Best led light?

[Growingwithnature420]

What's the best or good led light for around 200-300$? One with enough coverage for around 3 plants if possible

[Campesino]

I use viparspectra lights. Very happy with them. One or two 450s or one 600, depending on your set-up. I am growing 6 plants under two 450s

http://a.co/fnGyaP3

[RosettaStoned]

Read up on cobs. They are the future of led lights

[D.A.A.S.69]

Morning Growing420, yes, if you are determined to use LED lights, check out the COBs, that BigSmo, makes that are on Autoflower. Net.
Mcubed476, a grower on here ,uses them, and does great ,with his plants. Several more do to. The 300watt leds, like Galaxy Hydro, an Viparspectre, an several more grow good weed, but they don't for some reason, power I suspect, grow dense,hard nugs, like metal halide, or HPS, does. The led nugs have mostly always been very airy, an lite weight,but plenty smokable.

[Jibblerjoe]

Cobs. Look at HLG leds, Google GROWMAUS. Chip on board leds is best led currently. Timber lights, rapidled, plc lighting concepts, chilled led.

[RosettaStoned]

What he said. I'm getting a 4x4 setup from rapid this week and yes....growmau5 youtube
Jibblerjoe do you use cobs?

[Growingwithnature420]

Is there anything I should look for in a cob light? I read people and build there own is something that would be better to do than to buy a built one? Thanks for the info I have never heard of those cob lights

[RosettaStoned]

You can do that as well, it just cheaper. Rapidled will answer your questions. They have some really nice kits you assemble and you can customize them if you have some knowledge about what you want. Timber has nice ones that are built. You can have them leave that up to you to save some cash. Qboards are also an option.

[gdogfunkly]

This is a bit above your budget, but I have two of these lights and they are providing amazing plant performance for me. One in each 3x3 tent: https://www.amazon.com/Advanced-Plat...ywords=p4-xml2

[RosettaStoned]

How do the buds turn out?

[gdogfunkly]

I'm still in Flower, but they are looking amazing. You can follow the grow here: https://forum.growweedeasy.com/forum...sia-haze/page8

[Jibblerjoe]

Yes RosettaStoned 3 Vero cobs from rapid led, plus an hlg veg board, couldn't just toss the ol mars previous grow, currently.
RosettaStoned 400 watt hid light photo tent around 300 plus led. I'm just figuring out what works for me.

[RosettaStoned]

Nice grow! Are you loving the results? I'm told I'll be amazed. Have you thought about doing his Mars to cob diy light? I have one I got for $20 and want to make a veg light out of it. Looks fairly simple if you're kinda handy.

[Jibblerjoe]

RosettaStoned I may once or if it burnsout. It has a few infrared and uv diodes. I'm no expert, but I believe it's helping to control stretch by adding blue to light spectrum.

[DrPhoton]

Its commonly misunderstood that COB is more efficient than its SMD counterpart. This is incorrect however. Because of the concentration of energy from the many individual light emiting diodes, the heat actually works against efficiency. This is because the junction temperature is relative to a diodes efficiency. This is the main reason of how thermal runaway events happen. Think light blow outs. The same radiant flux output (total energy) of a COB chip, spread out over a larger surface area with SMD. Will be more efficient because of the lower concentration of heat and higher dissipation.

[RosettaStoned]

What lights do you prefer to grow with? You obviously have good handle on the lighting for growing, I'd love to hear your opinion on what is best.

[DrPhoton]

Well that depends on how you look at it.

Asuming for all variables that power efficiency and yield is priority.

Cost no object, the most efficient LED you can buy or build. But you are talking about several thousand dollars to buy or produce a product that will be superior to sodium discharge.

When economic value is wanted, sodium discharge wins all. With all other technologies the fixture cost per umol is in the several dollars. Sodium discharge is less than a single dollar per umol.

Even when not looking at the initial costs, sodium discharge is still more effcient and effective than anything else. Except for LED, but you have to pay deeply to get that level of efficiency.

[DrPhoton]

There are places for other technologies such as Ceramic metal halide and fluorescents, but that again depends on your priority.

[gbauto]

For me, 3 plants would need 6-8 sq ft of floor space. For most commercially available fixtures in your price range I'd shoot for at least 30W/sq ft of actual power used. 200W should give you respectable results. I agree with what Dangerdan suggests-HPS is always going to be the most economical option, provided you can manage the added thermal load the lamp will introduce into your grow space. The benefit of leds or any other lighting source should be based on its ability to convert electricity into usable energy that your plants can use to grow. I would take a closer look at either building your own rig-it's very easy to do. Cob's, Quantum ?Boards or light strips give you access to state of the art diodes in a package that makes it so simple an old hippie like me can build it-I'm sure that you can too.. I would also ck out this forum for ideas- www.ledgardener.com

[RosettaStoned]

The cob fixture I'm buying will use less kilowatts, have a wider spectrum where it matters, and will produce 30-40% more photons than my 600 hps. Sounds like my hps loses, but at a higher price.

[DrPhoton]

Ah interesting, i figured as much. If it were not the case they would have just done away with the cree and sold only the veros. Theres no harm in mixing spectrums, both 2700k and 3000 are inbetween a metal halide and high pressure sodium. The white LED's are blue LED's with phosphor coatings to turn some of the blue into other colors and make a white. As such the lower the kelvin and the warmer color it gets, the less efficient the lamp will be. I have not gone over the numbers in a while, but it can add up a lot. Saying that 2700k to 3000k is a good mark. Just make sure thats kelvin and not cct. Im only familiar with kelvin.

[RosettaStoned]

Ok thanks. I'm going to order tonight, the 4x4 cree with extra wide lenses and hopefully 6/6 2700k/3000k. Not sure if you can mix colors on the same driver, do you know by chance? If not then 8/4 2700k/3000k.

[DrPhoton]

The different colors say they have the same forward voltage, which should be fine. But of course ask the supplier.