This is the Zhiyun Fiveray M20c, a very bright 20 watt tiny LED panel. So let’s directly go into the brightness test. So I put the M20 1 meter away from my phone so we get the LUX at 1 meter. First output at 100% and going through all major kelvin values.
100% CCT
2500k – 1240 lux
3200k – 1275 lux
4300k – 1431 lux
5500k – 1510 lux
6500k – 1550 lux
7000k – 1562 lux
8000k – 1590 lux
9000k – 1590 lux
10000k – 1590 lux
It’s quite bright for such a tiny light. And it competes with the Astera Hydra in brightness. But it’s being such a small light at 100% we can hear its fan cooling this light, but also go through the battery much faster. As you only get 40 minutes of use at full power. However I don’t think this is a light that should be used at 100% but more at 50% or lower.
50% CCT
2500k – 725 lux
3200k – 739 lux
4300k – 795 lux
5500k – 850 lux
6500k – 890 lux
7000k – 905 lux
8000k – 895 lux
9000k – 890 lux
10000k – 885 lux
Even at half power it is still much brighter than the Aputure MC pro at 100% output, while being almost half the price of the MC Pro. Also tested the light at 1% it is interesting its still quite bright at the lowest setting.
1% CCT
2500k – 84 lux
3200k – 88 lux
4300k – 92 lux
5500k – 100 lux
6500k – 109 lux
7000k – 112 lux
8000k – 103 lux
9000k – 102 lux
10000k – 102 lux
Accessory wise we have a grid and bardoors, the barndoors kinda work, but the soft light spreads still leaks everywhere. The best way to prevent the spread is to use a grid, which makes the light more directional, but you also lose some of the light. The light loss is actually not very extreme as it uses a very thin grid.
100% with grid
2500k – 1083 lux
3200k – 1112 lux
4300k – 1255 lux
5500k – 1318 lux
6500k – 1355 lux
7000k – 1364 lux
8000k – 1394 lux
9000k – 1390 lux
10000k – 1385 lux
50% with grid
2500k – 638 lux
3200k – 646 lux
4300k – 697 lux
5500k – 745 lux
6500k – 777 lux
7000k – 792 lux
8000k – 783 lux
9000k – 779 lux
10000k – 777 lux
There is also HSI and RGB mode Noticeable the Blue LED is much bright than the Red and green.
HSI 100%
120 – 692 lux
240 – 926 lux
360 – 622 lux
RGB 100%
Red – 625 lux
Green – 693 lux
Blue 100% – 922 lux
Fiveray M20c got a lot of effects which is very nice, when you need them: Sos, paparazzi, candle, bad bulb, tv, lightning, strobe, cct loop, cct flash, cct pulse, police car, disco, fireworks, hue loop, hue flash and hue pulse. There is also a special Music effect, which is the light reacting to sound and flashes. So if you want the light to react to a beat of someone clapping.
The light is inside a kinda cage, but when remove, there is no mounting point on the light itself so the kinda plastic cage thing is needed to mount it anywhere. There is a magnet on the cage thing which is nice and strong, there are cold doe mounts so you can stack multiple of these.
On a shoot we notice it’s kinda impossible to get a purple color out of this light as it either jumps to magenta or becomes blue. However realistically we rarely use purple, it was just an off music video that needed a purple look.
Now using the light with the ZY Vega app, if you can’t connect, you just need to reset the bluetooth on the light which can be done in the menu. the app works with setting groups and also changing the lights. It has good kelvin values to choose from and many ways to alter the color of the light to match a color.
The con of the apps is there is no access to all the built in effects and possibly have a future upgrade that would include it. Overall, even with my old Samsung S9 phone, I can still control the light over bluetooth. The other con is that it seems to miss a certain range of colors in the Hue as it is noticeable it jumps from one color to the other and does not have a gradual change. This might be a software issue where the light is not set up right as it seems to stay on a certain color for a long time before switching to a different color. Hopefully Zhiyun will fix the issues in a coming firmware.
