Congrats, bdery, on the publication of your very well-written review.
For instance, I liked the animation of the flash head and agree that unrestricted swivel control is a very nice feature.
There
is was a typo:
"
1/5 second recycle rate at full power" should be
"
1.5 second recycle time at full power".
I don't understand why you write
"The head’s illumination pattern is perfectly usable but will serve the photographer better behind a light modifier such as an umbrella (the same is true, to a greater extend, of the Cactus flash)."
What makes you think that the RF60 has a worse illumination pattern?
Note that the test patterns I provided for the RF60 were probably taken at a lower distance and, most importantly, were from a
beta unit. The production version has a different lens and diffuser panel; it yields visibly smoother output than the beta unit.
We probably won't be able to agree on the following, but I don't see how the Godox's trigger system "
covers all the bases" when it does not support adjusting the power levels of all groups simultaneously. The latter operation is required when you change the f-stop on your camera but want to maintain the same flash exposure. The Cactus V6 supports this use case with a simple dial turn.
I also don't think that scrolling through 1/3 stops from 1/1 (in the extreme case) to zero and back again is just "
a few more clicks" compared to two group button presses.
What if you are using three groups and only want to see the effect of a single group? Using the Godox transmitter you'd have to
- memorise the two power settings for the two groups you need to turn off temporarily,
- scroll the power levels of both groups down to zero (through 1/3 steps),
- take the test shot, and then
- scroll the power levels of both groups up to the two levels you memorised earlier.
This is a lot more inconvenient than toggling two groups with four button presses in total on a V6.
The four group buttons of the Cactus V6 for quickly checking individual flash contributions (in any combination) and the immediate adjustment of all groups simultaneously (even the RF60 can do that in master mode) are features I always use in
every shoot without exception. To refer to these features and the V6's ability to remote power control a large range of flashes in a brand-agnostic manner as "
exotic functions" seems odd to me. Yes, the V6 has more functions such as "delay" or "remote camera triggering", etc. that could be considered "exotic" but the ones I mentioned are bread and butter functions, AFAIC.
I understand that the text was written before full information on the V6 became available so some of the phrasing seems justified from this perspective, but it is a bit of a shame that some of the text makes an outdated impression already on the first day of its appearance.
Anyhow, very nice review overall!