NANLUX Evoke 2400B Review – High Output LED Cinema Lighting Has Arrived

by Graham SheldonDecember 20^th, 2023

The Bi-Color NANLUX Evoke 2400B LED fixture promises a few innovations: a high output rivaling an HMI, increased flexibility (with a clever way to navigate 15A or 20A circuits), and a new electronic system for tracking compatible accessories. Pair that with +/- 80 Green and Magenta tint control, which isn’t always common in a Bi-Color fixture, and you have a light that is more than just its eye-popping output. Here’s my full review.

First unveiled at Cinegear LA 2023 (very much in prototype form), the Evoke 2400B with a range of 2700K – 6500K, priced at $6,990 with a case, ($6,200 for a limited time at B&H), and with a promised output of a 4K HMI or 10K Tungsten was impressive, but we left that show with tons of questions about how the NANLUX Evoke 2400B would work in practice. Could this fixture work off household power in North America? Would it be a Bates plug only? Would it be backward compatible with other accessories previously released by NANLUX?

Since then, we’ve seen similar 2400-ish wattage draw fixtures announced from the likes of Aputure and Godox. As I haven’t gotten my hands on the Aputure or Godox higher wattage offerings yet, this review will draw on my experience with NANLUX products from a director of photography perspective.

The NANLUX engineering team had a choice. They could have aimed the Evoke 2400B at the pro-only crowd with a Bates plug or left it open to more owners/ops. In my opinion, NANLUX picked a great middle-ground by shipping this unit with both “bare ends” and an Edison plug (for use in the United States) with a switchable 15A/20A plug. More on the switchable plug in a moment, but shipping with “bare ends” gives you maximum flexibility to add whatever plug you want with minimal effort or electrical skills. Career gaffers and best boys will be fine with bare ends and busy owners/ops will appreciate a more turn-key solution.

After receiving the Evoke 2400B for review, I immediately had the opportunity to throw the fixture into use on a Netflix promotional video in Los Angeles for an upcoming series. On that first shoot, the intensity barely rose above 20% – because frankly, I didn’t need it for interiors shooting at 24fps. It’s that bright. Thankfully, I had several more weeks to really put the Evoke 2400B to the test.

First impressions

This lamp head is not meant for a C-Stand. Combo style stands only here, please.

It will come as no surprise that the Evoke 2400B lamp head (33 lbs.) and power supply (25 lbs.) are both larger and heavier than their 1200-watt cousins, but I was surprised by how compact everything still is. You can fit the lamp head, ballast, head cable, and 15A/20A switch power cable into a flight case (not to be confused with a NANLUX trolley case that includes a fresnel with the Evoke 1200). With the flight case that was sent to me, I was not able to fit the 45-degree reflector, but NANLUX is making dedicated flight cases that can fit it all.

Regarding durability, everything is rated IP55, which is defined as “limited protection from dust and low-pressure water jets from any direction.” The flight case feels indestructible with plenty of interior foam protection, and the ballast has protective rubber at either end – this whole kit could take hits and keep on cooking. There is also a handy image on the interior of the lid that helps with packing if you are renting the kit or unfamiliar with how to pack everything.

Like with past Evoke models, the lamp head yoke is rock solid and doesn’t seem prone to slipping in any orientation.

There is fan noise (although it isn’t as much as I would expect given the size of the lamp head). My solution was to keep the fan in “smart” mode for the duration of filming over several shoots, and audio never mentioned an issue. Granted, I never had a reason to move the Evoke 2400B within 3 feet of any lav or boom microphones.

Accessories

NANLUX has decided to go with electronic contact pins (see image above) for their Evoke 2400B accessories. That idea is reminiscent of ARRI’s approach with their Quick Lighting Mount system for the Orbiter fixture. I’ll admit I’m a little wary of proprietary electronic mounts that could be used to exclude 3rd party accessory manufacturers (sometimes brought up as a concern with the RF Mount on the camera side). Still, NANLUX has assuaged these fears by allowing an easy turn-off of the setting in the menu that requires accessories with these pins.

The argument in favor of these pins is to guarantee compatibility and not risk melting or damaging an NL accessory that isn’t specifically designed for the Evoke 2400B heat. There is also the possibility of future electronically controlled accessories, but those have yet to be announced.

The NANLUX team also mentioned they are working to make these pins separately available for NL accessories that users might already own and to Chimera and DoPChoice for their own compatible products. No word yet on how to affix these pins or if they are available at an additional cost.

Power

This part of the review dedicated to power considerations will depend on your particular country, so please keep that in mind. In the United States, you are limited primarily to 15A circuits in homes (sometimes a 20A circuit might pop up in the kitchen or the laundry room). Still, generally, you can expect to run a single ARRI M18 HMI off a household wall outlet drawing roughly 1800 watts without much fuss. Or, again, in the case of a 15A circuit, you could run a Tungsten 1K and a 650 drawing 1650 watts.

The Evoke 2400B with a power draw of 2200W required to reach its full output will not work on a 15A circuit at 100% intensity. For this, NANLUX has created a novel solution that allows this fixture to work off of house 15A power or 20A power where necessary, simply with the flip of a switch. NANLUX could only provide me with a prototype for this switch, but the prototype worked as intended during testing.

Output also scales with the power input, so if you are set to the 15A / 1700W side of the switch, the fixture still lets you select from 0% to 100% when dialing up or down brightness. All of this is to say that with the Evoke 2400B, you have a more flexible fixture that doesn’t require being limited to a soundstage or dragging a 20A generator around. Pretty cool.

NANLUX has done a good job making their past 48V Evoke-line ballasts interchangeable in the case of the 900C/1200 and 1200B, but please note that the 2400B is 96V and won’t work with those other fixtures.

Output & Kelvin handling in CCT mode

I would be remiss if I didn’t give a special thank you to Rev Studio in La Jolla, California, for installing a 20A circuit to allow this review to happen in advance of filming. How cool is that?!

The Evoke 2400B has two different output modes: constant (with a lower power draw) and max (top end of the power draw), and thus Max mode is more likely to pop a circuit.

I went ahead and tested the output in Max mode using lux and color handling (in Kelvin) of the Evoke 2400B at a distance of ten feet (3.048 meters) with my Sekonic C-700U Spectrometer in the center of the beam (you do lose a bit moving away from the center of the beam with this reflector, but generally it is a very even spread). Here are my results with a target of 5600K with the kit 45-degree reflector attached and the launch firmware installed.

A result of 5733K with a target of 5600K is excellent and the 37000 [lx] / 3430 [fc] value is fantastic. This is a very, very bright light.

And now on to a target of 3200K:

We do see a drop in output here (32900 lx and 3050 fc) when compared to our 5600K results, but the CCT Kelvin accuracy is literally spot on at 3207K. In general, phenomenal test results out of the Evoke 2400B.

Evoke 2400B – control

I have thoroughly covered the Nanlink app (now very much improved with consistent updates) in past NANLUX Evoke reviews, and you can still control the fixture that way through integrated 2.4G/Bluetooth. You also have DMX/RDM, sACN, LumenRadio TimoTwo CRMX, and Art-Net control. In my mind, that covers about 99% of the professional users in the marketplace, but feel free to hop into the comments if you can think of another lighting control protocol the NANLUX team should consider adopting.

If none of the above control options work for you, NANLUX has even included a tiny remote control, which might be best in solo owner/op situations.

Given the price point of this unit and the feature set, I think most users will be primarily taking advantage of some flavor of wireless or wired DMX here. You also obviously have access to physical rear control dials that work in exactly the same way as past Evoke models.

Who is the NANLUX Evoke 2400B meant for?

Considering we are about to see several high-output LED sources hit the market as I’m writing this, we should give some thought to who the perfect user might be for the NANLUX Evoke 2400B. In the United States, the NANLUX brand is slowly becoming more prevalent on the rental side in larger markets like Los Angeles. A quick search of Sharegrid.com shows that smaller shops and owner/ops are also steadily adding more NANLUX fixtures to their inventories.

Why should we care about others adopting NANLUX fixtures? In short, the film industry remains a place where perception and “what is popular” is still considered, for better and for worse. Producers being familiar with NANLUX as a brand means these lights are easier to bring on set (because Producers sign the checks). More NANLUX in larger markets means the fixtures are also easier to service if a unit accidentally gets damaged.

The $6,990 price tag and the size of the Evoke 2400B kit means if you are a smaller to mid-sized production house, you will likely only have the budget and space for one or two of these fixtures in-house at most. As a Freefly Ember high-speed camera owner, I was most interested in the light as a way to get better exposure at 4K 800fps while in the studio.

We went ahead and shot a quick test at 1000fps with a 50-100 SIGMA Cine zoom at T2.8 and the Ember at ISO 100. Big takeaway – no flicker and we only needed to get the light to 25% output in Max mode to get enough exposure for the shot at 5600K. Feel free to check out the video portion of this review if you want to see the slow motion in action.

As an owner of both the daylight-only and Bi-Color 1200W Evoke fixtures, I want to stress that neither of those lights has been made obsolete by the Evoke 2400B. For one, the Evoke 2400B doesn’t have a compatible fresnel accessory yet and those other lights do (along with the 900C). The Evoke 2400B kit is larger and less portable than its 1200W cousins.

In short, consider if you need the output or the +/- 80 Green and Magenta feature of the Evoke 2400B when purchasing. You might be fine with one or several 1200W fixtures instead – it will depend on the type of work you do. If anything, hats off to the manufacturer NANLUX for giving us the ability to use this light on 15A and 20A circuits for maximum flexibility.

Future-proofing the NANLUX Evoke 2400B

As previously mentioned, the Evoke 2400B sports a price tag of $6,990, and that price includes the case. At this price, we should expect this light to be a years-long part of the kit. I understand that Bi-Color isn’t color and full-color fixtures are where we are generally trending as an industry, but there is a case to be made that the majority of our work isn’t shooting colorful Bladerunner sequels and that daylight and tungsten are somehow present in 90% of shots we help create.

I spoke with a Gaffer recently who was trying to move all his fixtures to full color, and I get that, but on a price-per-watt level, you are paying a premium on a color fixture that you might be leaving in CCT mode for the majority of your work.

Your story might be different, but the tradeoff when going for a color fixture is a cut to output. And sometimes you just need a light with a punch. The Evoke 2400B has that, and the ability to dial in green or magenta tint providing added versatility in settings where you can’t control every element in the shot, such as a large mall food court or an exterior with multiple buildings in the distant background beyond your control.

In brief, consider how often you may need color-capable lighting in your work. When the RGB ARRI Orbiter first came to market, it was $10,000 (with needed accessories), and that’s a 500W light with a fraction of the punch of the Evoke 2400B. Food for thought.

Final thoughts

I have enjoyed watching NANLUX and their partner company NANLITE continually listen to feedback from the filmmaking community and adapt their designs to be more on-set friendly. Shipping this fixture with bare ends, a switch that toggles between 15A/20A, every imaginable connectivity option (including a little remote), and +/- tint 80 adjustment just guarantees the Evoke 2400B won’t sit on the truck or in the SUV collecting dust on your shoot day.

The cost of the Evoke 2400B, while pricey on a watt/dollar basis at $6,990 is actually more affordable than at first glance, and I’ll argue that it makes sense as a years-long investment in an industry where there is constantly a new, shiny piece of gear hitting the market.

The Evoke 2400B is now shipping and for a limited time only, a fixture kit with a reflector and flight case is even cheaper than the light-only version at B&H.

What do you think? Have you used the Evoke line from NANLUX in the past? Would you consider adding the Evoke 2400B to your kit? Let us know in the comments below!