It has been almost four years since
Godox originally announced the AD200. For me and many others the AD200 was the strobe that we had been longing for. Extremely compact, powerful enough with 200Ws and reasonably priced. Today I am going to discuss how the AD200 has been property up the last iv years. With the take chances of spoiling the review; I simply love this flash. And I am not the only ane that does then.

For this review I have gathered feedback from multiple photographers using the AD200 in club to get a good feel for the reliability and little flaws people take discovered. If you have boosted remarks or comment feel free to share them in the comments. Hopefully this will give you more insight on how durable the AD200 is and if indeed this is the right investment for you.

Form gene

The showtime reason why people love the AD200 is because of the small size and convenient shape. In the pictures of my
first impression article
published a long time ago you can see that the AD200 has roughly the same shape of a speedlight. This is quite impressive since the AD200 is roughly three times more powerful than a conventional photographic camera flash. But the form cistron besides means that the AD200 volition fit nicely within your camera handbag in identify of your flashgun.

The AD200 features a swappable head, which ways that you can alter the front part of the flash into a blazon of flash head that suits your type of photography ameliorate. The standard AD200 kit comes with 2 different heads that tin can be swapped, a Fresnel head and a barebulb head. Later on will discuss it a chip more, but there are many different AD200 accessories bachelor.

Ane of the things where I recollect Godox could have improved is with the way how the battery is inserted. Due to the square shape of the battery itself it is hard to see how you demand to insert information technology, especially when the light is dim. Compare it a fleck to the traditional USB 2.0 connectors. For some reason you always need to insert it multiple types before you lot found the right orientation, and that is the same with the battery of the AD200.





Fortunately with a bombardment life of 500 full power flashes (specified by Godox) you lot practice not need to replace the batteries very oftentimes. After 4 years of quite intense apply I am non sure if my batteries can still hold a 500 flash charge since they have aged (which is completely normal). That said, battery life has never been and notwithstanding is non a problem.

On the back of the unit of measurement there is a pocket-size LCD. It is quite simple and rather small, but in practice you will not expect oft on it since you volition use a trigger to command the AD200. If you need to modify custom settings on the flash it can exist a bit tedious to practice so considering of the small display.



Build quality

My initial impression of the AD200 and its build quality was very positive. I am happy that I never had to change my opinion about this during the last four years. Although I have had some modest accidents with information technology, information technology never missed a beat. For me personally the AD200 has been a strobe on which I can depend on.

With the feedback that I received from others I can that the AD200 has been as well very reliable. In most cases people experienced no problems whatsoever with the strobe. For the few instances where people had suffered problems information technology was always due to a mistake from the photographer himself. I AD200 stopped working after it was submerged in water and some other AD200 cracked its LCD console considering of a 2 meter drop onto concrete.

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If I look some further on the net you can obviously find more people that have had some problems with the AD200. While some of them seem to be single occurrences, there is one problem that happens more frequently. The switch of the AD200 is by far the weakest indicate on the device. Or amend to say; was the weakest point of the device. All the discussions I found near the switch malfunctioning are from 2017 and 2018, so it seems that Godox has quietly improved this on their later production batches.

The experience I received with repairs and warranty depends from country to country. In the early years of Godox it was hard to observe a local repair eye that would be able to repair your strobe. Fortunately this is non the case anymore. Due to the popularity of the brand it is possible to observe distributors for about countries and these distributors will also aid yous with solving the issues with your wink. Yous should understand that if yous directly buy from China and then a local distributor might not help you to repair your flash since information technology is grey import.

Four years back, just after the release of the AD200 updating the firmware of Godox products was not especially piece of cake. It had to exist a Windows motorcar and fifty-fifty then you needed to practice some special tricks for Windows to detect the connected device. My recent experience of updating Godox devices has been much better.

Accessories

Earlier I already mentioned that the AD200 comes with some accessories and there are a lot of optional accessories to buy. If you purchase the standard AD200 kit you will get a storage box, battery, charger, umbrella swivel, 2 swappable heads and the AD200 unit itself. The initial version of the umbrella hinge could just be mounted with 1/iv″ thread and meant that virtually lightstands were not compatible with it. Godox has changed this and the new design can be mounted on the spigot of a lightstand instead.

Personally I recollect the storage box is a very dainty addition, but the manner how it is designed could be much improved. Start of all, in order to store the blank bulb head you need to remove the bulb from the head. Godox has stated in the past that you lot should avoid doing this since the contacts are not designed for this type of vesture. As well within the storage box there is some infinite to store a battery, just why wouldn’t you store the battery inside the AD200 itself? My last remark is nearly the space reserved for the charger. For most of my trips the charger always stays at home and therefore the space within the box is wasted if I wanted to utilize for the storage box for ship.

Besides the ii included heads in that location are more than swappable heads available for buy. One of them is the AD-L, a three.6 watt LED head (no flash) and the other is a round head adapter called the H200R. This round head is identical in shape to the Godox V1, which means that the accessories for the V1 (AK-R1) too work on the H200R. At 80 dollar the H200R is not particular cheap.

Like is the example for the round head, in that location is a line of optional modifiers for each swappable head. The barebulb head shares the same mount with the AD360, so all reflectors and modifiers also piece of work on the AD200. For the fresnel head at that place is a set available with a grid, magnetic colour filters and a barndoor attachment





There are also more accessories for the AD200, such as the AD-B2, which is a Dual Power Flash Bracket. Onto the back of the AD-B2 you tin mount two AD200s and the front has a mountain for a Bowens modifier. This means that effectively y’all create a 400ws lite source that uses Bowens modifiers. Great if you are in a state of affairs where you occasionally need more power, only for almost of the times yous can use them separately.

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The last accessory I would like to mention is the EC200. This an extension cable for the AD200, meaning that you can motion the trunk of the AD200 abroad from the caput. For most situations this is not really needed since the AD200 is already quite low-cal, but it does mean that yous can use the AD200 on camera. You will need a X1 or X2 for this to put on your photographic camera, on which the EC200 can be mounted. I did previously a
review on the EC200.

You tin encounter with all the products mentioned in this section that Godox has created a whole ecosystem around the AD200. There are then many optional accessories bachelor pregnant that you volition be able to find the right one for you.

Performance

Fifty-fifty after four years of use I am amazed with how much power this little flash has. With 200ws it has plenty of power, while it might not be enough for the biggest modifiers, for nearly applications it is sufficient. I call back the AD200 is the about versatile tool in my camera bag and it has been my go-to strobe for already a long time.

Also the two included heads (fresnel and barebulb) I also have purchased the two optional heads (round and LED). When you use the AD200 in a light modifier the barebulb head is a smashing pick since the blank seedling throws lite in all directions, pregnant that you fill your softbox very evenly. Unfortunately the bare bulb head does not take a modeling light. In the photo underneath you can see that the the low-cal spread of the bare bulb is not perfect, this is due to the shape of the tube itself. Godox has opted for instance for a more classical pattern with the AD300Pro for instance to solve this minor result. In practise you will not notice much about this because there bare bulb head is ever paired with either a reflector or a modifier.

The other standard included head, the frensel, does have a modeling light but also has one significant flaw. This fresnel head tin can be compared to the head of a tradional speedlight, simply stuck at the 35 mm zoom setting. The problem comes with the way how the lens diverts the low-cal. As you can see in the images underneath the light spread from the fresnel head is far from pleasing. Information technology is not uniform and has a very harsh fall off. I know some photographers love this head considering MagMod accesoires tin can be used with it, but personally I would never use it without diffusion to light my subjects.



Light pattern of the bare seedling


Calorie-free pattern of the round head


Calorie-free blueprint of the fresnel head

In my opinion, Godox should have never made the fresnel head and directly included the H200R circular caput. It achieves a similiar spread of light, but instead it has a pleasing light design and also features a modeling light. I am happy that the H200R does exist, but compared to the toll of the AD200 itself it is quite a pricey accessory.

From swappable heads past far the least useful is the AD-L, the LED head. Since this head has no wink functionality it is not particular useful, especially since the output of the light is not very high at 3.6 watt. I would non recommend this optional head.

While I personally never had any issues with overheating, I do run across some people lament on the cyberspace about overheating issues. The Godox AD200 is officially rated for twoscore full power flashes with the fresnel caput and lx full power flashes with the bare seedling. If yous activate HSS then this number is reduced to 20 and 50 respectively. From my tests this number seems to be accurate. My assumption is that the people that have issues are using the fresnel head with HSS activated. In that example 20 full power flashes happen pretty quick, especially when you are trying to overpower the sun with this little flash.

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Underneath I have included some of my work with the AD200. For me the results speak for themselves. It is an extremely versatile tool that can exercise a lot.























Godox AD200 vs. AD200Pro

The AD200 has been so popular that Godox decided to introduce an updated model, named the
AD200Pro. Both the AD200 and AD200Pro are however being sold today, but the
AD200 costs US$299
and the
AD200Pro costs $399.

Godox introduced a few improvements with the AD200Pro, simply most the production has remained unchanged compared to the original model. It uses the aforementioned bombardment, swappable heads are identical and the shape is generally unchanged. From my observations there are four differences between the AD200 and the AD200Pro. These are:

  • It is now possible to change the wink power in 1/10 stop increments and the minimum ability output has been reduced to 1/256 from one/128
  • The AD200Pro features a color stability mode which keeps the colour temperature within 100 Kelvin
  • Compared to the AD200, the AD200Pro has a different design on the back. This means that the LCD is improve protected and the on/off switch is redesigned.
  • The included swivel locks into the body of the AD200Pro in a better mode. On the original AD200 the swivel could more easily loosen and then the flash would rotate.
  • Recycle time has been reduced from 2.1 to 1.eight seconds

Are these differences are worth the $100 premium? y’all have to inquire yourself. I am very happy with my original AD200 and do non see a reason why I would need to supervene upon it for the newer model.

Conclusion

The AD200 quickly became my favorite wink and it notwithstanding is. When people ask me for advice which flash to buy, 99 per centum of the fourth dimension I recommend them to buy a AD200. At $299 information technology is not much more expensive than a lithium-ion powered speedlight, but it can do so much more, and nonetheless it still is the same size. For me the AD200 is the perfect trade-off between size and power. Bigger strobes, such every bit the AD400 or AD600 are so big that I call up twice if I would really need it. With the AD200 you can simply pack it, for but in case you need it.

I think that explains the reason why I and and so many others dearest the AD200. It falls into exactly the sweet spot of ability, size and affordability. To this date I think the AD200 is the best product that Godox has created and they deserve a compliment for that.

While there withal might exist things to ameliorate on the AD200, it is difficult to amend on something that is already so practiced. There are a few things that I mentioned in the review, merely for about of these things I am but nitpicking. More of import are things such as functioning and reliability, which are simply said just great.

The AD200 was and still is such a skillful concept that information technology inspired many other brands to create products which wait very like to the AD200. When you consider that false is the biggest form of flattery, so you can understand how good the A200 is. I dear mine and if you lot would accept one yous volition do so as well.