Chauvet's numbers have always been in dispute as widely inaccurate and generally misleading. I think that the Scan LED 300 is definitely better than the Spot LED 250 for a few reasons:
1) Higher power LED. The 60w LED should definitely get you more overall brightness. The Spot LED 250 may have a more concentrated and seemingly slightly brighter beam, but the twofold brightness dispute is probably just Chauvet's numbers.
2) Wider beam. For short throws, you want a nice, fat beam. The wide beam angle of the Scan LED 300 is a huge advantage.
3) Remote focus. The focus of the Spot LED 250 is adjusted via the screw-lens on the front. The focus on the Scan LED 300 is adjusted via a DMX controllable motor in the unit. This allows for nice soft focus projections or razor-sharp hard edge projections.
4) Programming. Position programming is much more of a pain with a moving head than with a scanner. You do lose some pan/tilt range with a scanner, but the programming & movements are generally much easier because you don't have to worry about which way you start moving the fixture every time.
5) Build quality. I have personally used the Scan LED 300s and love them. One of the things that I noticed right off is that they're made from a nice thick metal (thin, but thicker than lots of other DJ-level fixtures I've seen) whereas the Spot LED 250s have a plastic outer shell. The one thing to worry about durability-wise is the mirror, but you can easily make spares if you buy some small first-surface mirrors so you don't have to pay for the exact Chauvet replacement. They have to be "First-Surface" mirrors though or else you will get a double image on the wall. You should be able to get inexpensive pieces of first surface mirror and cut them to make replacement mirrors should you break your a mirror.
So, there's my case for the Scan LED 300. Ever since it came out it's been one of the fixtures that I will always recommend first on this forum. Impressive fixture for sure.
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