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Thread: Marq Gesture Spot 300 Review

  1. #1

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    Default Marq Gesture Spot 300 Review


    Introduction

    Four 60W LED moving heads for £1099 with rotating, replaceable gobos, 18 degree beam
    angle & 3 facet prism? Don’t mind if I do! I have to admit I had reservations & was almost
    resigned to losing the return shipping costs if I decided they weren’t for me.

    What’s in the box?

    Included in the pretty shipping carton is:
    One gesture spot 300
    IEC power cable.
    A DMX cable – decent quality too, though not furnished with rubberised cable & Neutrik
    connectors.
    An eyebolt for securing a safety cable (not supplied)
    An omega bracket with ‘quarter turn’ fixing bolts.
    User manual

    Initial impressions
    My initial impressions on unboxing the first pair of Gesture Spot 300s were good. Their
    build is solid although the finish on the plastic parts of the casing feels soft & you get the
    impression they might mark easily. There were no worrying rattles & no missing fixings
    I’ve seen with other budget fixtures.

    Built-in Shows
    Being something of a DMX advocate I resisted the temptation to jump straight in with my 3
    pin XLR cable and I tried the built-in shows. Oh dear. A few forward facing programs are
    available but they’re slow and awful. The built-in auto shows are slow & awful too. The
    sound active shows are fast and are shockingly awful! Slave mode on other fixtures (4
    modes are available) merely delay received DMX which results in the show looking even
    more random & frantic. OK then, onto DMX!

    DMX
    I wasted no time in lining up all four units in a row & had them all DMX’d with QLCplus very
    quickly in 13 channel mode.
    In 13 channel mode you get:
    16-bit pan & tilt
    Pan & tilt speed
    Colour
    Gobo
    Gobo index & rotation
    Prism
    Dimmer
    Shutter
    Program Modes
    Speed
    Service functions

    There’s a more limited 8 channel mode where pan & tilt are restricted to 8-bit

    Gobos
    The first test I carried out was open white before venturing to the 7 factory fitted gobos.
    They are almost without exception, TERRIBLE. This isn’t a deal breaker for me because
    factory fitted gobos in most movers are bordering on unusable anyway. The Gesture
    Spot’s gobos are very very bad though, bar the two glass ones that come as standard. I
    was immediately impressed with the brightness &
    clarity of the optics though.
    All seven gobos can rotate and are easily swapped by removing an access panel & sliding
    out the desired gobo holder.

    Colours
    The Gesture Spot 300 comes with 8 colours plus white – all are strong, though with the
    slightly limited gamut of the white LED used some are stronger than others (a trait
    common among most LED fixtures of this type).

    Prism
    A static 3 facet prism is included, which greatly increases the spread of the light output

    Dimming
    Easily the most linear dimming I’ve ever seen on any LED fixture, never mind a budget
    one! A DMX brightness of 1 is barely visible & increases fairly smoothly across the whole
    range to 255.

    Menus
    A full colour LCD shows the onboard menu system which I found very intuitive & easy to
    navigate – certainly a far cry from many four digit 7-segment LED menus.

    Noise
    Some fan noise is evident but should easily get drowned out by ambient noise at all but
    the very quietest of functions.

    Positioning
    It’s not mentioned anywhere in the user manual but these babies have an auto-return
    feature whereby if the yoke or head are inadvertently moved, they’ll go right back to where
    they should be.

    That bracket
    I don’t have the biggest, strongest hands in the world & I found I needed additional
    leverage to secure the included bracket to the base of the fixture. The bolts locate in the
    provided holes quite easily but getting a full quarter turn on them is hard work. Removing
    them by my fair hands was impossible. It’s a good, strong bracket but the prospect of
    needing a spanner to assist in mounting & removing the bracket was a concern. I certainly
    wouldn’t worry about the bracket falling out of its mounting holes!

    Similar beasts
    At first glance they appear to be very similar to the Chauvet Intimidator 255 IRC & the
    Showtec Phantom 50. Comparing photos of all three, the chassis look remarkably similar
    - screw holes in the same kind of places – but with basic differences, some purely
    cosmetic, some functional.
    On paper, the Gesture Spot 300 is slightly different to the Chauvet & Showtec models
    being that the Gesture Spot 300 has a beam angle of 18 degrees & the 255 / Phantom50
    have a beam angle of only 15 degrees. LED power in all cases is a reasonable 60 Watts &
    lumen figures are pretty similar too (although brightness is quoted in different distances in
    all cases).

    A light off!
    Being so similar to the Chauvet Intimidator 255 in both size & specification it became
    imperative to do a side by side comparison with its more expensive sibling.
    The first thing that was tried was fitting the Gesture Spot 300 in the hard bag made for the
    255. Good news everyone – the Gesture Spot 300 fits in the bag with no problem at all,
    even with the omega bracket & a 32-35mm half coupler fitted.

    Next up, a 255 was put next to a Gesture Spot & output was compared – first on open
    white, then with colours. Colours in both models, while different are good, even & strong.
    Immediately apparent was the difference in beam width between the fixtures. 18 degrees
    of the Gesture Spot vs 15 degrees of the 255 means you get a wider throw with the
    Gesture Spot. It was impossible to see any difference in brightness, although the white
    colour temperature is slightly cooler on the Gesture Spot.

    Dimming was compared next. The 255 has a noticable jump in brightness between DMX 0
    and 1 on its dimmer channel & doesn’t seem as linear as the Gesture Spot.
    When knocked, the 255 doesn’t auto return to where it should be positioned, either.

    The gobos included with the 255 aren’t anything to write home about, but they’re a lot
    better than those fitted by default to the Gesture Spot.

    Fan noise & operating temperature is noticeably different with the 255 too, but then they
    cost almost double what the Gesture Spots sell for.

    On paper the size of the gobos in both fixtures is different, but in the interests of research
    a custom gobo from the 255 was tried in the Gesture Spot. It fitted without any problem
    despite the published differences in size & in tests produced projected images
    indistinguishable from the 255.

    Chauvet Intimidator 255 Marq Gesture Spot 300
    LED 60W White 60W White
    Dimensions 211 x 232 x 337mm 220 x 240 x 330mm
    Weight 5.7kg 5.6kg
    Power 95W 84W
    IR remote capable? YES NO
    IEC Power Link? YES NO
    DMX 3 pin 3 pin
    Illuminance 10420 lux @ 2m 3700 lux @ 3m
    Gobo Size 24mm x 20mm image x 1.1mm 23.5mm x 19mm image x 1.1mm
    Colours 8 plus white 8 plus white
    Gobos 7 rotating plus open 7 rotating plus open
    Prism 3 facet, static 3 facet, static
    Pan Range 540 / 360 / 180 deg 540 / 360 / 180 deg
    Tilt Range 270 / 180 / 90 deg 270 / 180 / 90 deg
    Auto position return? NO YES
    Price £529 each £299 each


    Conclusion
    The Gesture Spot 300 is a very good fixture – never mind for the money. Okay maybe it’s
    not as nicely finished as the Chauvet 255 but it’s almost half the price. It certainly isn’t
    scruffy but its built-in shows ALL absolutely SUCK. There’s no podium mode either and its
    mounting bracket is unwieldy for all but the strongest of fingers.

    If you’re in the market for a moving head which can have its gobos changed, can rotate
    them, has a prism & is bright enough to cut through in most scenarios a small to medium
    mobile DJ encounters – AND you can DMX.. buy the Gesture Spot 300 and house it in the
    Chauvet CHS-X5X Twin Moving Head Bag.

    If you don’t/can’t/won’t DMX, buy the Chauvet Intimidator 255 IRC or the Showtec
    Phantom 50 instead. Or buy the Gesture Spot 300 & LEARN DMX!

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    Two movers with a Pearl Necklace gobo. Left – Chauvet Intimidator 255.
    Right – Marq Gesture Spot 300

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    The outer circle demonstrates the beam width of the Gesture Spot 300 vs the
    Chauvet Intimidator 255

    Acknowledgements
    Thanks to Andy Przybyla for bringing his Chauvet Intimidator 255s & bag for these tests!

  2. #2
    Resident Antagonist Benny Smyth's Avatar
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    A very interesting and comprehensive review. Thanks, Justin.

    Would be good to see a video when you get them programmed in.

  3. #3

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    Quote Originally Posted by Benny Smyth View Post
    A very interesting and comprehensive review. Thanks, Justin.

    Would be good to see a video when you get them programmed in.
    Thanks Benny.

    I'm also working on an unboxing & demo video.. There's so little information about these things I was taking a bit of a punt - which is entirely why I didn't go through my friendly local (and amazing) dealer. They're not stocked in many places so would've been a special order, plus deal matching, plus aggro if I didn't like them....

    Basically I've tried to answer all the questions I had before buying them

    Oh yeah - and before too much longer there's gonna be a guts comparison with the 255 too

  4. #4

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    Still not got round to editing the review video yet but here's some pics of them in action.

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    NB gobos model's own

  5. #5
    Solitaire Events Ltd's Avatar
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    Great review - thanks for taking the time.

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