Gloxy GX-F990 N TTL

£130, $200

Boasts some clever features at a great price

The Gloxy is a disarmingly inexpensive flashgun, yet has an impressive range of advanced features, including an 18mm to 180mm motorised zoom head and programmable repeat mode – the latter being practically unheard of in such a ‘budget’ flashgun. The usual remote mounting stand and pouch are included, but the Gloxy also comes with a diffusion dome and a bonus set of colour filters.

The maximum power rating of Gn 54 is pretty good and the control panel is logical and easy to use. Build quality feels good, too. The only real disappointment is that there’s no wireless master or slave mode, so TTL metering isn’t available if the flash is taken off-camera. There is a more basic optical slave mode, which senses the output from a pop-up flash or another flash, and fires the flash at the power that’s been set manually.

Performance

In our lab tests, recycle speeds proved to be pretty brisk, even after a full-power flash, but the maximum output was a little disappointing compared with the claimed values. We also feel that TTL accuracy could be better as there was slight under-exposure.