Today I played with the new Zacuto Plazma light, which is similar in size to Litepanels' 1x1. It's based on micro plasma technology, not LED. The result was a much softer, but brighter light! In profile, the panel was only .8cm or .3 inches thick. Will retail at $1350, which is less than Litepanels. They said it would be available for sale around June.
Here is a video link I found of it:
Zacuto Plasma Light : NAB 2012 Wide Open Camera (http://wideopencamera.com/nab-2012-2/nab-2012-zacuto-plasma-light/)

I'm very excited about this as well. Looks very promising.

Looks like it will be in production soon! I'm still waiting for this, looks like it's on its 4th generation already. I was impressed with the 1st generation model as it was.
http://www.zacuto.com/plazma-light

Bravo Zacuto ! Finally we are starting to see something really new, and affordable in the quality panels.
I just hope that they will not try to "monopolize" their concept of using plasma light for film/cinema/broadcast industry use like the other ahem...panel company. This is an exciting technology and surely will see use in more powerful units to finally give the filament the boot.

After reviewing the specs, my only concern is that this unit is power hungry. Input is 10 amps at 14.4 volts, which equals to 144 watts. That's quite a lot if you're running off batteries. Far more efficient than filamant for sure, but I hope they'll be able to increase it's efficiency even further in .the future.

Notice also that there is a sort of power supply or ballast box that has to be used with it. That is why the panel unit is so slim. The lumen figures of that light is 2200 at 3 ft. Somewhat like a 150 watt filament, and consuming like 144 watts ?????
At 6 ft. distance the lumens drop to around 550 ( the inverse square law ) and at 12 ft. , somewhat the average shooting distance, that will drop to like a paltry 138 lumens.
I would have expected that light to be in the area of 3600 lumens at 3 FT. Oh well.....