Advanced LED: are the 5watt XTE lights better than original 3watt lights?

[ChippyMalone]

I have chosen advancedledlights.com to be my lighting supplier. I have purchased one DS 200 panel and another XTE 300 panel for a small scale home medical garden to produce CBD meds for myself.

I cannot find direct comparison specs for actual performance between the two as far as the plants would care. I do like the XTE's ability to dim the panels for seedlings and clones, but I can turn off the red dominant half on the DS200 if I have an occasional short term need for less light.

I am wondering if I should return the DS200 and exchange for the XTE equivalent? But my question is this: does anyone here have experience with using both of these? If the small difference in price was not a deciding factor, would you bother with the exchange? Or is the actual performance difference so minor that it would be just a hassle to return and replace? I will purchase again in the future and it might be just as easy to keep what I have and not label myself as a picky troublesome customer because I know this is a minor issue and I don't like to bother good people with irrelevant issues that are my own doing. Although standardizing my equipment in the future is a goal of mine.

Hopefully icemud will see this, as I am too much of a newbie to send pm's, and I would appreciate input from such experienced users of this equipment.

Thanks for any insight anybody can offer. And since I'm making my first thread here, I'll include a photo of my new seedling garden. Super Lemon Haze x Unknown possible CBD strain, and three Aliens on Moonshine CBD seedlings. I'm super impressed at how little these plants are not stretching. The largest is barely three inches. Hopefully, I will end up with at least one good CBD phenotype for cloning. But analytical testing will be the judge of that.

 

[Watergunz]

I read somewhere that 3 watt LED chips don't have much of a difference to 5 watt LED chips. There really isn't much of a difference in performance.

I would base the return on preference to be honest. The ability of dimming and turning off the red dominant part of the light is pretty cool in my eyes.

I am new to growing and using LED's to grow I currently have a HEAT issue with my MarsHydro 300-Watt light.

 

[Dano2k3]

I was reading up on LED, a couple of reviews mentioned that 3w are the sweet spot for LED's currently. The main thing some of the articles pointed out... The increased voltage means the light get hotter, thus they will need to be spread out from each other further effectively diminishing the benefit from having a higher wattage LED. I have 3 900W leds running (actually draw 580W). I have AC in my room, found if i turn off my CO2 generator and the AC, the temperature don't go up very fast. But run my CO2 generator, i notice a 2 or 4F degree temperature jump whenever the CO2 kicks on. So just the LED not too bad.
Your use might vary...

 

[ChippyMalone]

Thank you dano2k3. When I spoke with the sales rep at Advanced LED for my first panel, he pretty much said that the difference between their 3 and 5 Watt panels were more in the overall more refined design of the newer version rather than very much that the plants care about.

I'm going to just keep the 3 watt small panel for vegetation, and will probably save few dollars getting another 3 watt panel for flowering.

That will give me a DS200 for clones, seedlings, mother plants, the XTE300 for vegetation, and a new higher power panel for bloom.