Cactus RF60 Review

About Cactus

Stylish packaging Cactus are proud of their products.

Cactus is a brand of Harvest One Limited, focused entirely on photography equipment that offers high quality at very competitive pricing.

Cactus is based in Hong Kong which nowadays politically belongs to China. However, due to its history as a British colony it is culturally very different to other parts of China. Cactus pride themselves to be truly "Hong Kong"; a place where people treasure their core values such as the rule of law (Hong Kong still uses the English common law) and freedom of speech, to name a few.

Cactus are determined to excel in offering reliable products and providing exemplary service. I can personally vouch for both their excellent pre- and post-sales service. My personal experience with contacting Cactus left absolutely nothing to be desired. Cactus are not a company that throws together some cheap parts, rips off original designs for good looks, throws in an incomprehensible manual, and then leaves the customer alone with usability issues and technical failures.

While Cactus apparently were still learning way back when they offered the V2(s) triggers, starting with the Cactus V4 they went from strength to strength with their product designs, demonstrating that they are serious about their aim to be innovative and do their own in-house research and development.

Having inspected the internals of many Cactus products, I have been repeatedly impressed by the very high manufacturing standards. The RF60 internals, for instance, are the most modularly designed and cleanly arranged components I have seen in any flash. Period. Add to that a dedicated quality control unit set up in Hong Kong and you can expect excellent reliability.

When Cactus write “We listen.” on their “About” page, they are not paying lip service. Cactus have increasingly involved photographer focus groups when designing and testing new products. They are genuinely interested in what real photographers need and what works in practice and what does not.

I believe it is fair to say that despite my appreciation of the Cactus brand, I am not a “Cactus fanboy”. For instance, I have been criticised by some (not Cactus) of having been too harsh with my criticism of the Cactus LV5 hardware controls. I like to call a spade a spade and make no exception with Cactus products. However, I have the utmost respect for the people at Cactus who show a tremendous amount of dedication to design a product to a standard as opposed to building it just to a price.

I avoid companies that sell products with high margins and prefer companies that offer value for money. I generally have no issue with shopping for the best price, but there is certainly a point at which “affordable” turns into “cheap” and “money saving” into “not getting your money’s worth”. At this turning point one runs the risk of post purchase costs for repeatedly fixing or replacing a product instead of paying slightly more in the first place. I like that Cactus aim at producing quality products but do not play the overcharging game either.

I feel that Cactus have repeatedly designed products that have just the right specs and maintain very fair pricing. I wished more companies operated like Cactus and perhaps that is why I sometimes can come across as being very enthusiastic about Cactus and their products.