Review: Chauvet MinSpot
Fresh off the assembly line, just in time for Christmas comes the Chauvet MinSpot and MinWash. I, being ever addicted to gadgets, was immediately impressed by it’s small form factor. The Chauvet Min is not only tiny, it is also rather responsive, and comes with most standard moving head features. While it might not be a Martin MAC2000, it is definitely worth looking at.
Weighing in at a hefty 8.3 pounds (That’s 3.8kilograms for you metric types), the Min is downright light. Forget those 50 pound MAC250 Kryptons - this baby is a snap to install. It’s a whole 10 inches tall, and about 6 inches wide. But that’s not to suggest the Min is light on features.
The Min includes 9 gobos, 540 degrees of pan, 270 degrees of tilt, an electronic dimmer and strobe (Which can operate at up to 20hz, the same speed as my 750watt strobe). Interestingly enough, this is my first experience with a LED driven moving head light - with only one LED. The Min contains a single RGB LED, rated at 14watts, which puts out as much light as a 250 watt bulb.
Upon receiving my Min, the first thing I did was plug it in and start playing some music with heavy bass. After activating it’s sound-activated features, I was pleasantly surprised by the speed with which it moved. The sound-activated patterns were rather nice, and included strobing and forming various shapes on my ceiling. But really, that isn’t where this unit shines.
Soon after, I grew grew bored of just watching the Min work on it’s own. I pulled out my handy-dandy Chauvet DMX-7 (POS) controller, switched the unit over to DMX control (Yes, you have to do it manually), and started experimenting. Since the Min can use either 5 or 13 channels, I decided to try both before coming to any judgement, and I have to say, the 13 channel mode is much better. It gives you much more control over the speed of the unit, and also allows you to utilize the full power of the Min’s RGB mixing. Channels 7, 8, and 9 are devoted to Red, Green, and Blue, and you can mix about any color you want.
However, the Min is by no means perfect. It makes some rather odd noises at times when moving (Which I guess should be expected), and you can tell what color the beam is without even looking - it creates a different tone depending on the color. I’m sure this isn’t intentional, but it was a rather interesting observation on my part. Also, I found the Min’s “Color Macro” settings rather, well, the same. Also, the color macros are next to useless in 5 channel mode, since you have no control over them. In 13 channel mode, you have to use the color vector control to keep the color from changing 10 times a second… But my most irritating complaint is the Min’s focus. There is a slider to focus the beam, but if you try to focus it, the two lenses hit each other. It doesn’t sound like they would break, but it’s still rather irritating, because the inner lens needs to move about half an inch further to bring the Gobos into full focus, and at anything less than 12 feet of distance they appear fuzzy, and the colors are slightly misaligned.
So there you have it folks - my take on the Chauvet Min Spot. Overall, I’m extremely pleased with this unit. If someone would like to donate a Martin light to me for testing purposes, I’d be rather overjoyed ;).