LED Light comparison

[XavyRaingrow]

Hello everyone!!! I'm new to forum and have a question for the experienced growers here.

This is my 4th grow, I have previously used LARGE photostudio CFL bulbs and gotten some pretty decent results in my past grows but find it's raising my bills too much and the CFL bulbs get too hot and honestly scare me [fear of house fires haha]. I have heard that LED's would be cooler and more energy efficient and I've been looking around at some that were suggested in a growers forum I'm in on facebook and I wanted to know what everyone here thought.

On Amazon, there are several different LED's of the same wattage, I found a Phlizon 600w LED for around 90$ and it says in the description can compare to a 400w hps, but I've also seen other brands of 600w LEDs that look exactly the same that are lower or higher in price. I also have seen a Giixer 1000w LED light and it's about 20$ cheaper than the Phlizon. My question is: How can I tell which light is better? If they say 1000w does that MEAN it's putting out more than the 600w? Anyone know why some are cheaper than others? With the CFL's I spent time calculating the lumens and now everyone on the grower forum is debating weather its lumens that really count or watts, or spectrum, and it's kind of confusing tbh.
I really would rather use a HPS or MH but, again, energy costs and my current grow area is only 2'w x 4'L x 5' H right now, I've got another area I want to set up to use as my bloom chamber that is about 2'W x 6'L x 8' H. Ideally I'd like to grow 4-6 plants, I know in the past I was able to grow 2 in the smaller chamber perfectly and they were huge compared to the 4 I did last grow in the larger area. So is more always better?

Sorry for all the writing, I just want to understand the differences in the LED's, why some 'higher powered' ones are cheaper than lower wattage ones, and what is the most bang I can get for my bucks.

ATM: I am doing DWC, all indica strains, and wanting to spend under 100$ to start them all, will get more lights for the bloom phase so if ya'll can help me figure out which lights would work best for vegging 4-6 and then blooming 4-6, I would greatly appreciate it.

THANK YOU!!!!!

 

[Chris Scorpio]

Ok then....lol

Actual watts are measured at the wall, not the CLAIM They make of it

Now most go by watts/sf to determine yield and coverage

I run all QB lights, all white lights, love them, but started with HPS and still have a couple Blurple lights as well

Check those lights actual draw wattage before u decide
Also check the coverage they say, coverage at 18"-24" height, where u will be most the time

Good luck, holler if u have any specific questions

 

[TorturedSoul]

On Amazon, there are several different LED's of the same wattage, I found a Phlizon 600w LED for around 90$ and it says in the description can compare to a 400w hps

Yeah, they don't have much in the way of product liability or truth-in-advertising laws over there in China . Or at least for their export stuff. Maybe it's different in their domestic market - I mean, there's like 1.39 billion people over there, lol, so ripping off the customers who are located in the same country as the factory and physical storefront could end up causing a riot of epic proportions. Then again, some of them tried staging a protest some years back at a location called Tiananmen Square about 30 years ago, and their government sent the military to hose the poor fuckers down with automatic weapons. So they probably put up with a lot, unless they want to leave their next of kin with a funeral bill and one for the cost of the ammo that killed them. So I really wouldn't know what the exact situation is over there in Chinajunkastan.

But, in terms of dealing with foreigners, they're much the same as those sand lickers over in the Muddle East. No, not the "fuckers are so fucked up that someone had to start a major fucking religion just to codify things like 'thou shall not pick up food with the same bare hand that thou just wiped thine own ass with, again, barehanded' and 'since you stupid fucks can't seem to grasp the concept of properly cooking your food, Mohammad says you are not allowed to eat pork, because if you just blow a little hot air on it for a minute, it's not going to kill the parasites' " part. I'm talking about how they treat others comma foreign. It doesn't count as a lie if it's something stated to a foreigner. Yet they (the PRC, not the camel-mates, although I suppose they might, too, IDFK) refer to other people as barbarians, LMFAO. Which is pretty rich coming from a people that thinks burying eggs in the ground for months and then eating them is the height of fine cuisine, and who spend staggeringly huge amounts of money to grind up the horns of endangered species because some slick con artist told one of them that it'd turn the old SOBs' wet noodles into raging hard ons.

Anyway, if you're talking about... uh... I just got stomped on for posting a link to a product for reference purposes, and the boot print hasn't fully healed yet, lol, so I want to be a little circumspect here. Let's see... That... seller you mentioned, that... product you mentioned... and the word "newest" in its product/ad title... for... some little amount under ten bucks less than the price you mentioned. If that's the one you're referring to, again, fucking liars, yeah? It's only a 108-watt device. It'd probably be quite good in an enclosed space of two square feet (1'x2'), lol. Likely acceptable, more or less, in three square feet. And, if it's more efficient than a lot of the cheap Chinese trash that gets dumped on the market to entice newbies into wasting their money, maybe four square feet. That's in regards to running a traditional 12-hour flowering light cycle. It'd be okay at vegetative growth because you'd be running it 50% more hours per day. Same applies if you intend to grow autoflowering strains instead of "traditional" ones, because those don't need ~12 hours of uninterrupted darkness to flower, so people run their lights 18, 20, or even more hours per day.

But you'd be ahead to buy a decent light, regardless, IMHO. Or, compared to that one, a 150-watt HPS, lol, which would probably perform slightly better (assuming you tailored the shape of your room and your plant training style to the light).

but I've also seen other brands of 600w LEDs that look exactly the same that are lower or higher in price. I also have seen a Giixer 1000w LED light and it's about 20$ cheaper than the Phlizon. My question is: How can I tell which light is better? If they say 1000w does that MEAN it's putting out more than the 600w?

See: fucking liars, above.

I really would rather use a HPS or MH but, again, energy costs

400 watts of electricity costs the same whether it's being used by a 400-watt HPS, a (legitimate/truthful) 400-watt LED, or a blender. You would probably see some minor overhead due to varying efficiencies of the power supplies (aka "ballasts" and "drivers"), but that's not normally a major issue unless you're right up against your maximum electrical capacity.

Sorry for all the writing, I just want to understand the differences in the LED's, why some 'higher powered' ones are cheaper than lower wattage ones

See (you guessed it, lol) : fucking liars, above. Those lying liars are just fucking lying.

 

[XavyRaingrow]

Yeah, they don't have much in the way of product liability or truth-in-advertising laws over there in China . Or at least for their export stuff. Maybe it's different in their domestic market - I mean, there's like 1.39 billion people over there, lol, so ripping off the customers who are located in the same country as the factory and physical storefront could end up causing a riot of epic proportions. Then again, some of them tried staging a protest some years back at a location called Tiananmen Square about 30 years ago, and their government sent the military to hose the poor fuckers down with automatic weapons. So they probably put up with a lot, unless they want to leave their next of kin with a funeral bill and one for the cost of the ammo that killed them. So I really wouldn't know what the exact situation is over there in Chinajunkastan.

But, in terms of dealing with foreigners, they're much the same as those sand lickers over in the Muddle East. No, not the "fuckers are so fucked up that someone had to start a major fucking religion just to codify things like 'thou shall not pick up food with the same bare hand that thou just wiped thine own ass with, again, barehanded' and 'since you stupid fucks can't seem to grasp the concept of properly cooking your food, Mohammad says you are not allowed to eat pork, because if you just blow a little hot air on it for a minute, it's not going to kill the parasites' " part. I'm talking about how they treat others comma foreign. It doesn't count as a lie if it's something stated to a foreigner. Yet they (the PRC, not the camel-mates, although I suppose they might, too, IDFK) refer to other people as barbarians, LMFAO. Which is pretty rich coming from a people that thinks burying eggs in the ground for months and then eating them is the height of fine cuisine, and who spend staggeringly huge amounts of money to grind up the horns of endangered species because some slick con artist told one of them that it'd turn the old SOBs' wet noodles into raging hard ons.

Anyway, if you're talking about... uh... I just got stomped on for posting a link to a product for reference purposes, and the boot print hasn't fully healed yet, lol, so I want to be a little circumspect here. Let's see... That... seller you mentioned, that... product you mentioned... and the word "newest" in its product/ad title... for... some little amount under ten bucks less than the price you mentioned. If that's the one you're referring to, again, fucking liars, yeah? It's only a 108-watt device. It'd probably be quite good in an enclosed space of two square feet (1'x2'), lol. Likely acceptable, more or less, in three square feet. And, if it's more efficient than a lot of the cheap Chinese trash that gets dumped on the market to entice newbies into wasting their money, maybe four square feet. That's in regards to running a traditional 12-hour flowering light cycle. It'd be okay at vegetative growth because you'd be running it 50% more hours per day. Same applies if you intend to grow autoflowering strains instead of "traditional" ones, because those don't need ~12 hours of uninterrupted darkness to flower, so people run their lights 18, 20, or even more hours per day.

But you'd be ahead to buy a decent light, regardless, IMHO. Or, compared to that one, a 150-watt HPS, lol, which would probably perform slightly better (assuming you tailored the shape of your room and your plant training style to the light).



See: fucking liars, above.



400 watts of electricity costs the same whether it's being used by a 400-watt HPS, a (legitimate/truthful) 400-watt LED, or a blender. You would probably see some minor overhead due to varying efficiencies of the power supplies (aka "ballasts" and "drivers"), but that's not normally a major issue unless you're right up against your maximum electrical capacity.



See (you guessed it, lol) : fucking liars, above. Those lying liars are just fucking lying.

I see what you mean about all that, so in your opinion I'd be better off just going with the tried and true hps? Problem is, my smaller area that I'm starting 2 plants in, I'm worried the HPS wouldn't be far enough away from the plants and burn them? It's only about 4' H and the buckets I'm starting them in are about 1/2-3/4' tall, plus the height the plants will get before switching to the bigger area, even so the bigger area is only 7' H, is that far enough away for the plants so they don't get burned/stressed? I know a 400w HPS isn't that strong like the higher powered ones but still..new to anything other than cfl's lol.

Thank you for your response though!!!

 

[TorturedSoul]

No, to be honest with you, there's nothing inherently wrong with buying an LED product, even one that's been advertised by a con artist. Just make sure you're looking at / comparing the actual wattages of the devices.

I just get tired of seeing people (who aren't aware of the thing) get screwed.

You don't need strong, intense light to start plants. And seedlings don't require much. At some point, it becomes a question of how quickly you want them to grow (and to what size). Although you can plant cannabis seeds in the middle of the yard and the sunlight on a cloudless Summer day doesn't seem to bother them . I think it's the sudden shock of going from little light to lots of it as much as anything.

Old-school 40-watt T8 fluorescent (tube) bulbs work - if you're not in a hurry. So will most every other grow light. Including your CFLs (which can be improved by orienting them horizontally, cutting open a soda can by cutting a vertical line in the side, cutting most of the way around the bottom (so it can open up like a flap), and cutting the top so there's enough metal left to fit onto the base of your bulb or socket, then opening the can up like a pair of wings).

At only 4' tall, I'd be extremely hesitant to use a HPS larger than 150 watts (although a 250-watt setup could be made to work). Mostly because you'd see growth that'd quickly have you running out of room.

That's eight square feet, but the shape is "a bit" awkward for one light. Most cheapie LEDs (and more than a few that aren't so cheap) can be placed pretty close to plants. But this ends up meaning that they're not able to spread the light out well.

I'm running a 134-watt LED "bar" (it's kind of long, but really, really narrow) right now over some miscellaneous "square" ( ) garden plants - some peppers, basil, rosemary, and one tomato plant - and feel that it would be adequate for starting seeds in a space of about that size. I'd want to add another one just like it real soon now, which would give me... 33.5 watts per square foot worth of light. That'd be perfectly adequate for vegetative growth, and arguably acceptable for flowering. If I was growing autoflowering plants, it'd be more than acceptable, IMHO. They're available from one of our forum sponsors (the one that shares part of its name with one of the planets in our solar system). And I doubt that they'd harm tender young cannabis plants, because one of my basil plants is taller than the other plants in there and its top is approximately 8" from the business end of the light (it's only about 6" above the plant, but the plant is off just a tiny bit from the center line of the room, so, diagonally, about 8") - and, instead of burning or bleaching the leaves, it's causing the top four inches of the plant to lean towards the light, lol. And that's a young plant in 16 ounces of soil. And it produces light that appears white (there are a few red diodes, but the output appears to be whiter than the CFL in my bedroom's overhead light), so I'm not only not concerned about the neighbors seeing its output shining on my curtain at night, I've actually been known to sit beside it to read.

The only problem is, the product I'm referring to carries a list price of $149.99 before forum discount code (which can always be obtained by asking) or sales (they're running one right now).

 

[Mars Hydro]

Check their real wattage rather tan just see the title wattage. Old blurple led grow lights cannot be that efficient to save 50% energy.

You will need around 35~50w/sft to fit your space in order to get a great result.

 

[No Pain]

Ive done the amazon blurple thing and have about 1000.00 worth sitting collecting dust . there is still a lot of hoopla in the led market that does not help consumers . I would recommend saving and spending a little more on a quality LED. I recommend a spectrum king closet case for your situation … as they are the lights that I use and I love them and I get awesome results . Now if you are a diy guy and aren't looking for a waterproof lamp with a patented spectrum you should look into quantum boards for some bang for your buck .

 

[JoeDaddy77]

Like everyone else said, check actual draw and don't forget, you get what you pay for.

 

[TorturedSoul]

I recommend a spectrum king closet case

Those things are over $2/watt .

Pass.

 

[ucandewit]

If you wanna do it right, go with the Samsung based boards or strips. You will get rid of your heat issue a lot and you can get them closer to the plants without burning as long as you have some air circulation.

 

[No Pain]

Those things are over $2/watt .

Pass.

Yes the come with a price tag and if you look at any of the major led companies that provide led lamps to commercial grows you will find that they are reasonably priced for the market and the product that you are receiving ...they are water proof, 5 year warranty on the light not just that it will come on but that it will maintain a certain level of intensity I want to say at least 90% from right out of the box and the patented spectrum ...all I can say Is I love them and you do get what you pay for and since I have used these I have noticed a 30% increase in yields of hash using a dry ice extraction . what can I say im an advocate and a fan of them .

 

[ucandewit]

You can get boards and strips for much less than $2 watt.

 

[No Pain]

You can get boards and strips for much less than $2 watt.

yes you can and I suggested that if he was into DIY. But what you don't get are the things that I mentioned and more …. Im a DIY guy that believes and feels that I use the best that a grower can buy. Its my opinion based on the results that I have seen from hid's - blurple leds- what I use now.

 

[Monkeyluv]

 

[Monkeyluv]

If you wanna do it right, go with the Samsung based boards or strips. You will get rid of your heat issue a lot and you can get them closer to the plants without burning as long as you have some air circulation.

I keep seeing the samsung strips mentioned here a lot, but I can't seem to find where to obtain them completely assembled, or preferably DIY kit. Can you help point me in the right, or left direction please.

 

[Gazoo]

Heads-Up Once you Decide which type you want CHECK your Local Craigs List adds first
you may be able to find a great deal

 

[Monkeyluv]

Heads-Up Once you Decide which type you want CHECK your Local Craigs List adds first
you may be able to find a great deal

Thank you Master Wizard of the Universes Gazoo! Excellent idea, one I did not consider. Have a great day!