As a world leader in consumer lighting products as well as LED components, Philips has developed a reputation for making great products and the Philips Entertainment Entertainment Showline SL PAR 150 Zoom is no exception.
The first thing that you notice about the Showline SL PAR 150 Zoom is its build quality. The unit is heavy, about seventeen pounds with a clamp, from a body made from cast aluminum and a solid steel dual yoke. Immediately you recognize that Philips Entertainment has built the fixture to last. It has also made it in a manner that will effectively dissipate the heat of the nine 15-watt red, green, blue, and white (RGBW) LED emitters that are at the heart of the fixture. Assisting in the cooling process are air vents strategically placed in the body, and a fan. The fan only runs when it is needed in auto mode, is fairly quiet, and can be turned off if need be. You can hear the fan running in a quiet room when you are near it, but hanging 20 feet off the floor your probably never going to hear it.
The fixture will physically look good in a lighting rig, with a shape that is somewhat reminiscent of a typical cast aluminum PAR can. It has a dual yoke that can be used as a floor stand or for hanging the light, as well as an attractive gel frame holder with integrated clip to hold an optional gel frame or other beam shaping accessories. Power In and Through, DMX In and Out, as well as a well-designed color LCD display and control pushbuttons are located on the back of the unit.
The fixture draws 150 watts at full current draw and uses Neutrik PowerCon connectors for power in and daisy chaining power through to the next fixture. It comes with a standard 39-inch power input cable, and optional power cables are available so that you can daisy chain up to ten fixtures on a standard 15-amp 110-volt circuit.
The unit uses 6, 10, or 16 channels of DMX 512 for control depending on what mode you are running the fixture in. DMX 512 connects to the fixture using industry standard 5-pin XLR connectors for both DMX In and Out. The unit also is RDM-compliant for remote monitoring and setup.
Those that aren't using RDM will find a nice LCD color display on the back of the unit to assist in setting up the fixture. The display is easy to read and has the option to flip the display making the fixture easy to read regardless of how the fixture is hung.
The setup basics are intuitive and I didn't have to refer to the manual to get the fixture addressed and in the proper mode. However, for more in depth configurations you will probably want to refer to the manual for the menu structure of the fixture and explanations of all the different operating modes available.
With Philips proprietary Harmonize Color Calibration standard on each Showline fixture, each light in the rig should provide consistent color quality and intensity output making all of the Showline fixtures match.
So enough about the physical features of the fixture, by now I am sure that you are wondering how it does as a lighting fixture. Honestly it does very well. Showline touts the SL PAR 150 Zoom fixture as a PAR can replacement and I think it would do a good job holding it's own as far as LED fixtures go.
In my testing I had a throw distance of around 30 feet and in color, especially dark colors, I can see the SL PAR 150 Zoom keeping up with a 575-watt PAR can. Of course this will vary some from color to color and will depend on the zoom depth of the fixtures optics that you decide to use at your throw distance.
Since the fixture will zoom from 15 to 70 degrees I found it to be quite versatile. You can zoom the fixture out wide to use as a wall wash or a big stage wash or zoom it in tight to compensate for a long throw, or to create beam looks or a tight spot on a set piece. It is definitely a nice feature but buyers beware, the zoom is a manual, hand-operated zoom only, it's not motorized. I understand that on a fixture like this a motorized zoom probably is not needed but it would have been a nice feature.
The quality of the color mixing was excellent. The red, green, blue, and white (RGBW) chipset allows you to mix a wide range of colors. The addition of the white chip to the standard RGB allows the fixture to mix nice pastel colors as well as make a range of “white” light that is tunable from 2,700 to 10,000 degrees Kelvin.
The fixture also has is the ability to use internal preset color mixes. The user can define up to 31 colors and eight chases in the fixture. These are all defined from the menu on the back of the fixture and then saved in the fixture and available for either manual playback or playback from a console. Additionally, in Master/Slave Mode you only have to define your custom colors in the Master unit and all of the slave units will follow along, which is great for those instances where you want all of the units to do the same thing.
While I think there is great merit with the Master/Slave Mode and building custom color presets for those running the fixtures without a control console or using a very basic console for playback, if you are using a console that has good LED color mixing capabilities you are probably not going to spend the time to build custom color presets in the fixtures or use the Master/Slave Mode.
However, Showline has included 43 factory-preset colors, including 10 different white color temperatures that are very nice. They also include several generic color chases and a couple of rotating “color wheel” simulations that give the effect of a spinning color wheel like that in a moving light. All of these presets worked very well and I thought they were an excellent addition to the fixture.
Dimming was also excellent with a “theatrical-grade” dimming quality not found in every LED fixture on the market. The fixture faded up gently from off to full and back from full to off just as you would expect an incandescent fixture to dim. Additionally the fixture has four dimmer curves to help match the dimming curve of the LEDs to an existing incandescent dimming system or to the Philips Entertainment Strand PL lighting fixtures if you had them in your rig. It also features a 16-bit dimming and color mixing mode for advanced control consoles that can handle 16-bit commands. This feature gives the control console even more control of the fixture and allows even greater fine tuning on the color mixing and dimming properties.
Other fairly standard features include stand-alone operation, master and slave mode for using one fixture to control the rest on the DMX chain, intensity strobe while in color, as well as a hue, saturation, intensity (HSI) mode for controlling the fixture in HSI instead of RGBW.
One nice proprietary feature is Philips Entertainment's Harmonize Color Calibration technology that is onboard the fixture. With Color Calibration on each Showline fixture in the rig should provide consistent color quality and intensity output, making all of the Showline fixtures match.
All in all I think that Showline SL PAR 150 Zoom is a well-designed LED PAR fixture. With a list price of $1,248.00 it has an ample feature set and a great build quality that makes it worth giving serious consideration when looking to purchase an LED PAR fixture.
COMPANY: Showline, a Philips Entertainment Company
PRODUCT: SL PAR 150 Zoom
List Price: $1,248
