Yongnuo Goes on B&H. Similarly Priced, Better Service (+lenses?)
Jan 9, 2015
Udi Tirosh
Udi Tirosh is an entrepreneur, photography inventor, journalist, educator, and writer based in Israel. With over 25 years of experience in the photo-video industry, Udi has built and sold several photography-related brands. Udi has a double degree in mass media communications and computer science.
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Yongnuo has been the goto strobe brand for many off-camera-flashers (yea, I said it). Between the low price (it’s pretty hard to beat a $60 strobe, even if entry level), the plethora of features and the compatibility with major brands systems they are hard to say no to.
The only thing that kinda sucked on those strobes was their origin, they were shipping in from China. Shipping from China means hard to exercise warranty or returns. Don’t get me wrong, if you got 4 Yongnuo’s and one was a DOA, it was still a good deal price-wise, but you ended up with one dead strobe. Add to that the fact that many eBay sellers were selling those strobes with a lesser levels of Quality Assurance and you can see why there was a certain kind of risk involved in such purchases.
But this is changing as B&H are now adding the Yongnuo brand to their catalog. This means getting the same strobes with a significantly higher level of security. As for warranty, at least the items that I checked had a Limited 1-Year Warranty.
I was kinda expecting the B&H prices to be higher than the Amazon ones, but in fact they are not:
- The YN560-II sells for $59 on Amazon and for $55 at B&H
- The radio enabled YN560-III are selling for $71 on Amazon and at the same price over at B&H.
- The YN-622N-TX i-TTL Wireless Flash Controller is selling for $45.99 on both Amazon and B&H
(for a full Yongnuo listing on B&H click here)
Similarly interesting is the hint on B&H also adding Yongnuo lenses to their store. There is currently only one lens entered into the catalog – the Yongnuo 50mm EF For 1.8 Lens For Canon (mistakes on original listing), and it has not images and is marked out of stock – Usually ships in 2-4 weeks. Which may indicate that B&H did not receive any stock yet or that they are testing the item… If the YN lenses do go on sale, it could be very interesting for US photographers.
Now here comes the question, now that service warranty and returns are so much easier will you jump in and get a Yongnuo?
[via SLR Lounge]
Udi Tirosh
Udi Tirosh is an entrepreneur, photography inventor, journalist, educator, and writer based in Israel. With over 25 years of experience in the photo-video industry, Udi has built and sold several photography-related brands. Udi has a double degree in mass media communications and computer science.
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12 responses to “Yongnuo Goes on B&H. Similarly Priced, Better Service (+lenses?)”
To be honest, I find this to be very exciting news. I’ve been a fan of YongNuo ever since I discovered them several years ago and have used their speedlights ever since. And, selling them through a States-side retailer like B&H adds a whole new layer of legitimacy…which could result in artificially-inflated prices moving forward, but time will tell.
I’m very interested to see what additional lens offerings YN will roll out in the coming years.
Good on them, this is exactly why I purchased my Odin’s from B&H rather than some ‘importer’ or ‘re-seller’. I know B&H will take the worry out of my purchase.
I bought all six of my YongNuo lights from eachshot (previously YongNuoStore). I love them!
I already buy Yongnuo and this makes it even better.
I’ve got 2 Yongnuo 560 III already and I was planning to eventually get their most recent ‘transceivers’, but B&H doesn’t change anything from me since I’m from Canada. I prefer paying a little bit more from products that were shipped by Amazon than paying customs to make the products cross the border.
This is good. I ordered a Yongnuo 50mm f/1.8 from a Chinese seller on eBay when it was the low $40 price. Somehow they made a mistake and I got a pair of green socks after waiting two weeks for the shipment to arrive. The seller is re-sending the lens, but I have another two-week wait. No worries about botched shipments or long shipping times with B&H.
I chatted with a photographer this week who was using a Yongnuo flash, and she liked hers. I’ll have to give their flashes a try.
I highly recommend their flash units. They’re cheap, powerful for the money (really no complaints for speedlights), and pretty reliable for being Chinese-made. I did have one fail me a while back while on a job (fortunately had backups), but the three years of use I got for the $90 I spent was nothing to complain about. And, I just disassembled that unit tonight to use the internal battery pack for another (non-photography) DIY project.
(As a word of caution, getting shocked by the remaining charge in the giant capacitor hurts. A lot. Getting shocked twice is double the fun… I’d liken it to the shock of a stun gun. Don’t ask.)
If it’s anything like the one for the inbuilt flash of a camera I can sympathize with you… it hurts.
The capacitor on the speedlight is the size of the tilt/swivel joint. I had no idea they were that big. Dang…
I love my Yongnuo stuff, even with a hiccup along the way. I have a YN-560-II, YN-565, 3x YN-622n and a 622n-TX, all work great. And the price simply can’t be beat. I laughed when PocketWizards tried coming out with their budget X series thats twice as much a Yongnuo and half the features.
being in australia the shipping cost kills this, i can get them from ebay delivered free.
The bad news is …Whilst Yongnuo is great value,especially in comparison with the major brands its deplorable in trying to get hold and update its firmware…for example for YN600ex rt..I have 3…