Flash Godox V860II — on-camera flash for those who shoot a lot and often

In this review, we will focus on the flash Godox V860IIN ie. for the Nikon sys­tem, but the dif­fer­ences between the Godox V860II for dif­fer­ent sys­tems (Godox V860IIC for Canon and Godox V860IIS for Sony, recent­ly even V860IIF for Fuji­Film and V860IIO for Olympus/Panasonic) are min­i­mal.

Basi­cal­ly, Godox V860II (Flash­point Zoom Li-on R2 TTL) is an ana­logue of the Godox TT685 cam­era flash with slight dif­fer­ences: unlike the TT685, the V860II is pow­ered by a li-ion bat­tery and does not have a con­nec­tor for con­nect­ing an exter­nal high-volt­age pow­er sup­ply. And because Since I have already pub­lished a review of the Godox Thin­klite TT685N flash, I will try not to repeat myself, but to tell you about the dif­fer­ences. More­over, I have been using this flash since March, and at the moment I already have three of them (can be seen in this video at the twen­ti­eth sec­ond).

I bought all three Godox V860IIN flash units I have at Gearbest, because at dif­fer­ent times in this mod­el there were coupons “V860IIN” And “V860IIN1» (still needs to work), which reduced the cost of Godox V860IIN flash­es to $126.99.

But let’s get back to the hero­ine of today’s review. If any­one is inter­est­ed, here is a video with unbox­ing and a brief review of Godox V860IIN

When you receive the par­cel with Godox V860IIN flash, you will be sur­prised by the size of the par­cel

The approx­i­mate size of the box is 23x21x7.5cm and weighs about a kilo­gram.

All the tech­ni­cal details are writ­ten on the back of the box.

They are also dupli­cat­ed by pic­tograms at the end of the box.

Specifications Godox Ving V860II iTTL Nikon

I’ll hide the pic­ture from the man­u­fac­tur­er’s web­site under the spoil­er

• Com­pat­i­bil­i­ty: Nikon DSLR cam­eras (i‑TTL, Nikon CLS)
• Guide num­ber: 60 (ISO 100 200mm)
• Flash expo­sure com­pen­sa­tion (FEC) / Flash expo­sure brack­et­ing FEB: 1/3 steps (±3 stops)
• Syn­chro­niza­tion: high speed up to 1/8000s, front and rear cur­tains
• Wire­less tech­nolo­gies: Nikon Cre­ative Light­ing Sys­tem (Nikon CLS), Godox X1 TTL
• Wire­less fea­tures: mas­ter, slave
• Sup­port­ed chan­nels: Opti­cal 1–4, Radio 2.4GHz 1–32
• Opti­cal sync: S1, S2
• Flash mode: i‑TTL/M/Multi
• Man­u­al pow­er adjust­ment mode: 1/128 — 1/1 pow­er out­put (1/3 steps)
• Reflec­tor zoom: 20–200mm (14mm with dif­fuser) auto­mat­ic and man­u­al
• Head rota­tion: ‑180…180 hor­i­zon­tal­ly and ‑7…90 ver­ti­cal­ly
• Flash dura­tion: 1/300 — 1/20000 sec
• Col­or­ful tem­per­a­ture: 5600+200K
• Charge time: up to 1.5sec
• Con­nec­tors: 3.5mm exter­nal sync, MicroUSB port for firmware upgrade
• Nutri­tion: 11.1V 2000mAh lithi­um poly­mer bat­tery
• Num­ber of full pow­er puls­es from the bat­tery: 650
• Dimen­sions: 76x64x190mm
• Weight (with­out bat­tery): 430g
• Weight (with bat­tery): 540g

Package Contents Godox Ving V860II iTTL Nikon

Pay atten­tion to the upper right cor­ner of the front of the box? Where it says KIT. Yes, Godox V860II flash units (like Godox V850II) are sold imme­di­ate­ly as a set:

In addi­tion to the flash itself, the pack­age includes:

1. case
2. stand for mount­ing on a hor­i­zon­tal sur­face or on a tri­pod
3. bat­tery Godox VB18
4. charg­er Godox VC18
5. pow­er cable with USPlug plug (flat pins) and fig­ure eight
6. Godox Ving V860IIN flash man­u­al
7. War­ran­ty card for flash Godox Ving V860IIN
8. Godox VC18 charg­er man­u­al
9. qual­i­ty con­trol pass card

Let’s take a look at some of the items in the box and start with the VC18 charg­er.

The charg­er is small, approx­i­mate­ly 97x63x28mm in size, at the ends it has con­nec­tors for con­nect­ing the mains sup­ply and con­nect­ing the option­al VV-18 car adapter for charg­ing from the cig­a­rette lighter.

All sorts of warn­ings and foot­notes are writ­ten on top, and there is a slot for installing a VB-18 bat­tery

Well, on the reverse side, between two rub­ber legs, cov­ered with films from the fac­to­ry, the char­ac­ter­is­tics are writ­ten:

• input: 100–240V AC 50–60Hz
• out­put: 12.6VDC 0.85A

A ful­ly dis­charged Godox VB-18 bat­tery charges in just under three hours. Con­sid­er­ing that it is prac­ti­cal­ly impos­si­ble to dis­charge it in three hours, because for this you need to do about 200 full-pow­er puls­es per hour, or more than three full per minute. And in this case, you are more like­ly to have the flash go into pro­tec­tion against over­heat­ing than you will drain the bat­tery. And yes, there is over­heat­ing pro­tec­tion in Godox V8660II, as well as in Godox TT685.

By the way, about the bat­tery:

The dimen­sions of the Godox VB-18 bat­tery are approx­i­mate­ly 58x55x23mm, volt­age 11.1V, declared capac­i­ty 2000mAh, 22Wh.

There is noth­ing inter­est­ing on the back of the bat­tery, only an arrow.

Appearance Godox Ving V860II iTTL Nikon

The Godox V860II flash has a tra­di­tion­al appear­ance.

Of course, there is also a white card and a wide-angle dif­fuser.

On the left side under the rub­ber plug there are con­nec­tors:

• for con­nect­ing Godox FT16S receivers
• MicroUSB port for firmware updates
• cable exter­nal sync con­nec­tor

And on the right — a com­part­ment not for four bat­ter­ies or AA bat­ter­ies, but for li-ion poly­mer bat­tery VB-18.And this is the first of the impor­tant dif­fer­ences between V860II and TT685.

More­over, please note that due to the two beveled cor­ners, the VB-18 bat­tery can­not be installed on the oth­er side. And there is also a bat­tery latch that does not allow the bat­tery to fall out even with the bat­tery cov­er open. Well, when you light­ly press this white lever with your fin­ger, the bat­tery is pushed out of the com­part­ment by a spring locat­ed deep in the bat­tery com­part­ment of the Godox V860II flash.

On the hot shoe there are addi­tion­al con­tacts for the Nikon sys­tem and a fix­ing nut. And here con­nec­tor for con­nect­ing exter­nal high-volt­age pow­er next to the hot shoe — no. This is the sec­ond major dif­fer­ence between TT685 and V860II.

Oth­er­wise, as for the con­trols, and as for work­ing on the cam­era, and in mas­ter (mas­ter, lead­ing) or slave (slave, slave) modes, in the Nikon Cre­ative Light­ing Sys­tem (CLS) and the Godox X1 uni­ver­sal radio syn­chro­niza­tion sys­tem (with sup­port for TTL and FP / HSS) — the Godox V860II flash is com­plete­ly anal­o­gous to the Godox TT685 flash, so, in order not to repeat myself, I rec­om­mend read­ing the cor­re­spond­ing descrip­tion of the Godox TT685 flash in my review, because the only dif­fer­ence is that the Godox V860II dis­plays the cur­rent bat­tery lev­el in the upper right cor­ner:

Results and conclusions

Over­all, I am sat­is­fied with my set of three Godox V860II flash­es and Godox X1T‑N trans­mit­ter. Every­thing works cor­rect­ly with my Nikon D80 and as an on-cam­era, with reportage shoot­ing, as well as in mas­ter (mas­ter) and slave modes (slave) in Nikon Cre­ative Light­ing Sys­tem (Nikon CLS) and Godox X1 uni­ver­sal radio syn­chro­niza­tion sys­tem.

In addi­tion, Godox VB-18 li-ion bat­ter­ies are eas­i­er to charge, their capac­i­ty, in terms of a full pulse, is more than three sets of AA eneloop and almost like three sets of AA eneloop pro. They also recharge flash­es faster.

You can eval­u­ate it in this short video, which com­pares the recharge time of Godox TT685 (Flash­point Zoom R2 TTL) on new Pana­son­ic Eneloop after Break-In cycle in MC3000 Uni­ver­sal Charg­er and Godox V860II (Flash­point Zoom Li-on R2 TTL) with li-ion bat­tery VB-18:

As for the cost and resource of the Godox VB-18 bat­tery, they are sim­i­lar in capac­i­ty (in terms of the num­ber of impuls­es) Eneloop kits will cost almost the same amount as buy­ing a new Godox VB-18 bat­tery sep­a­rate­ly. And they will have about the same resource.

In the spring, I gave one of my Godox VB-18 flash­es to a friend of the wed­ding, and when he shot the entire wed­ding day on one bat­tery charge, and part of the charge was still left. After that, he ordered him­self the same flash.

So if you shoot with flash not much and not often, and for shoot­ing you only need one, max­i­mum two sets of AA bat­ter­ies, Godox V860II may not be for you. But if you shoot like me, a lot and often, and two sets of AA bat­ter­ies for a flash may not be enough for you. Or the flash recy­cle time is a crit­i­cal para­me­ter for you, then buy the V860II.

By the way, Godox flash­es are also sold under the Flash­Point brand, for exam­ple on Ama­zon and Ado­ra­ma, here is a list of match­es:

• Godox TT600 Flash­point Zoom R2 Man­u­al
• Godox V850II — Flash­point Zoom Li-on R2 Man­u­al
• Godox TT685 — Flash­point Zoom R2 TTL
• Godox V860II — Flash­point Zoom Li-on R2 TTL

And you can pur­chase the Godox V860II flash from Gearbest using coupon code V860IIN1 for $126.99.

PS Well, you can addi­tion­al­ly save on pur­chas­es in Gearbest and oth­er online stores or online sites using cash­back ser­vices. I use ePN Cash­back and Letyshops, depend­ing on where at the time of pur­chase there are more favor­able con­di­tions, both of these ser­vices, in addi­tion to con­stant cash­back rates, often arrange var­i­ous pro­mo­tions and allow you to apply pro­mo­tion­al codes that increase the per­cent­age of cash­back.