their first line of LED lights. As I said, ZHIYUN is very new to the lighting world.
What immediately struck me about ZHIYUN, is their pride in being a Chinese brand. There are countless Chinese lighting brands out there, but nearly all of them aren’t keen to promote it. Nanlite, Aperture and of course, Godox are just a couple of the more famous lighting companies on the market today, but their Chinese origins aren't common knowledge among many of their customers.
As a child of the 80s myself, I’m aware of the stigma that many Chinese brands do their best to avoid, but these are different times today and China clearly produces many excellent products so it was refreshing to see ZHIYUN not have a Western brand name or be shy about their heritage. And rightly so, as the one thing that immediately struck me when I received these lights, was just how well made and robust they felt.
The ZHIYUN Lights
I mentioned at the top that ZHIYUN kindly offered to send several lights from their range so I could get a broader understanding of their lineup. I requested 3 of their more unique lights to take a look at, firstly we have the X60 which is the little RGB light I will be reviewing today, but I also requested some of their bigger, more powerful lights to test too. One of them was the Molus G300 and this was the one I was most intrigued about, not only due to its excellent looking design, but also its unique ‘Boost Mode’. Lastly, I got one of their most powerful lights in the form of the Molus B500. This is clearly an extremely bright LED and it's a more traditional approach to lighting in the classic monoblock strobe you attach to the top of the light stand without the now common trappings of extra cables, control boxes and transformers or many other powerful LEDs.
First impressions are great though and I aim to review all of these lights in the coming weeks, starting of course with the little X60.
What is the Molus X60 RGB light?
You may not be familiar with the X60 and I’ll share images of this little LED light below, but this is a palm-sized full-colour LED light that’s capable of the ‘full’ RGB spectrum and I’ve put that ‘full’ in quotations for now as we’ll come back to it.
You can see how small the light is in relation to the lightstand in shot, but it’s roughly the size on a small micro 4/3s camera and without the battery it measures 100 x 71 x 56 mm. As you’d expect, the weight matches its size and it weights in at around 320g (or just over 11 ounces for those still living in old England).
The little 60W light provides white light in a Kelvin range from 2700K up to 6500K and like all of these LED lights today, it also has a range of onboard lighting effects like candle, paparazzi, ambulance, as well as a host of others, you get it. Those effects are nice to have, but typically not very useful for many of us photographers. There is one other feature on the light, and that's simply called ‘Music’.
It’s unlikely that it’s of use to many of my more esteemed readers here, but I’ll explain it anyway. Set this light to ‘Music’ mode and a small microphone will listen out for noises and flash/pulse the light in a user-assigned flourish of colours. Granted, as a middle-aged white guy, I personally can’t imagine a use for this feature outside of my old disco-biscuit fuelled evenings at the local rave of yesteryear, but music videos and dance parties would arguably benefit from it I’m sure. Ironically though, the ‘Music’ feature actually has surprisingly deep functionality. You can assign up to 7 pulses and each of those 7 pulses can be individually coloured via a hue from 000 all the way up to 360. I spent faaaaarrrrr longer than I care to admit playing with this feature as, like said, it’s very customisable. Maybe I could program a way to pulse colours in a long-exposure image!!!
Click to enlarge
Those are the core features of this light and as you’d expect, these are all available at the top level of menus as soon as you switch it on. Navigation through the menus is all done via the 2 big knobs you see here. Clicking the left one in moves you forward in the menus and clicking in the right one adds extra functionality in many of the menus. For example, whilst in the CCT mode, clicking the right dial in brightens the light in 25% increments. As you’d expect, both of these dials also spin to adjust the highlighted values.
Design
Let’s be honest, in today's market it feels like there’s a new LED lighting company being announced every week. For them to stand out, they really need to offer something utterly unique, or at the very least, look super-cool! Although the X60 seems a very capable light, its look, along with the other lights in ZHIYUNs line-up, is very cool!
As with many other lights like this, size and the lack thereof, is vital. The ZHIYUN aesthetic is extremely pared back, so much so in fact that many of the typically internal parts are now presented as a design choice on the outside of the light. Elements like the fan, its grill and even cooling fins are used in a very effective way as the actual housing of the light. Couple that with some semi-transparent covers and retro knobs and you have a very distinctive-looking light in today's over-crowded market. This may seem gimmicky, but they pull it off in my opinion, not to mention that the design is actually very conducive to running the light as it now has tons of airflow. Again, this is personal preference, but I really like the distinctive look, plus this isn’t just designed with TikTok BTS videos in mind either and this same aesthetic is carried over onto their far more powerful and professional lights too.
What’s Included in the X60 RGB Combo Pack
Molus X60 RGB Light
Mini Reflector+Diffusion Dome
Power Adapter
Adapter Organizer Bag
Grip Battery
60W PD Charging Cable
Cool Bag
Price: £329 - Price from official ZHIYUN website - August 2024
Core Functionality
Unless you’re looking at this light for specific use cases, you’ll most likely be spending your time in the core modes of CCT and either HSI or RGB.
CCT Mode
This is the white-light mode and this is simply the brightness via the DIM option from 0% to 100% in single-percent increments. The CCT option or the ‘Correlated Colour Temperature’ in case you were curious, is the option we adjust to get a variation in colour temperature. The Kelvin range on the X60 goes from 2700K up to 6500K. Not the hugest range, but typically more than enough for most people to either add a little personality to the colour of their light or for normies to colour correct their light to match the surrounding tone.
No Tint Adjustment
One feature (although I don’t really consider tint to be a ‘feature’ in today's lights) that wasn’t present to my knowledge, was a ‘tint’ adjustment.
Click to enlarge
Above you can see images taken at each of the major Kelvin steps and I simultaneously matched the Kelvin of the light to the Kelvin in the camera for each image. To be clear, this is far from a definitive test as there are often variances in white balances from camera to camera and manufacturer to manufacturer, but it does illustrate a deviation in the tints (green/magenta) at both the top and bottom end of the Kelvin ranges. For example, in the image included here, you can clearly see the 6500K sitting above the 3500K and the former is arguably more green than the latter. Note that these tests were done at full power to allow for the LEDs to achieve their best possible colour.
Typically, this isn’t a major issue due to you being able to white balance it out in post, but with multiple lights on set and often from multiple brands, this becomes harder to do. This isn’t a unique problem to ZHIYUN however and many lights have this issue with the extremes of the Kelvin range, but many RGB lights also include the ability to ‘tint’ the light. I was surprised to not see the option here and I even tried various button combinations to see if it was hidden somewhere. It is a full RGB light so technically it should be able to add tint to these Kelvins and we may even see an update to include this function in the future.
Brightness across the Kelvin range
If you’re unaware, LED lights typically create a Kelvin range by utilising two sets of LEDs. One warmer and one cooler. It’s due to this that nearly all LEDs are brighter when they’re sitting around the middle of their Kelvin range as this is when both the warm and cool LEDs are both on. For this little light, I found it to be brightest at the coolest or 6500K setting, but it was very negligible and overall extremely consistent across the range.
Measured at full power 1m from the light meter:
2700K - ISO 100 1/60th f4 + 8 tenths of a stop
4600K - ISO 100 1/60th f5.6
6500K - ISO 100 1/60th f5.6 + 2 tenths of a stop
Of course that brings us to the one question every photographer has ever asked me about any LED light ever, “How bright is it?”
Image taken at f5.6 / ISO100 / 1/60th / 6500K - Light 1m away from wall
Brightness
As I mentioned at the start, the title tells you what you need to know, it’s a 60w light. This is not a bright light for photographers and it won’t be bright compared to what you’re used to as a speedlight or strobe user. I gave you a real-world example of brightness above and with camera settings of ISO 100, 1/60sec at f5.6 at 1m away. No, you won't be overpowering the sun in any situation, but if you shoot a lot of video or you comfortably work indoors in a light-controlled room or studio, this won’t be a problem. I’ve seen several videographers state that this is a “bright light” and they aren’t lying, for videographers and film-makers, this is bright enough for a lot of their work where a continuous light in videos is needed.
Brightness Range
I will mention one last aspect regarding the brightness of this light and that’s the range of brightness. What I mean by that, is the brightness at 1% power compared to 100% power.
What you may notice, is what you don’t notice. By that I mean there’s very little difference in brightness at 1% power versus 100% power. Of course, lower-powered lights typically have less range, but this light only having a little over 1 and a half stops of range is very limited. Chances are you’ll always have this light cranked to 100% anyway, but it is noticeable how little it changes when you turn it down and is still noticeably bright at 1%. The silver lining here is that you can significantly extend the battery life by turning it down to 50% and you’ve only lost half a stop of light.
Colour
I’m sure it’s of no surprise to anyone that I’m a very harsh critic when it comes to colour in my lights, so just be aware that I’m approaching colour in these lights from a borderline neurotic point of view.
LED lights, specifically RGB LED lights have made my life considerably easier since their introduction. As many of you know, I use LED panels with 16 million+ colours at my fingertips. Compare that to my 20 or so physical sheets of gel colours that I typically use and that’s an awful lot of colours to play with. Now, I don't think this little ZHIYUN light has 16 million colours, but it certainly has an awful lot and certainly a lot more than 20.
HSI or RGB?
One interesting aspect of this little light, is the ability to adjust your coloured light via either the HSI or the RGB mode.
HSI
HSI or Hue, Saturation, Intensity is actually represented on the light via the DIM control instead of Intensity. The DIM is adjusted in single percents up to 100% and the HUE is adjustable via 361 degrees from 0 to 360. and lastly, the SAT(uration) is adjusted in single percents from 0 to 100.
This HSI mode is likely to be the more intuitive one for adjusting colour for many, as you simply select a HUE and then adjust the brightness and saturation, quickly and easily from there.
RGB
The feature of a full RGB mode is a nice one though as it offers a lot of very fine control over the colour you’re after. As you’d imagine, you have all the RED, GREEN, and BLUE adjustments from 0 to 100 percent. In this mode, you also have the DIM from 0 to 100 as well and it’s with these 3 colours and DIM adjustment that you’re seemingly able to access more nuance in colours than the HSI mode, but it is less intuitive and you need to know your colour theory to get the most from this.
It’s worth noting that this RGB mode is not done via a typical 256 value, as, like I mentioned above, it uses percentages instead. Again, not a huge issue, you just won't be able to copy across an RGB value from artwork in Photoshop to match it like-for-like on set for example.
My thoughts on the Colour from this LED
At the start of this article, I put ‘full’ RGB spectrum in quotations and promised to come back to it. I also want to remind you that I’ve dedicated the best part of my career to fully understanding colour and as a result, I can be pretty critical of it in my lights. With all that said, I will state that I found both the HSI and RGB modes to have several colours that ‘stepped’ aggressively, specifically in the pink/red/orange range as well as the green/blue range. By ‘stepping’ I mean that there was a noticeable jump between several colours, even though I was only adjusting its colour by a single increment. In contrast to this, many of the other colours were extremely smooth with also no visible notch in colour as I scrolled through the spectrum. This is not a dealbreaker in any way, but it was noticeable.
FX
I’m not sure if people actually use these FX, but they are on all LED lights today and I’m sure they’re a nice feature for some. With that in mind, I’ll quickly outline what’s included with the X60.
Included are all the usual suspects:
SOS - PAPARAZZI - CANDLE - BAD BULB - TV - LIGHTENING - CCT FLASH - CCT PULSE - CCT LOOP - POLICE CAR - DISCO - FIREWORKS - HUE LOOP - HUE FLASH - HUE PULSE
- ok I didn’t realise there were so many options. I regret starting to type them all out now!!!!
All of these filters have a DIM value from 0-100 as well as a SPD (speed) option with varying values. Plus, many of them either have CCT adjustments or further options like variants and even colour spectrum inputs.
Music
I’ve spoken about this mode above, including some of its functionality, but if your year of birth starts with a 2, you probably already know all about this mode anyway.
Results
I get it, I’m more of a lighting-nerd than most, but stats only paint so much of the picture. How does the light actually perform? I was able to test the light in various lighting setups and although I tested the light on its own, I also used it in conjunction with the other ZHIYUN lights too. I will state which light was used where and I aim to review those other lights in the coming weeks.
Set 1 - ZHIYUN X60 + Molus G300 - Kelvin Key & Fill
Click to enlarge
Click to enlarge
Cut Out and Keep
Here we see the Molus G300 with Parabolic Softbox set to 6500K
X60 set to 2700K
Here you can see the warm light from the front and the cool light behind
Long-time followers will no doubt have seen me use this setup countless times in the past, but essentially it’s just a key-and-fill setup. Here the key-light is the X60 and that is set to the warmest value it has of 2700K. Note that the X60 also has the included diffusion dome attached too. The fill-light is the Molus G300 with the ZHIYUN Parabolic Softbox and grid attached (links to both of these are included at the end of the article). The Molus is set to the coolest temp it has of 6500K. We set the camera to a low/warm Kelvin value of around 2000K-3000K to neutralise the warm light from the X60 and that’s about it.
Camera Settings
Camera - Nikon D850
Lens - DC-Nikkor 105mm f2
Shutter Speed - 1/250th
Aperture - f2
ISO - 100
Kelvin - 3000K
Focal Length - 105mm
Comments:
It’s worth repeating those camera settings, 1/250th, ISO 100, f2. Yes, I am using a fill-light behind the key, but those settings require a decent amount of light and remember, my key-light here is a little 60w LED and it’s set to the very lowest Kelvin which we know produces a little less light and it has the diffusion dome attached. Even at 60w and brought in close-ish, it produces a healthy amount of light.
Set 2 - ZHIYUN X60 - Solo Set
Click to enlarge
As you can see here, just a single X60 up high and angled down - it's also worth noting that the X60 has the diffusion dome attached too.
Lastly, this was a quick shot I wanted to grab of just the X60's light alone and because of this, the X60 was still set to 2700K. I quickly switched my cameras Kelvin to match it and got a shot that was correctly white-balanced. The colouring you see in my final shot is purely aesthetic as I colour-graded it in post.
Cut Out and Keep
Camera Settings
Camera - Nikon D850
Lens - DC-Nikkor 105mm f2
Shutter Speed - 1/250th
Aperture - f2
ISO - 100
Kelvin - 2700K
Focal Length - 105mm
Comments:
It’s rare that any of us only use a single light in a studio, but I did want to grab a few shots with all other lights off, just to see the quality of light from this unit alone. This shot had the diffusion dome on and I doubt I’d even use this light alone without it attached. The results were clean and no odd double shadows or fringing were visible on the shadow transitions.
Set 3 - ZHIYUN X60 - RGB Set
Cut Out & Keep
Camera Settings
Camera - Nikon D850
Lens - DC-Nikkor 105mm f2
Shutter Speed - 1/125th
Aperture - f2
ISO - 30
Kelvin - 4000K
Focal Length - 105mm
Comments:
There’s a slight chance that my star-pupils are questioning the above images. I clearly state that I only used 2 lights, one of which was the X60, a full RGB LED and the other was a ZHIYUN MOLUS G300….. which isn’t an RGB light.
Can you see why you might be questioning the above images now? I’m only using the X60 RGB light to create that beautiful red colour, the second, blue colour is coming from a Kelvin shift trick. With very bold colours like reds, you can push the Kelvin around quite dramatically and it has little effect on the bold, red colour. So here I’m doing just that as I have my G300 set to 6500K which is producing the subtle blue shadow-light when I set my camera to 4000K.
Nerd-talk aside, the RGB mode works as you’d expect aside for the aforementioned RGB spectrum and the red used here was very rich and clean.
Many thanks as always to my patient-ish model: Jaye Hicks
Usability
Attachment
The X60 comes with a single 1/4-20 attachment at the base for all manner of tripods and light stands. It is flat to the base though so you can’t angle the light in any without additional ball-heads etc.
Battery
The battery sits on the side via a very stable and snug clip. The battery can easily be popped off and on with a single hand too. The battery itself is touted as lasting for around one hour at full power. I was using it constantly at varying powers during my shoot and mine lasted two hours. It took around 3-4 hours to fully charge.
One nice feature of this light is the ability to run it via the power cable it comes with and you don’t need the battery to be attached to do this.
One slight annoyance is that the battery can only be charged via the USB-C cable. Not a big deal, but I had to charge my battery via my Playstation 5 as it doesn’t come with a standard plug out of the box.
Modifiers
There are a handful of standard modifiers available for the X60, but if want something specific you may need to use third-party light-shapers. Also, the ZHIYUN website clearly states that the X60 is compatible with Bowens modifiers and sadly that is not the case. The X60 has a proprietary ZY-Mount that you first need an adapter for before you can use this light with Bowens modifiers. There are a couple of different adapters, so be sure to use the one that works on either X60 or X100.
Connectivity
I personally don’t tend to faff around with all the different lighting apps when I’m shooting, but I know many of you have asked me to include these options in my reviews, so I did download the ZHIYUN app to test it.
The app is called the ZY Vega and once downloaded you get prompted to sign your life away via a trillion page privacy policy (can you see how small the scroll icon is on that picture above!). I did sign it for you guys (you’re welcome!), but once inside, it's extremely smooth. I turned the light on and the app found it immediately. In fact, I even closed the app and turned off the light, reopened and switched the light back on and it found the same light again straight away.
The options in the light are clear and easy to use. You have your CCT (white light) mode and here you choose to manually adjust the colour or opt for the CCT Gel presets page. Furthermore, you can even scan the environmental lighting in your room with your phone via the CCT PAIR and it will translate that tone to your light. Simple and very quick and easy to use, even for an idiot like me.
The colour options are just as robust and inside the COLOUR tab (typo in the app), you can adjust the light via the HSI or RGB mode. Remember how I said earlier that you couldn’t dial in an exact 256 RGB value? Well, here you can and you can see in the image above that it translates it to percentages on the light. Odd that the light doesn’t support the 256, but at least it’s in the app if you need it.
Lastly, there’s a colour picker mode. You point your phone camera at a colour and it will translate that colour to RGB values on your light instantly. Plus, you can then save these as presets for later if you'd like to.
Overall, I was very impressed. I ordinarily NEVER use the LED apps as they’re notoriously bad at initially connecting (some lights have very awkward pairing procedures) and even then they often don’t stay connected and the whole process of re-pairing starts again. This seemed solid though and I will likely test it on a shoot next time.
The only downside was the vast amount of T&Cs you need to sign, but that said, it didn’t require you to register the lights, nor set up an account or even sign-in in any way. All of which is a plus!
Final Thoughts on the X60
Let’s be honest, that review was waaayyyyyy more detailed than it needed to be. After I finished writing this I checked some other reviews and they pretty much said, ‘its a really nice light that is small enough to put in my bag wth my sandwiches, you should definitely get it’. You gotta love YouTube.
Hopefully, there are some other super-nerds out there like me who found some of his useful as I know I find this extra detail valuable when there are so many options out there right now.
So to sum up:
PROS:
Very small and lightweight
Looks very cool
Bright for its size
A (nearly) full RGB light in this small form factor is actually pretty impressive
The app was surprisingly robust - I’m glad some of you moaned about me not including this last time!
Can be powered directly without the need for the battery to be attached
CONS:
Not a huge range of brightness control
Not directly Bowens mount compatible
No tint control in CCT (white-light) mode - I’d be amazed if this doesn’t get patched in
Who is this light designed for and should you get it?
I’d argue that this light is more suited to video people. The 60W is bright for video but is limiting for stills shooters, especially those not working in a studio. That said, I could absolutely see myself using this light as a hair light to add some strong specularity from behind and most definitely as a background light as it’s so small, that it’d be perfect for hiding behind the subject.
I also think this light is decently priced too. I see a lot of small LED lights emerging right now and some are far more expensive than this and offer far less.
Closing Comments
Hopefully, you found this review helpful and although it’s highly doubtful that I’ve forgotten anything in this compendium if you do STILL have questions about the light that you somehow think I may have missed…. Google is available. I’m joking of course and I will gladly answer any questions you have….for a small fee.
Products Used
ZHIYUN
As I mentioned at the top, ZHIYUN sent me these lights to review, but I am not being paid to share my thoughts. Below is a link to the lights and modifiers I used, supposedly if you use them, I will earn a very small amount of commission from them. It is minimal though and beer money at best so if you find a better deal elsewhere, please feel free to take it. All that said, they have provided me with a discount code for you to use on their official site. Use code ‘JakeHicks’ to earn 10% off anything on their site.
Use Code: 'JakeHicks' for 10% Discount on the ZHIYUN website
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Use Code: 'JakeHicks' for 10% Discount on the ZHIYUN website ||
ZHIYUN X60
This link is for the COMBO RGB Kit I had. That includes the battery, power cable, diffusion dome, carry case etc.
ZHIYUN MOLUS G300
I did use this light in nearly all of the setup above, but I am still in the process of reviewing it. Spoiler alert, it is an excellent light so I have included a link to it here in case you wanted to learn more before my review was out.
ZHIYUN 90cm Parabolic Softbox
An excellent, generously sized softbox that is very well made and seems robust - most importantly, it’s very easy to put up!
JHP Livestreams…
I livestream every other Tuesday night via YouTube and there I answer your questions, critique your shots, take community images into Photoshop to work on them and discuss all manner of lighting tips and techniques. I look forward to seeing you and your work there real soon. Jake Hicks Photography - YouTube
