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Difference between led lights

D

Deriksson

New member
Can someone please explain to me like I'm 5 the difference between a 60$ish led grown light from Amazon that says 1000w and a for example Mars Hydro 100w for 5 times the price or other expensive lights?
I get it that the components are better but for actual growing of like 4 plants in a tent. I grow only for myself
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​​​​Thanks
 
You need high wattage to grow fatter buds per square foot.
when stores list it as a 1000watt in reality it only probably has 100 actual wattage from the wall. So watch what light you maybe buying.
 
Deriksson, yes. Focus on the wattage from the wall. Your light is the biggest investment and most critical piece of equipment. Lots of opinions on here about grow lights. Lots of good quality lights available out there as well. I like HLG LED's. I started off with an HLG V2 100 in a 2.5x2x6 tent. It was $150 at the time. Grew great weed in that tent. There's some good information about lights on the GWE web site. You'll want a light sized right for your grow space. It's easy to go down a rabbit hole chasing light numbers. For me, it was easier to focus on a few things, efficiency (wattage from the wall), intensity (how far down into the canopy can the light go), spectrum (is it the right kind and color of light for cannabis), and footprint (does the light fit your space).
 
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Until recently (as in the last 2-3yrs) HPS lights were the undisputed king for growing indoors. Due to this LED manufactures always compared their lights to a HPS. The cheap lights on Amazon in the description will say for example that’s it only uses 100 watts but is compared to a 400 watt HPS which is BS. The better brands used to do the same and although closer in comparison they still didn’t match a HPS of the same wattage much less surpass a HPS.

Only judge a lights power by how many watts it actually uses. Most of the top brand LED’s don’t even compare to a HPS anymore like they used to. A full spectrum LED will serve you better than the burple type as well.
 
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You don’t have to go expensive, especially in a 3x3. Mars hydro and HLG have some reasonable priced lights for that size tent. Goto the GWE main page and search lights, it’ll pull several articles with GWE recommendations for your setup. You should be able to get a good starter light for under $400 unless the prices have went way up with Covid

Personally I recommend a ES180 for that tent. Its generally $420 but it’s been on sale lately. I’ve been growing under Electric Sky’s for almost 3yrs now. Nebula has been using them lately, every time she does a compare grow with another brand the ES wins.
 
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Thing is im pretty limited in which grow lights to choose from, to get the es180 shipped to my country from any site I'll have to pay twice what the light costs. Only real option is mars hydro since a site here carries there brand.

How about the Mars Hydro TSW-2000 QB, it's about 450$
 
I’ve never used that light but Mars Hydro is good brand and coverage should be wall to wall in a 3x3. I have a 150w mars hydro I throw in the center of my 5x3 on occasion and it’s bright AF
 
Deriksson Bottom line being you get what you pay for. Stick with a name brand and you should be ok. And, who knows a couple of months from now when you're knee deep in bud and being the generous fella you are maybe a couple of your mates may toss a few quid your way to help out with the overhead. Just remember the golden rule of growing your own---- NO sell, no tell, no smell, = No cell. Peace out !
 
Just my opinion from some direct totally subjective trials . i switched to leds awhile ago from HID due to cooling. first tried some blurples which worked OK, but didnt give very much penetration so buds were in general limited to the top of canopy and I wasnt getting the same production as HID. Borrowing from firends has allowed me some free trials. At the end, I Have found that Mars-Hydro produce very nice overall at great price point, and now have one small 3 by 3 tent with a TS3000 in it, but not yet a full grow - which was crapped due to spider mite infestation - but was growing incredibly well with long colas till killed em. Also Spider farmer - and now the other tent (2 by 4) has 3 of spider farmer SF1000s and they did a great job with tight, quite long buds, high production and nice shiny results - loved em. Previously, I also had decent results with budget Best VA 600 Watts reflector series that I bought, but think the SF and MH are superior. That being said, I am keeping the best VA's which are going to a clone/ vegetation tent) and as backup. I dont think you can go wrong with any of the well rated brand names these days except for penetration=intensity (PAR- for growing). I am personally now a believer in spider farmer and mars hydro to get bang for your buck as long as not really tall grow set-ups. I believe i saw good ratings on them from Nebula at some time. but- for the price the BEST VA's would be nice for short tents. havent tried too many other non-blurples but I am happy now. Cheers.
 
Exactly why i keep my old vipars they work well for vegging do fine for flowering but these newer Qboards are the bomb for flowering and penetration deep down to the soil.
 
Welcome, Dericksson.
I've been growing indoors for about 6 years now. I started with a trio of Mars blurple fixtures and grew some decent flower.
Temp control is an issue for me so using HID lighting wasn't an option, so I looked at better(more efficient) leds.
Buying a top-tier fixture wasn't in the budget, so I built my own lights with a lot of info from https://ledgardener.com/
Mars and quite a few other economy brands have begun to use better diodes and drivers in their fixtures, so the efficiency gap between them and top-tier fixtures isn't that much.
As far as a suggestion for what you need, I would work 'backwards'.
Most of the plants I grow will occupy a 2'x2' footprint, so 4 would need a 4x4 space. That is approximately 1.5 sq meters. Cannabis grown in ambient co2 levels flower best when subjected to no more than 750 umoles ppfd(this is the scientific description of how 'much' light is radiated over that area), so you would need a light that can generate 1125 umole ppf(750x 1.5 sq m).
1125 umoles is the total amount of light the fixture will need to output, if you can find info on the fixture that specs ppf output in umoles that will help.
Mars TS3000 would be a closer fit for the needs in a 4x4. It outputs 1151 umoles ppf, so it would do the job. The 2000 only outputs around 700 umoles ppf.
Most of the diodes used in the economy brands will operate at 2.0-2.2 umole/watt, so as a minimum I would be looking for at least 500-600 watts from the wall.
I use a 480w 3500k QB fixture that uses top-tier lm301b diodes in my 4x4 pheno tent and it struggles to provide enough intensity on the corners without overloading the center.
If this was my main grow, I would suggest 600 watts of really good diodes using a bar-style array to enhance even lighting.
 
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