Well since it is a thread about impressions of the Cheetah AD360 and V850, I will give mine. My AD360 and V850 arrived Thursday afternoon and wouldn't you know it, the worst rain storm in years hits the SoCal area where I live. Today (Saturday) I had a model shoot scheduled, but cancelled it, as it was planned for outside.
So for a day and a half I have been playing with the lights inside. I am extremely impressed with the quality and build of the lights, as well as the menus, ease of operation, and especially how easy it is to change the power function of the lights via the rotating dial or via the transmitter. Having 4 Nikon speedlights, 2 SB800 and 2 SB900’s with PW TT5 triggers for all of them, has taught how valuable it is to change power from the camera. I mostly shoot manual and rarely use TTL with multiple lights, as hey, I am smarter than a computer chip and know what I want when dealing with 3 or 4 lights.
A few observations:
AD360, at ISO 200, 1/1 full power and at 10' from subject with either the standard or umbrella reflector attached I am getting F25 (without the diffuser gel). It drops to F22 with a single diffuser gel and F20 with 2 gels. At 1/2 power it is F20 without gels and at ISO 100 at 1/1 power it is F18. Going to try my metal BD and 20" collapsable one later, but I got to believe it is more than enough power to blast away in full daylight. The AD360 with 4500 battery pack recycles very fast at 1/2 or 1/4 power, less than a second. At less then 1/4, the unit is ready instantaneously.
The V850 is very easy to use. Haven't tested the power output though, as it will be used for fill mostly. It too recycles very fast. The receiver uses a 4 pin socket which is a bit more secure than the USB port of the AD360 receiver, but the same transmitter works for both units.
In testing these units I put the lights in Apollo soft boxes. Not once has the transmitter/receiver failed to fire in about 500 flashes. The transmitter changes in power are immediate on the flash, and you do not have to dump a flash like you do with Alien Bees to make the change register. Also, I read someone complaining about the time it takes to make changes. After setting the group dial to the proper number, it is about 1 second to rotate the dial from 1/1 to 1/128 power. This is a non-issue for me and it is a lot easier than my Nikon CLS or Pocket Wizard systems.
However, there is a small issue with the V850 when it goes to sleep. It can only be woken up by hitting a button on the flash. The V850 manual says you can do this, OR either hit the camera shutter button or hit the test button on the transmitter. But unfortunately neither of these remote options work. I sent an email to Ed Tang at Cheetah Friday evening about this. He called me Saturday morning, after being on the phone with the Godox engineer in China for about one hour discussing this issue! Ed confirmed that neither remote option the manual lists will wake the V850 from sleep and this was upsetting to him. He says Godox is working on it and hopefully this will work in future units. It really it is no big deal, as the sleep setting is user adjustable and I will set mine to Off or 60 minutes for most shoots. With the Lithium battery this is not a big drain like it would be on 4 double AA’s.
Overall I am very happy with these lights and triggers!
why I think its so cool 
).
45mm f/2 
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