True that, not all the Bowen mounts work well or even or fit in every unit!
I have some old “not optimized” standard reflectors that I can use with different kind/brand of fixtures, evening out the beam and output of similar lights.
All in all anyway I would say that the reflectors optimized for a certain light may deliver the highest output and color consistency, but are more often than not or very spot in the center with a visible fallout at the external part of the beam or with a quite narrow angle, again to focus the light and be able to declare insanely hight outputs.
Either way once you use the light on another modifier all those optimizations disappear, hence probably that’s a situation worth testing more :)

And now I have 2 amaran 300c and I’m happy about them! Although I needed to bought additional accessories to use them in versatile situation and carry them with other things for production ( But safety and reliability is always more important than price for me, because I need to be reliable to my client.

Hello! I don’t agree the everyone chucks the included reflector part of your argument. Generally I try to use accessories that are optimized for the light they are shipped with. Some just don’t work from one brand to another despite being bowens mounted – Spotlight / leko mounts are notorious for this. Obviously swapping bowens mounted softboxes around is a safer bet. In any case, I explain the beam angles right off the top of that section for a reason — some may prefer a wider beam angle or a more punchy narrow beam. I’m really not super pumped personally to start swapping accessories between brands (unless those accessories are entirely designed to be universal) because of the variables that would introduce :)

Hi Lu Lo! Be careful swapping different brands of bowens modifiers between one another —- this can especially be an issue with Spotlight / leko accessories that aren’t truly compatible with every brand (despite being bowens). Usually not the case with things like a softbox, but reflectors do shift the CCT occasionally and using different brands of accessories with different brands of lights introduces a “well this reflector wasn’t optimized for this light” argument :)

GVM seems definitely growing as a brand, hope the reliability will be on par with others more established brands.
However agree that the test should have been done with the same reflector or with both of them on each light.
A narrow beam false the results and those lights are meant to be used with a variety of modifiers so makes sense to have a more general idea of how they perform as more generically as possible.

Appreciate the “out-of-the-box performance” argument, but I’d analogize that to the minor distinction of testing one product that comes with alkaline batteries for power, and another that doesn’t — anyone in this target market almost surely chucks the included reflector and uses their own anyway, therefore an apples-to-apples comparison using the same beam angle would have been the relevant determinant of value. Since the narrower beam favors the GVM, I estimate that the performance between the two is practically identical.

Hi there! Thanks for your comment. There are differences from a Kelvin shift perspective between different brands of reflectors and that wasn’t a variable I wanted to introduce here. Also COB placement could be optimized for different accessories? Either way, I’ve always felt the “here’s how they perform alongside each other right out of the box” test to be a good approach for these reviews. I’m disclosing the beam angle for this exact reason — they aren’t 1:1, but knowing one is brighter out of the box or more accurate in CCT mode would be useful info for someone considering a purchase?

Guess how you coulda solved that? Just use the Bowens-mount reflector at 65 or 45 degrees on BOTH! Again, the tests here are mooted by this flaw.