The YN600 Pro LED Video appears to be  impressive for the money, with 600 LED beads daylight balanced to 5500K, barn doors and gels, so in theory this should be an amazing product.

Barn Doors
The YN600 has integrated barn doors (not removable) providing great protection for the LEDs during transportation and a convenient platform for attaching better diffuser material to. However, if you’re hoping the barn doors can be used to shape the light, just like they do on regular tungsten lights then you’ll be in for a disappointment, because that’s not how LED lights work.

The barn doors are quite thin but have a silver reflective surface which should help bounce more light on to the subject.

Gels / Diffuser
This YN600 is a daylight balanced model, so if you’re looking to shoot under incandescent / tungsten lighting then you may want to use the included plastic conversion ‘gel’. In my testing the colour accuracy was not that good and it would be better to buy some real CTO (colour temperature orange) gel material, but if you’re not worried about being super accurate 3200K then it’s perfectly adequate. Mine appeared to be giving more like 2900K.

The clear diffuser gives somewhat mixed results because it sits too close to the LEDs and doesn’t merge them in to a single light source.  For close up photography, such as product shots, the diffuser can make a difference to the specular highlights, though I’d still prefer to add my own diffuser material to the barn doors instead.

For video, particularly when the subject is more than an arms length away the diffuser seems to make no difference at all, other than robbing you of around 2/3 of a stop of light. Again, I’d rather use my own diffuser material.

Mounting PointYN600 Mounting Point
One disappointment in the YN600 design compared to some of it’s competitors is that it provides only a single centre / bottom mounting point. It’s the standard 1/4″ 20 thread, but there’s no other brackets included for mounting to light stands at differing angles and you’ll need to buy these separately from ebay or another supplier.

Yongnuo’s main competitor in this market is the Aputure Amaran 528 which includes a nice bag/case, a external power supply, gels and a great angle mounting bracket that allows the light to be tilted as well as accommodating an umbrella for easy diffusion.  With the YN600?  No bag, no mounting bracket and quite possibly no external power supply either (see below).

Battery Power
Powered by two Sony NP-F style batteries, operating time depends heavily on what size (capacity) and brand of battery you buy, since not all batteries are created equal.  Cheap Sony clones can be found on ebay very easily, but realise that they may not last quite as long as the much more expensive Sony originals.

Batteries are easy to fit by sliding in to place and are self locking. Remove them by pressing the release button and sliding out.

Each battery powers one bank of 300 lights, organised as alternate rows and columns.

External Power Supply
Yongnuo provided the YN600 with the option of powering by an external power brick, but it’s not clear to me if this is factory supplied or if mine was added by the ebay reseller. It’s also worth noting that the YN600 does not charge the batteries when powered externally, unlike some of it’s competitors do (e.g. the Amaran 528).