Astera QuikSpot

The QuikSpot is the latest in a line of high quality wireless fixtures released by Astera; a battery powered light that is up to spec for film & TV. If you are familiar with Astera and their products you will see a light that feels familiar, even though it is new.

It is ‘on brand’ with the rest of the Astera product range, with quality LEDs. It features a large range of accessories and control protocols, including the app. It is the latest addition to the Astera ecosystem which is rapidly growing, improving, and refining.

The QuikSpot is essentially a battery powered Fresnel. Although it’s a small light, it has a really high end look and feel to it. It looks like a lot of time and effort was put into the research and development of the QuikSpot.

Construction

It is a good size light. Not too bulky and awkward and also not too small and ineffective. It weighs just under 3.5kg without the barndoors. It has dimensions of 164mm x 164mm x 182mm and as such, can be easily handled by one person.

One of the highlights of the construction of the Astera QuikSpot is the versatility and the number of ways in which it can be hung and mounted. It has an easily removeable yoke, an integrated kickstand, mounting pin in the back, or you add a TrackPin Compact to attach it to a track. You can also attach a third-party clamp or use a FlexCover to blend the fixture into the surroundings. The Astera ecosystem extends well beyond an app and a logo. Just like any light in the Astera range, there are a large range of accessories that go with the QuikSpot.

It comes with an IP65 rating, meaning you can use it indoors or outdoors. It also means less maintenance and should be more durable.

You can tell that a lot of time and thought has been put into the design, not only from an aesthetic standpoint, but also from a practical perspective. The yoke is in the right spot, and can be taken on and off with ease. It has rubber stops to protect the lens as well as the base, the zoom angles are marked and the screen is easy to see at all angles, really helpful if you are on a ladder and can just reach the light and need to adjust the settings via the onboard screen.

Optics, Colour and Brightness

The Astera QuikSpot features the Titan LED engine. This is the LED engine being used for Astera products to create an ecosystem of lighting fixtures which are all uniform and compatible with each other. This means that if you were to use a bunch of different Astera fixtures that all share the same Titan LED engine, you will have uniformity across colour, dimming characteristics and brightness.

It’s a single source LED. When you look into the light as it is outputting, you see one crisp colour, not an assortment of red, blue and green dots at varying levels. The Astera QuikSpot uses additive colour mixing, RGBMA (Red, Green, Blue, Mint, Amber).

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Why use mint in additive colour mixing?

In LED colour mixing, mint LEDs are used to boost optical efficiency. It can help increase lumen output of the whole fixture and can improve lumen per watt performance when compared to standard RGB fixtures.

Why use amber in additive colour mixing?

Amber is a version of warm white. Having amber as a part of additive colour mixing allows the light to produce whites with a much higher and more stable CRI (colour rendering Index) which is essential for lighting to camera.

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The QuikSpot features a fresnel lens which can be focussed as a hard spotlight or as a wide soft flood. It has a set of compatible barn doors and a range of filters to spread and shape the beam. The quality of the LED engine is the highlight of the optical side of the Astera QuikSpot.

Applications and Features

There is a feature pot which allows you to trade off light output with light quality, called OutputGain. If OutputGain is on, the light aims for maximum output and deeper saturation of colours. It tends to be more suited towards live performance applications. When turned off (OutputGain Off), you lose some of the output and colour saturation for higher CRI. This version tends to be more suited to film and TV or any applications with cameras.

The zoom can be manually focussed, much the same as an SLR camera, by turning the lens barrel. The beam angle ranges from 13º to 60º. It will stop at 30º to indicate that you are in the middle of the zoom range.

The QuikSpot features up to 20hrs of run time, with 4.5 hours of runtime at maximum brightness. All Astera products utilise Smart Battery Management, the most advanced battery management system in the industry.

The system intuitively deals with most of the common issues associated with the traditional battery lights. For example, you can set a run time of 20 hours for your Astera fixtures, and they will automatically self-manage to perform at the optimal level for the entire time.

True to form, Astera has a number of accessories that go with the QuikSpot to help with charging and prep work. ChargingPlate lets you charge the batteries of up to eight QuikSpots with a single TRUE1 cable, directly in the case. PrepBox lets you assign DMX in seconds, to blue-mode and pair up to eight QuikSpots at once, to configure dimming and colour in multiple devices without a controller.

The Astera QuikSpot is best suited to any application where a high-quality battery powered Fresnel is needed. That covers a wide range of applications from front light to ambient light and even extends beyond event lighting into architectural applications.

Control and Programming

Another thing that Astera is well known for is having lights that are compatible with a large range of control protocols. The QuikSpot is no different. The QuikSpot includes LumenRadio’s wireless DMX and RDM. As for wireless protocols, it is also compatible with CRMX, UHF, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi.

It also features 5-pin XLR in + out sockets for a more permanent install or ‘old school’ approach. Same goes for power, it can be run for longer periods using a powerCON TRUE1 cable. It also has an onboard control panel, which will be very familiar for any previous Astera user.

Verdict

Over the last few years, we have been seeing some huge forward steps being taken in the battery powered LED space. Astera have been at the forefront of this movement and have continued to do so with the release of the QuikSpot.

The size of the light and the number of easy- to-use rigging accessories available with the Astera QuikSpot make it really easy to use and hang in all kinds of difficult spots.

The fact that it is battery powered and has wireless DMX means there are no cable runs (unless you want them). The high-quality output means it can be used on TV and film gigs, the IP65 rating means it can be used indoors or outdoors; a very useful light indeed.

I would love to see a bigger, brighter and more powerful version of the same light to complement the QuikSpot, but who knows, it might be in the pipeline.

Product Information: astera-led.com

Distributor Australia and New Zealand: www.ulagroup.com

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The Specs

• LED Engine: Titan LED engine Colours: RGB, Mint, Amber Total LED power: 60W
• LED power draw: 35W
• CRI (Ra)/TLCI 3200 – 6500K: ≥96
• Strobe: 0 – 25 Hertz
• Battery runtime: up to 20 hours
• Battery runtime (max. brightness):
• 4.5 hours
• Weight: 3.45kg
• Dimensions (L x W x D): 164mm x 164mm x 182mm