Kyle Otto
- Comment
Short review, just wanted to get one on here since none have been posted yet! This is the second iteration of the YN600EX-RT, and is therefore the equivalent to Canons second iteration of their 600EX-RT (which is the 600EX II-RT). Im an amateur experimenting with flash photography and got a single 600EX II-RT to start. I quickly moved to off-camera flash. Optical control using my Canon EOS 80D as a master worked fine, but I really wanted the on-camera TTL control of all the flash settings, which requires radio. I couldnt afford to buy another Canon 600EX II-RT at their price point and Id seen Yongnuo flashes everywhere, even among well-known professionals, so I decided to check them out. I almost bought the YN600EX-RT but thankfully thought to just check their official website to see if they had an update to match Canons update, and sure enough they did - this YN600EX-RT II! Being so much cheaper than the Canons (1 Canon = 4 Yongnuo), I decided to buy two to use as radio off-camera slaves and use my Canon as a radio master. They all work wonderfully (Canon master, Yongnuo slaves). As expected and as others mentioned for other Yongnuo models, build quality isnt quite on par with Canon. Theres no push-button release for rotating or angling the flash head; rather, you simply have to apply enough force to overcome the notches. The amount of force required makes you second-guess yourself at first, wondering if youre about to break something. Given this design, it makes sense to find some kind of grease between the body and flash head. Its not excessive and leaking all over things, but I did notice it was there you might be able to swipe some off the edges with your fingers. Overall build quality is fine though. Not tanks, but not overly cheap either. Quick list: - No push-button release for rotating and angling of flash head; requires a lot of force to turn - Set button in center of selection wheel rotates with the wheel (so "Set" can be upside-down, etc.) - Flashes arrived at maximum LCD contrast; clearing settings and resetting to default actually sets medium contrast which is pretty weak/hard to see and might make you wonder if your screen just "broke" during your reset.. it didnt, just go bump the contrast all the way back up. Again Im no professional, but overall I think these are great especially considering four of them can be had for the price of a single Canon 600EX II-RT. Unless these all fail very soon, this definitely seems to be the way to go unless your pockets are just overflowing with cash. So thanks, Yongnuo! The various official steps for updating the firmware seemed inaccurate to me. The first comment on this review contains steps that worked. I updated my firmware on two flashes from 1.10 to 1.12 (downloaded from YONGNUOs official website; unable to navigate via the site, I instead found the official product page via Google search and the firmware link is at the bottom of that page).