ACME SANDANE FROST Road Test

Construction

This is a big unit, at nearly 53kg, and on par with other fixtures in its class. Dimensions are: width 465mm, depth 365mm, and height 830mm. It is IP66 rated, making it a true outdoor fixture. It can be hung on a truss or placed on the ground just like any other light. Movement is smooth, with a reasonable range of motion at 540° Pan and 270° Tilt. It’s a well-constructed light. It is robust, and it definitely looks like it has an IP66 rating and will survive the elements.

Optics, Colour, and Brightness

SANDANE FROST is a multi-source LED Par. It features 55 x 6W RGBL (Red, Green, Blue, Lime) LED diodes, with the lime LED included for more accurate colour rendering. Colour temperature is variable from 2,500K all the way up to 8,000K.

The fixture draws 215W of power and has an output of 9,400 lumens. Pound for pound, it packs a proper punch. For context, an old-school conventional 500W WFL (Wide Flood Lens) Par 64 gives a lumen output of about 3,500 lumens. The ACME SANDANE FROST uses less than half the power and gives much more than twice the amount of light of a standard Par 64. Very efficient.

Possibly the main selling factor that separates it from the rest of the LED Par pack is the electronic frost. It is a frost with no moving parts. It is variable and can switch between different angles. It is effectively DMX-controllable Smart Glass. If you’ve seen Smart Glass before—glass that can go from clear to frosted with the flick of a switch, most commonly seen in high-end shower screens—then you’ll know how this technology works.

I love the out-of-the-box thinking by ACME to use Smart Glass to shape the beam. Using innovation like this in a market as cost-driven and competitive as the LED Par market speaks volumes to their R&D team behind the scenes.

The beam angle goes from 18°–53°. For reference, a VNSP (Very Narrow Spot) in a Par 64 has a beam angle of about 12°, and a WFL (Wide Flood Lens) has about a 50° beam angle.

Applications and Features

LED Pars in general are great to put anywhere you need blocks of colour. Put them on a truss behind a band, have them uplight a drape or a wall—just about anything that needs to be lit or coloured that isn’t front light could use the SANDANE FROST. You can use it inside or outside, as part of a show, or an installation. The beam angle is adjustable to cover just about the full Par range.

These would be a handy addition to any venue’s inventory. They would also be very much at home in the inventory of a production house. LED Pars are really handy; if you have them, you will use them.

When you are trying to make and market an LED Par, you operate in a pretty narrow band. If you put too many features in it, you no longer have a simple Par. If you do too much to the optics, you risk pricing yourself out.