{mosreview}manufacturer=Futurelight/product=PH(S|W)-260/website=www.futurelight.co.uk/score=4.5{/mosreview} Once upon a time, there was a company called Martin, Martin were the only company when it came to moving lighting with no other company coming close in terms of reliability and after-sales support.... Unfortunately those days are well and truly behind us with companies such a Futurelight bringing cheaper and dare I say it, better products on to the market.

I have played with some of Futurelights range before most notably the Evo 7 (link to EVO 7 review) and I must admit even with such a basic fixture I was impressed. Many people in our industry seem to hold the jaded idea that anything with out the Martin logo on is ultimately rubbish. Unfortunately for those and for Martin, Futurelight are breaking the mould and are releasing some top notch products.

I had the PHS-260 (Futurelight 250Watt Spot Moving Head) and the PHW-260 (Futurelight 250Watt Wash Moving Head) from DiFuzion to play with for a few weeks.

As noted in some other reviews I seem to have an obsession with packaging, but in today's age of couriers playing football with anything expensive looking or sounding, products have to be packed well. Futurelight as always do not disappoint on this with both lights being well packed in their transit boxes. To me a company that spends time getting the packing right tick many boxes before I even start to use the fixture.

From here on in the review is going to be split into two sections, the PHS-260 and the PHW-260.

PHS-260

As I have said before I have been impressed so far with Futurelights build quality, with each product being designed to survive the rigors of the road. The PHS-260 has a feature list that seems to go on forever so I plan to detail my experience as a whole and some of the features that I love and some that are borderline useless.

So first off, the PHS-260 is nicely designed; the whole light seems to have a somewhat rubberized grey/ black finish. From a non techie point of view the lights look good and un-obtrusive, perfect for a club or theatre environment. Once started up, the PHS-260 has a great menu system and an LCD that is readable in all lighting conditions. Another nice feature is the key that has been handily printed next to the LCD so that you can access all the functions of the menu / light without having to constantly look at the manual! Features like these usually go totally undocumented but when it comes to actually using the light in situe they can provide extremely useful.

Upon turning the fixture on the light goes through all of its power-on checks (resetting colour wheels and what not) and within around 60seconds the light is ready to use. The PHS-260 is not one of the fastest lights to go from power-on to useable, that said it isn't one of the slowest I have used either.

Control is via 3-Pin XLRs which may annoy some of you, to be honest it would be nice if it had both 3-Pin and 5-Pin but at this price range, most of the offerings will come with 3-Pin XLRs instead of 5. So I can only assume that here Futurelight are just following the crowd.

Changing the lamp is also nice and easy and unlike some fixtures doesn't require a degree in mechanics nor a toolkit the size of B&Q. Again, to some things like this may not matter, but when you are the technician that actually has to use and maintain these lights then it becomes a completely different story. Taking the case off the main body of the light for cleaning is also child's play, with 4 half turn screws holding each side on. The whole fixture literally takes a few minutes at most to strip down for cleaning. Once you are inside the fixture, everything is laid out in such a manor that cleaning is easy. The only one niggle I had was that the gobo's do not seem to be replaceable, if the fixture was being used in a club environment I very much doubt this would matter, but easily changeable gobos would be a real asset to this light.

Back to using the light, I would rather Futurelight incorporated a multi-fan design rather than their single fan design as it would result in a much quieter fixture, at least with regards to fans. I would rather they had say 4 smaller fans running at lower speeds, as when I tried these out in my local theatre they were a little loud for my liking. That said, these are no louder than any other fixture on the market. I bet if most of the audience were asked, they wouldn't have been able to hear the change in noise with the PHS-260 installed. However in a club environment the noise levels of the fan wouldn't pose any problem.

Being discharge the PHS-260 produces a lovely bright white colour and unfortunately it makes any halogen based effects that are near it look dull and boring in comparison, so if you are planning to buy a few of these and have halogen based effects in the rig then you better consider upgrading the whole rig.

The colour wheel on the PHS-260 has 7 distinct colours, with there being a nice assortment that means the PHS-260 is at home in any rig. Unfortunately the PHS-260 does not have CMY mixing but when you consider what you are getting for the price it is more than justified.

One thing that has disappointed me in the past with moving light has been the frost filter, in my mind the beam has always remained too defined even with the frost filter full engaged. However the frost filter on the PHS-260 is superb and when engaged the light that it produces could almost be confused as being from a wash light.

Gobo wise, there are two wheels one just plain gobos that can not be rotated, the other containing a variety of rotating steel and dichroic gobos. The coloured gobos contain some quite interesting colours and patterns and are a worth while addition; however they seem more suited to the club market rather than the theatrical market.

Since many local clubs always ask me about sound-2-light mode I thought I better write a small amount about the implementation of sound-2-light on the PHS-260.  The mode is quite useful, but I personally refuse to use sound-2-light on most fixtures as it is just a little too random. The in-built microphone picks up the music well and the programs and movement tends to suit the music being played, but after an hour or so, the programs and movement tend to be all very "samey".

Overall the PHS-260 is a great fixture and would be suited to any application, I would pitch it more at a club market, but that said it would be equally at home in a theatrical / touring environment if a little noisy.

PHW-260

Build quality wise the PHW-260 is exactly the same as the PHS-260, a good solid build that feels like it will last the rigors of the road. DMX wise, the PHW-260 also has 3pin DMX in and out, with a nice bright blue LCD screen for changing the functions of the light and setting its DMX address. Many foreign manufactures also swap pins 2 + 3 round on their DMX ins and outs. Its nice to see that Futurelight have stuck to the standard, resulting in the setup and installation being a breeze.

Again fan noise isn't really an issue, these fixtures aren't by any means silent but at the same time they are no noisier than anything else offered by Martin and Robe.

Onto the actual light its self, for those that don't know the W in PHW stands for Wash and hence the PHW-260 comes with all the features you would expect from a wash light.

In my opinion the P/T (pan / tilt) speed seems to be just a fraction slower that some of the other heads on the market, but they are by no means the slowest, and Futurelight make up for the slight decrease in speed, by making the movement almost silent as well as equipping the fixture with 16-bit pan and tilt, both leading to an extremely smooth and quiet movement.

The CMY mixing on these fixtures is superb, with the colours being both vibrant and very quick to engage. As with all CMY fixtures the amount of colours you can produce is huge. In addition to the CMY mixing there is also a colour wheel (5 colour)  that can be used, which lends its self more to club based environments with colour strobing, as with the PHS-260 there is a nice selection of colours on the wheel, most of which would be more than suitable for a theatre base environments.

In addition to the features listed above the PHW-260 also contains two colours correction filters and a UV filter, both leading to easier integration with any halogen based effects.

Whilst the PHW-260 comes with a frost filter that can be engaged, I did not find it all that useful as the beam that the PHW-260 produced was perfect for my theatre application and I found that the beam definition was perfect without having to add another filter and reduce the light output slightly.

Dimmer wise the mechanical dimmer isn't my favorite feature of the light, as I feel all mechanical dimmers produce a beam with odd hot-spots. That said, the movement of the shutter / dimmer is as smooth as one could expect. I just feel that with all moving lights that have a mechanical shutter, the resulting spot that is produced can sometimes look rather odd.

Overall, I would recommend the PHW-260 as it is a superb light that blows the competition out of the water, and at its current price, it is highly desirable!! Theatre wise it was a perfect addition to my generic rig and allowed me to produce something special. Club wise, the fixture ticks every box and being discharge the colours it produces are amazing.

Final Thoughts

Futurelight are a company to watch out for, we may soon be seeing a lot more of them, whilst I couldn't really test the reliability of the fixtures, within the month I was trailing them, I had no problems what so ever with either of the fixtures. The price that both the PHS-260 and PHW-260 sell for, is amazing considering the build quality and the features that you are getting.

I already plan to add 2/4 of each of these fixtures into my stock over Robe and Martin equivalents due to the price and usability of the fixtures.