When I was told I would be reviewing this new lighting fixture from CHAUVET DJ, I wondered what the use would be for a battery-powered moving head. No doubt you’ve turned the page and wondered the same yourself. But after getting my hands on one, I have a much better idea of why the company decided to launch it.

Some time ago, in another moving head review for this magazine, I mentioned that other than higher LED output, I thought we’d pretty much reached the pinnacle of moving-head design. There really isn’t much anyone can do to improve to design. Sure, you can make a unit lighter, include more colours and gobos, make it brighter, include more prisms…but from an innovation point of view, we’re pretty much at the top of the hill.

But then some bright spark in a dark R&D centre somewhere thought, “I know, let’s stick a battery in it!” And here we are, folks: the CHAUVET DJ Intimidator Free Spot 60 ILS. It’s a true 100% wireless battery-powered moving head featuring a built in D-Fi transceiver, compatible with the ILS ecosystem and with a rechargeable battery.

That’s right, a battery-powered moving head. Let that sink in for a while because let’s be honest, it sounds utterly, utterly bonkers. If ever there was a product that would suck the life out of a battery, a moving head would be it. All those mechanical parts moving the head, tipping it up and down; the gobo and colour wheels turning.

But forgetting it’s battery powered for a moment, the fixture is a pretty standard, high quality moving head of the type you would expect from CHAUVET DJ. Spec-wise, it’s similar to the Intimidator Spot 260X with eight colours plus white, seven rotating interchangeable gobos, and a 70W LED source. You get motorised focus, a 3-facet prism, totem mode, and a built-in D-Fi transceiver, plus it’s compatible with CHAUVET DJ’s proprietary ILS control system, making it extremely easy to set up and use. If DMX is not your thing, then it’s also compatible with CHAUVET DJ’s RFC remote or the new, fantastic RFC-XL remote.

With the huge battery in the Intimidator Free Spot 60 ILS (and it is a whopper), the weight comes to 9.9kg. As a comparison, the Intimidator Spot 260X weighs in at 5.6kg.

What about the run time? Well, it’s adjustable and you get a choice of four, six or eight hours. As you would imagine, the LED output is inversely proportional to the run time, so the brighter the output, the less run time you have available.

Speaking with CHAUVET DJ, the selectable run times quoted are also based on the maximum energy consumption of the unit,
so unless you have it whipping around the room as fast as it can
and with every motor inside spinning the prism, gobo and colour wheels, they expect it to exceed those times. Especially as most DJs normally start the evening with static or slow-moving looks.

As with any battery kit I review, I run it until it dies. In 4-hour mode I got just over five hours. In 6-hour mode, just over seven and a half. And in 8-hour mode, I managed a jaw-dropping ten hours – quite possibly enough juice for two events!

It’s important to note that you don’t have to use the built-in battery; you do get IEC power-in, so you can run them off the mains if you prefer. But why would you want to? They’re battery powered, so you may as well make full use of that.

The battery recharge time is quoted at 6.75 hours, and here lies a potential problem and something you need to plan for. Because this is a key issue for anyone using battery-powered lighting.

If you have two or three gigs on the bounce, in different venues, then you’re going to need to find a way of recharging the fixtures easily between events. If you’re like me, with a garage and an MPV, when you get home at 2 or 3am, you’ll have to empty your vehicle to get to the moving heads and stick them all on charge before you go to bed. You could load them in last, so you can easily get to them, but that’s not always possible, especially if you have a smaller vehicle.

For my own personal use, I’m still 50/50. The Intimidator Free Spot 60 ILS truly is a wonderful innovation.
Battery aside, it’s the typical high-quality kit that you’ve come to expect from CHAUVET DJ. Anything that makes setup easier and quicker makes it a very attractive addition to your rig – just look at how popular battery-powered mood lights have become.

I suppose there is an argument that where you would normally scatter mood lights around a room, most DJs position moving heads close to or next to the DJ booth, so there’s no essential need for a battery-powered solution.

However, I quite like the idea of getting them out, sticking them on a podium, turning them on, and then moving onto the next task without having to crawl around on my hands and knees running wires everywhere. And then there’s the price.
At £1199.00 per light, you would need an extremely clear use-case in order to invest in them. If you’re the type of DJ who regularly puts moving heads around a room – for example, at an awards event – then yes, the Intimidator Free Spot 60 ILS is a must-have item. If you’re a DJ with a couple of podiums next to your DJ booth, then you need to weigh up the additional cost with the time you save in running cables.

It’s worth remembering, this is the first moving head of its type. Just think back to the first smartphones. Look where we are now. The tech is always going to improve, becoming more compact and powerful. No doubt in 10 years’ time we’ll all be sat at Pro Mobile Conference 2033, reminiscing about the days when we used to use actual wires to power our disco lights – how cute!