Godox iA32 review: the hottest and coolest of three new mini flashguns from Godox

The flashgun section of my stash of camera gear has had Godox as the sole inhabitant over the last couple of years. I’ve migrated from own-brand flashguns to a pair of Godox Ving V860III flashguns that I use with my Nikon Z system cameras. They work brilliantly well on their own, even better when paired with my Godox XPro i-TTL RF wireless trigger, and the whole collection is unbeatable value for money. I’ve also been impressed with the round-headed Godox V1, Godox V1 Pro and Godox V100 flashguns, and firmly believe that Godox makes some of the best and most cost effective flashguns on the market. The iA32 is a scaled down affair that’s relatively compact and lightweight, with more than a passing nod to retro design. Even so, it aims to do the business with smart features and good performance, at a very alluring purchase price.

Godox iM32: Specifications

Godox iA32: Price

Even the ‘cheapest’ own-brand flashguns from camera manufacturers can be pricey items, like the Canon Speedlite EL-10 at $199/ £ $249 / AU$369 and the Nikon Speedlight SB-700 at $297 / £309 / AU$479, since the demise of the more entry-level Canon EL-100 and Nikon SB-500, respectively. The Godox iA32 lacks dedication to any specific camera system and is a little less fancy but it’s massively more affordable, priced at just $50 / £47 / AU$112. Bargain!

Godox iA32: Design & Handling

The iA32 followed hot on the heels of two other Godox flashes, being announced just a few days later at the beginning of 2025. The sibling Godox iM20 and iM22 are fully manual affairs and are really tiny matchbox sized flashes, designed to cater to cameras that lack a pop-up flash. The iA32 is bigger but it’s still not much larger than a pack of playing cards, measuring 66x114x36mm (2.6x4.5x1.4") and weighing 179g (6.3oz) complete with batteries.

Batteries are worth a mention because whereas the two smaller Godox flashes have a built-in, rechargeable Li-ion battery, the iA32 runs on two AA batteries. A plus side is that they’re universally available and you can swap them out and be ready to roll again immediately, rather than having to wait over an hour for your flashgun to recharge.

It’s not just the batteries that are universal. The iA32 is designed to be a universal fit for almost any camera, past or present. There are therefore no different versions, dedicated to different camera brands. As such, there’s no TTL (Through The Lens) flash metering and a couple of other hurdles to overcome, but I’ll come back to those later in my section on performance. For now, let’s just say that the iA32 works with any camera that has a standard hot shoe. And for those that don’t, a hot shoe adapter is usually available.

The lack of automatic TTL flash exposure might sound like a deal-breaker but personally, I prefer using manual power settings anyway. I often find that auto TTL flash and I have very different ideas about what the ‘correct’ flash exposure should be. Like the smaller iM20 and iM22, you can dial in manual flash power settings, but this time over a range that stretches from full power down to 1/128^th power, instead of just down to 1/16^th. That’s mainly because the maximum power output is rather higher. You can also adjust power levels in one-third EV increments instead of only in full EV steps.

Still don’t like the sound of manual flash power settings? Unlike the iM20 and iM22, the iA32 does feature an Auto flash mode. Instead of working ‘through the lens’, it’s based on a light-sensitive cell built into the front of the flashgun. This measures the amount of light reflected from the subject, and adjusts the power output accordingly. Switch to Auto mode and you dial in the ISO and aperture settings that you’re using and the flashgun does the rest. It also shows you what operating range you can expect. For example, at ISO 200 and f/5.6, the automatic flash metering caters to a subject distance of 0.5m to 3.1m.

The styling of the iA32 is delightfully retro, and the flashgun looks right at home in the hot shoe of similarly styled cameras like the Nikon Z fc and Fujifilm X-T50. As I’ve mentioned, the iA32 is rather more powerful than the tiny iM20 and iM22 and this time around, Godox specifies a maximum output power rather than leaving the specification blank. It’s rated at Gn 15 / 49.2 (ISO 100, m / ft). That might sound a bit on the low side compared with the Canon and Nikon flashguns I mentioned earlier, but it’s not the whole story. Hang fire a moment until we get to ‘performance’.

A major upside of the extra power on tap, compared with the iM20 and iM22, is that bounce flash is within the remit of the iA32. I really like the way bounce flash is implemented in such a neat and tidy way. Instead of the usual clunky top section that pivots up and down, there’s a neat dial on the side that revolves the internal flash tube through a range of -7 degrees to 90 degrees, complete with click steps at -7, 0, 30, 45, 60, 75 and 90 degrees, plus markings on a physical scale. That’s the good news. The bad news is that there’s no lateral swivel function. You can therefore only bounce the flash off an adjacent wall if you’re shooting with your camera in portrait (upright) orientation, and the iA32 is mounted in the hot shoe.

Slotting the iA32 into your camera’s hot shoe isn’t the only option. Yet another difference between this and the smaller iM20 and iM22 is that the iA32 features an optical sensor and dual optical slave modes. One mode enables you to trigger the flash remotely from a studio flash head or a flashgun/pop-up flash that’s firing in manual mode. The other enables you to trigger the flash from a flashgun in Auto TTL mode, so that the iA32 ignores any pre-flash pulses. The net result is that you can use the iA32 as a wireless slave off-camera, as a secondary remote flash. Yet further options are to make use of the sync terminal socket built into the side of the flashgun, or to use a hot shoe-mounting remote cable.

Godox iA32: Performance

Let’s kick off with power output. Godox claims a maximum power output of Gn 15 / 49.2 (ISO 100, m / ft) for the iA32. Sticking with meters, the rating of Gn 15 is somewhat lower than the Gn 40 of the Canon Speedlite EL-10, or Gn 38 for the Nikon Speedlight SB-700. As I’ve mentioned though, that’s not the whole story. The Canon and Nikon flashguns have motorized zoom heads, and the Gn rating is quoted at the longest zoom setting in each case, being 105mm and 120mm respectively. Zoom out to 24mm (equivalent to the iA32) and there’s rather less of a difference in the maximum power output. In my tests, measuring maximum power with a Sekonic Flashmate L-308X / L-308X-U light meter, I got a reading of Gn 11 for the iA 32, Gn 19 for the Canon and Gn 20 for the Nikon. Ultimately, the maximum power available from the iA32 might not be massive, but it’s certainly sufficient for most scenarios and beats the power of a camera’s built-in pop-up flash.

I found that decreasing the flash output setting gave a very uniform and consistently accurate reduction in EV rating, all the way from full power down to 1/32. It was only the bottom two full steps of 1/64 and 1/128 that gave less than a full EV reduction in output.

Fire the flash directly at the subject with the iA32 mounted on your camera’s hot shoe and you’ll get that ‘classic’ flash look to images. As such, subjects can look rather two-dimensional, with little modelling to speak of. There’s also a risk that shiny surfaces can create a lot of glare, firing light from the flash straight back at the camera. You’ll see what I mean in the following example shot.

The ability to bounce the flash off a ceiling is a major performance upgrade as far as I’m concerned, compared with the Godox iM20 and iM22. It can create a much softer lighting effect, as the effective size of the light source becomes much larger. For comparison, see the image below, which was taken with the camera and flash in exactly the same position as in the previous shot, but with vertical bounce instead of direct flash.

I also tested the abilities of the iA32 to be triggered optically from another flashgun or a studio flash, using both of its optical slave modes. I found worked very consistently, in both modes, one of which ignores pre-flash pulses of light that are used in flashguns for TTL metering. And while the iA32 itself isn’t compatible with TTL flash metering, I found that when using it as the main flash in Auto mode, its metering was actually very good and very consistent, for both direct and bounce flash.

With no dedication and just a single pin for triggering in the mounting foot of the iA32, the camera doesn’t even know that a flashgun is mounted in its hot shoe. If you want to use a classic flash exposure setting of, say, 1/60^th of second at f/5.6, you’ll need to switch to Manual shooting mode in your camera. Under low lighting conditions, that can give a very dark or black preview in the viewfinder or rear screen of mirrorless cameras, so you need to disable the live exposure preview function. It’s just a hurdle that you need to overcome but it’s not a major problem.

What really can be a problem is missing important shots because a flashgun has a painfully slow recycling time after a full-power flash. Despite running on only two rather than four AA batteries, I was impressed with the recycling speeds of the iA32. Using Eneloop Pro rechargeable NiMH cells, which are among the best AA rechargeable batteries, I found that recycling speeds were pretty much instantaneous from 1/128^th power right up to 1/8^th power settings. Even after a full-power flash, recycling speed was 1.9 seconds, which is about the same as from the Canon Speedlite EL-10 and almost a whole second faster than the Nikon Speedlight SB-700, using four of the same type of batteries.

Godox iA32: Lab Results

We test all available features for each flashgun that goes through out labs. To test power output, we used a Sekonic flash meter placed at a distance of one meter from each flashgun. We check the complete range of manual power settings, in one-stop increments. Based on a sensitivity of ISO 100, the figures correlate directly with the Gn (Guide number) in meters. The results are double-checked by taking shots of a gray card with the appropriate lens apertures and using the camera’s histogram display in playback mode. This is done for flash zoom settings of 24mm, 50mm and 105mm (in full-frame terms), where available.

We also check the accuracy and consistency of electronic/intelligent TTL (Through The Lens) flash metering, where featured, and the speed with which each flashgun can recycle to a state of readiness after a full-power flash, using both Ni-MH and alkaline cells, or a Li-ion power pack where supplied.

Power output:

Maximum power output is very respectable for a flashgun that runs on just two AA batteries, and the overall power range is generous, adding versatility. However, with no manual or motorized zoom facility, you can’t focus the light from the flash into a tighter area when using lenses that have longer focal lengths.

Recycle speed:

Recycle speeds are virtually instantaneous at power settings of 1/128 up to 1/8. It’s still under a second at half-power and just under two seconds at the full-power setting, which is much faster than I’m used to with flashguns that run on two rather than four AA batteries.

Godox iA32: Verdict

I really like the retro styling of the Godox iA32. That’s just a personal preference but more importantly, its looks are backed up by solid performance that combines a healthy power range and fairly fast recycle speeds into a conveniently compact and lightweight package. Compared with the matchbox-sized Godox iM20 and iM22, I feel that the larger iA32 has a lot more going for it, including a bounce facility, color rear screen, auto as well as manual flash exposure modes, and even dual optical slave modes. It’s a great little flashgun that’s only about the size of a pack of playing cards but comes up trumps.

Alternatives

The Godox iM20 came to the market at the same time as the iA32. It looks and feels less like a flashgun, and more like a pop-on flash for cameras that lack a built-in pop-up flash. It lacks several of the iA32’s features but is amazingly tiny, only weighs about an ounce, and costs $34 / £32 / AU$80.

The Godox iM22 is essentially the same as the iM20 with all the same electronics and internals and costs the same price to buy. However, it has a taller and slimmer design that’s arguably a better fit for use with physically longer lenses.