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!