Redgrass Creative – R9 Solo Review for Miniature Painters

Last Updated on Januar 13, 2025 by FauxHammer

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Lighting is typically one of the last things people buy when it comes to their miniature painting setup. And just as often, once we have a decent lighting setup which proivides so much more comfort than overhead room lights, you quickly realise it may be something to have invested in sooner. Your eyes will thank you.

So with Redgrass following the incredibl(e/y expensive) R9 with the new R9 Solo coming in cheaper and more mobile, is this somewhere you should throw your money? Well, that’s kinda the whole point of a review.

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Redgrass Games R9 Solo Review – Summary

Like the R9 dual-R9 before it, the R9 Solo easily ranks up there as the second best hobby light there is in terms of build quality, colour accuracy and overall features that a modern hobbyist could want, the more professional you are in your hobby life the more value you can eek out of it.

However these light are just that, professional kit and as such rank up there among the more expensives light in our community, which is fairly going to be a turn off to many people. But we’ll come onto that more in the review.

On the one hand, it’s more than ok to have the nice things if your budget can stretch to it, and what you spend on this, will net you a more premium product than the plasticy offering’s of competitors. But, is the expense here giving you value, that you want to pay for? That’s a personal decision.

(Full disclosure, I got the lamp free, I make nothing on the Kickstarter pledges, but will replace the links to website affiliate links once the produict goes to Retail)

Redgrass Games R9 Solo Review – Packaging

It’s worth noting here that I have a prototype model provided by Redgress fpr review, so this is subject to alterations. Though my R9 lamp wasn’t too dissimilar, the only difference was that there was a surrounding cardboard sleeve noting what was inside and it’s features.

So expect yours to mostly be a white box with an extruded cardboard frame like this. It;s more than good enough for shipping especially with the aded weight.

Redgrass Games R9 Solo Review – Accessories

“What’s in the box?” is a valid, question but nowadays can’t be asked without conjuring up the image of the meme (you know the meme). But in this case, it;s worth replacing that image with one that shows the contents.

Here we have, the Lamp itself, the power supply, Desk Clamp, Desktop Stand (Finally) and a carry case

The one thing I have not had hands on with hey is the carry case. Though i expect little more than a drawstring bag with RedGrass branding on it as shown here. I;m confident that this will house the Lap, PSU and Desktop Clamp. but i expect due to it’s sheer size and weight, the Destop stand/Base would need to be carried seperately.

Redgrass Games R9 Solo Review – R9 Vs R9 Solo

If you”re even looking at this, you are probably already aware of the R9 lamp from last year, if not, here;s my review video of that product so you can check it out.

That was meant to be like Neo from the Matrix doing the “I know Kung-Fu” face. instead it’s just a guy with a double chin waking up in the morning…

But anyway, that’s the original R9,

The R9 solo differs in 3 specific ways.

The height of the arm is halved,
It has a single LED bar (hense the name Solo)

It has the option of a desktop stand

Another difference I have is that The pin where the PSU connectect to the input cable on the light itself is a bit thinner (if that even matters), but the final versions (the ones you get) will be a direct match.

I think my favourite thing that has come from this however, is that the desktop stand is large and heavy enough to be backwards compatible with the original R9 model. So I’m hoping they sell this component seperately or even do an R9 bundle to include it. It’s not fully stable when fully extended but is fine for 90% of the positions you;d realistic put it in. I know many of the peopple whoe ever even happy with the price of the r9, were put off by it’s reliance on the desk clamp.

I’ll mention this in the conclusion, but I’ve genuinely loved how portable this is, becasue it add’s value beyoond a device that just sits on my desktop.

Redgrass Games R9 Solo Review – Performance & Quality

So, whilst this is expensive, it is the highest quality lamp I have in terms of build quality. and I have lights from a number of brands now. The black aluminum frame is sturdy, the movable joints are tight. I’ve had the R9 lamp for almost a year now and I genuinely have had no issues with the joints, despite moving it around frequently (read: Daily).

The integrated cable is a nice touch as is the red colour which is bioth on-brand and compliments nice with the black. I don’t think it’s unfair to say that when you compare this to the other lights on the market, these are the sexiest.

Functionality wise, the lamp itself has one button, press to power on and off, and when it is on, you can hold it to dim and brighten. Personally i would prefer a dial for increasing/decreasing brioghtness so at least then i can set it to very specific brigtnesses and mark that position. It;s a very small niche use case, but as a video creator, it”s important to me personally, that I can match the brightness between 2 shots taken on different days.

For most people, you’d just adjust it to a comfortable brightness whenever you sit down.

Affordability is a different question to value, and I often hate talking about the price of products due to the fact that what you may be willing to spend on such an item vs the next person is a very personal thing, and as such is a topic that sparks the most passionate discourse.

So let me instead say that in comparison to to similar products on the market. the price of this solo lamp is comparable to the other best hobby lamps, but this, from an enginnering perspective, looks and feels noticeably better.

As a content creator though, my love of this specificlly, is that i can use it to capture both photos and videos without the flickering you typically see in cheaper LED lamps, something that plagued my videos in the early dsy of doing painting tutiorials.

See these scanlines on the scenes with white backgrounds (that’s without the R9 lamp)

But anyway, all of that is before the true value of this lamp

Redgrass Games R9 Solo Review – The Colour Value

As I mentioned in my video above, which I suspect many people reading have skipped. The value of this map is in it;ls colour rendering

We hear all the tiem that you should use daylight bulbs, and that is true in terms of colour temperature, but it’s not the whole story.

I think most of us who went through primary school know that light is made up of multople colours, (remember when you shine light through a prism) well, when we make artificial light, it’s the same thing. Multiple colours working together produce white

And most desktop lamps, especially LED lamps, do not output all the colour equally, and they give lamps a CRI rating. Now you can get a high CROI rated lamp becasue the rating is the percentage value of each colour averaged. and very typically, LED’s have struggled to output pure red, on the CRI spectrum as R9 (hens ethe name of the lamp)

The R9 and R9 Solo are capable of outputting more individual colours naturally, which to your eyes is more like natural pure sunlight.

Now practically what does this actually mean.

Well, it;s hard to capture on video, but as a semi-professional photographer/videographer, it means that anything this light shines at and you see or capture will be more true to the natural and accurate colours you are using.

You can test this now if it’s a clear and sunny day, look at any model you have, specifically a red one, under your current hobby light, and then notice the brilliance of that same red under sunlight. That’s what this lamp does. I;m not saying that the only value of this is that iof you are painting red models, that’s just the most obvious example you should be able to see.

The benefit in other cases is that if you are photographic your miniatures, there’s little to-no colour processing to do in order to get an accurate representation of the colours of your model in the image, Which is handy.

Now for most people, this is still a minimal benefit, but again, if yoiu are looking at top-tier lighting versus other top-tier lighting, that’s when this one comes into consideration. And it is why the lamp is being marketed beyond just miniature painters now. The company is now RedGrass Creative rather than Redgrass Games becasue the original R9 was aimed more at professional colourists rather than only hobbyists.

Now with the the new size and price, it’s a little more palleteable for those of us twirling-brushes in our home.

Redgrass Games R9 Solo Review – Usage

When it come sto usability, as i mentioned above, I love that this thing is mobile, In fact, aside from the time using it to review it and have hands on. and due to the fact that i already use my larger R9 lamp which is fixed to my desk, I’ve actually use this more on my family fining table for my family hobbies.

Even on Boxing Day this year, we sat around as I built Lego, my Wife and Daugter built a Book Nook and my Son did somem colouring in. (I guess he got the most benefit out of it thanks to it’s colour rendering). But that mobility works absolute wonders and make this a more versatile tool around my home than something that needs to clamp to a desk.

When the first reviews of the R9 came out, I saw numerous complains from people that it was overpriced and since it doesn’t come with a stand, that’s an absolute joke… And with my head in my hands due to the value of hindsignt, I can now say I looked at those comments thinking “well, (eyeroll) no hobby lamps at this tier have stands, they all have desk clamps”. And I can confidently speak of my former ignorance now, becasue I’m happy to admit when i was wrong. This is incredibly handy… Sorry.

But it’s not all sunshine and rainbows.

One thing that is a double edged sword with the original R9 is the height of the arm, the dual strut nature allows for up to about 1m of height from the base, The R9 can be used well above your desk yp light the whole area. And the dual light-bars which can be independantly swivelled youc an have one ligting the mode and another lighting you work area for example. ot you can have both looking at the model and actually look through the gap for an evenly lit piece.

Now the single lightbar on the Solo still works fine to light the model and the surrounding area. it’s actually the single arm which can make this come across a little limited.

No matter which way you flex this, due to the neck position there is a very obvious minimum height and that is only achoieveable when te arm is extended at length.

Not a huge problem, but if you do prefer to sit with your eye level above your lamp, and te model below. The only way to achieve that here is to angle it down. and have the light bar diagonal. This is something I became aware of in my testing, and I’m sure you’ll agree, it wasn’t a massive hurdle to overcome. I’m literally only saying, sometimes you need to bend to a weird position to get it where you want it… but it will go where you want it.

Redgrass Games R9 Solo Review – Price & Availability

At (what I have been told is approximately, as it is subject to the EUR to GBP conversion rate) £125, this brings a very expensive hobby tool into the realms of, hey, tha’s far more palleteable when compared to competing products.

IWhether you wnat to pay this much for a light, is as I said a very personal choice, but of all the lights I’ve tested, it is the sturdiest product with the best colour rendering. So I would say it’s worth what they are asking for it.

Like most Regrass products it will launch first on Kickstarter coming Tuesday 13th January 2024, once the early bird orders are completed and Redgrass can stock up, it will go on General Sale on their website, but at that time, I expect the price wil go up. essentially, buy-in early for a chance to get it cheaper.

Redgrass Games R9 Solo Review – Final Thoughts

Well, I like it, I’ve alway’s been a fan of Redgrass products personally, I’ve loved following tjem from their first Wet Palette Kickstarter and they;ve continued to grow, It has felt like with the launch of the R9 and their change from Games to Creative, they had almost started a transition away from the Hobby Spehere in favour of a wider range of more technical applications.

I think the Solo is a nice reminder that they are still here for hobbyists, as they have created something which is more accessible. yes it;s half the size, but it’s half the cost too. Not only that but they responded to community requests for a free-standing base and delivered a great one which is also backwards compatible with the older lamp, Which alone, probably opens that more-expensive product up to new buyers too.

One thing to finish on as they oinly just advise, is that for tjose looking for a more perminent lfixture, they are also releasing a screw in base

So if you wnat a good hobby lamp, this is a very-good hobby lamp. I know a Multi Golden-demon winner with 2 of the original R9 lamps and swears by them!

Unsere Partner / Hobby Stores

VEREINIGTES KÖNIGREICH: Element Spiele, The Outpost, Wayland Games, Mighty Lancer, Goblin Gaming, Forbidden Planet, Model Scenery Supplies, Ebay, Amazon

USA / Kanada: MTechCave, GameKastle, eBay (USA), eBay (CA), Amazon
Deutschland: Taschengelddieb
Europa: eBay (DE), eBay (FR), eBay (ES), eBay (IT), Amazon

Australien: Ebay, Amazon
Global: RedGrass Games, Warcolours

3D-Drucker: Phrozen 3D, Elegoo, Anycubic

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FauxHammer
Selbsternannter Chefredakteur von FauxHammer.com - Aber ich muss dem Team dafür danken, dass es existiert und es mir ermöglicht, mir dese Rolle zu geben - ohne sie bin ich nur ein Plastic-Crack süchtiger Nerd mit einem Computer.
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