The Westcott S18 Flash Costs $40. But Why is it Special?

Today, Westcott is announcing something kind of weird. The company that’s released lights which are more or less rebranded Chinese lights for a while has also decided now get into the small manual flash options with the new Westcott S18. It’s a flash that doesn’t have high speed sync and has a Guide Number 16 (ISO 100) power output. And honestly, if you’re seeing any crazy videos about it, I’d be a little bit sus.

There are loads of flashes out there like this from Godox, Viltrox, Yongnuo, and others. What’s making this one a bit more unique is the built-in battery that charges via USB-C. It’s also just a little under 3 inches large.

So what else do you need to know:

• Native sync speed of 1/250th, but there’s no word on flash duration
• Equivalent of 18 watt seconds of power
• Maximum of 2.5 seconds for recycling
• A tilting head
• You can set other flashes up and optical slaves
• A promise of 500 full-power flash pops
• 19 steps across a 7 stop range of light power output
• 0.3 stop increments
• No TTL
• Includes gels and a diffusion panel
• 1 year limited warranty

It nice that this exists. But there are so many other flashes out there that do exactly what this little Westcott is doing too. If anything, I’m more intrigued by the ideas that strobists come up with when buying 10 of these and putting them all around a scene.