Physically it’s an attractively compact light. Top down the foot print is smaller than that of a CD case. The light is remarkably compact in the hand. My first impression upon handling it was the build quality. The main body is all metal (apart from the odd button and obviously the colour screen) and has a feeling of solidity, worlds away from lights I’ve owned from Godox or Zhiyun. The 80c at least so far gives the impression it really will stand up to being used as a regular work horse. It also gives me the impression that more time and effort was put into its design. Although it doesn’t natively have a bowens mount, with the optional adapter, that again is all metal and reassuringly robust, it can be fitted with any Bowens mount soft box. Also the light has arri anti rotation connection points. Combined with the lights small size and weight it opens up the possibility of creative mounting options, like magic arms.
Which brings me back to my heading that the Storm 80c is arguably the Swiss Army knife of COB lights. In a small darkened room or even inside at midday in the middle of a british winter I’ve found it’s bright enough to be a key light. I need to experiment further but I think it could be used as a key light for photography or at least to provide additional light outside/in the shade. 80 watts is at the end of the day, still only 80 watts, and it’s not going to have the output to overpower the midday sun or to function as a key light in a medium sized room or larger space. But it could still function as a fill or hair light.
The quality of the light is very high quality and it’s able to blend in well with and boost other sources of environmental natural or artificial light. The fact it is small, light weight, weather/rain tolerant and can be battery powered really help to make the case for it being a useful location light.
The C in the name is for colour, and being able to have a RGB COB light that can be adapted to taken a wide variety of light modifier is a significant plus. I’ve been experimenting with using bright contrasting colours for a series of photo/video portraits and that combined with the 80’c / exceptional colour accuracy led me to buying a pair of Storm 80’s. I’ve been very happy with them so far, however if you’re looking primarily for key light I would recommend looking further up Aputure’s range to something capable of outputting more watts.
