Varytec Colors StarBar 12

Firstly, the good bits. Seriously bright warm white blinders, and the only product of this type that I've been able to find (although there are a couple of other "versions" on the market that are clearly from the same factory) that has warm white available instead of cold. Remind me fondly of the old Howie Battens from back in the day, with a lovely warm glow - but with the added bonus of pixel control. Smart fixing bracket and sensible power/DMXconnection points are always good to see. With 12 segments I'd imagine you can get some nice background matrix effects going if you have several of these - although you need to have them dimmed (1/255 for me) to avoid them being too "in your face" for the audience. Very useful as a blinder bar though

Now, the bad bits...

I found the "colour" aspect of this bar next to useless and isn't something I would have made use of. To me it looked cheesy and totally out of place.

The beams (at least on the 1 of 4 that I opened) we badly aligned and looked crooked in haze and wherever the beams landed.

I only opened 1 of the 4 that I ordered and was unimpressed with the quality enough to return all without opening the other 3. The grey lens had hairline cracks emanating from the fixing points back towards the centre LED space. The edges of the lens were also rough from the injecting moulding process. Thomann feels this was shipping damage but I'm not sure. No marks on the inner box and the unit is very well packed. I'm not convinced that they would have lasted long in the gigging world, but would likely have been just fine for a fixed install somewhere out of the way.

For what it's worth, the inbuilt programmes are next to useless and can't be dimmed in any way (that I could find).

Giving them 4 out of 5 overall as I feel the size, weight, and warm-white output win out over the negatives.