Looking for the best LED maker out now

jimihendrix1

Well-Known Member
All very fair points. I use this analogy often; light manufacturers are the same as auto manufacturers. . .. are Fords the best? --no, but they probably have a model that you really love for various reasons. And really, a Toyota Camry is "more efficient" than a Porsche but is it better? --depending on your needs, maybe still "yes"
Its hard to believe, but Porsche, has the best reliability record of any high performance auto manufacturer, and is #2 over all. Per JD Powers in 2021 I think it was.
 

Prawn Connery

Well-Known Member
Its hard to believe, but Porsche, has the best reliability record of any high performance auto manufacturer, and is #2 over all. Per JD Powers in 2021 I think it was.
Rolls Royce cars were so reliable at one point, that if you broke down anywhere in the world, they would send a helicopter with a team of mechanics out to fix your car.

You get what you pay for. Sorry, I just said that :bigjoint:
 

Johnny15

Well-Known Member
All very fair points. I use this analogy often; light manufacturers are the same as auto manufacturers. . .. are Fords the best? --no, but they probably have a model that you really love for various reasons. And really, a Toyota Camry is "more efficient" than a Porsche but is it better? --depending on your needs, maybe still "yes"
I agree with your analogy between Fords and Chinese lights.
 

tstick

Well-Known Member
While all true, ANY light even THE WORLD'S BESTEST light will lose efficiency and intensity just over time alone, hell even if it sits in a box unused for 10 yrs it'll be less efficient than when it was brand new (very maginally, but still. it's a thing with electronics, and light intensity specifically). Therefore, even though your LED fixtures of, say 10+ yrs are "working", they may not be providing that level of intensity for precision stress to produce optimal cannabinoids and trichomes.
They might not be working as well as they did when they were brand new, but they still work better than the fluorescent shoplights that preceded them. And, to be honest, there really isn't a light that can produce optimal cannabinoids and trichomes on every strain. Some like more light. Some like less. Some will grow better under a MH bulb and some will do better under LEDs.
 

PopAndSonGrows

Well-Known Member
They might not be working as well as they did when they were brand new, but they still work better than the fluorescent shoplights that preceded them. And, to be honest, there really isn't a light that can produce optimal cannabinoids and trichomes on every strain. Some like more light. Some like less. Some will grow better under a MH bulb and some will do better under LEDs.
Dimmer, bro. You can also use "booster seats" for shorter plants so there are ways to alter the intensity to the canopy, under one fixture
 

tstick

Well-Known Member
Dimmer, bro. You can also use "booster seats" for shorter plants so there are ways to alter the intensity to the canopy, under one fixture
Got it and I have a dimmable light that I'm using at the moment. The point is that there's too much hair-splitting over data points that don't really matter that much unless you just grow the same strains over and over again and can dial in a specific type of lighting for a specific type of strain. That's more of a commercial aspiration and it goes against the way I like to grow -which is from regular seed. And there can be a lot of variation in regular seeds unless they have been really stabilized -and even then there are still variations of phenotypes. So it only goes to reason that a specific type of light can't turn poor growth into good growth on every strain. You just need to supply enough light and then let the genetics and all the other gardening factors take it from there. And there are lots of lighting choices now that supply plenty of light. It wasn't that long ago when there weren't many choices....but people still grew great weed, anyway.
 

PopAndSonGrows

Well-Known Member
Yeah, but it just ANY light worked, we'd all be flowering under T5's. It's LIGHT INTENSITY that provides precision stress, which brings the trichomes and cannabinoids we look for
 

tstick

Well-Known Member
Yeah, but it just ANY light worked, we'd all be flowering under T5's. It's LIGHT INTENSITY that provides precision stress, which brings the trichomes and cannabinoids we look for
Almost any light WILL work....and there are plenty of great growers who flowered under T5s. Members on this site have been posting all kinds of awesome results using all kinds of lights. I grew great weed back in the 70's, too, but not because I had the best lights. It was great because the weed, itself, was great. It was mainly the yields that improved as lights evolved. But, flavors and smells have actually gotten weaker. Certainly THC levels have increased in modern strains, but that never used to matter that much in the older strains. The quality of the weed, itself, was determined by its genetics and by the knowledge and/or luck of the grower. Having said that, I wish I had the equipment and freedom to grow weed back then, when I had jars full of landrace seeds, that I have now. I know lots of us oldsters that can say the same thing, too. But, unfortunately, there was a big period of time when people bred out all those strong flavors by trying to get rid of the stinky strains that made their grows too detectable.

In short, really great weed was around long before there was any kind of precision lighting.
 

RainDan

Well-Known Member
I most definitely do! Realstyles was from the older generation of the led section; afaik know he was the first on riu to get Alibaba cobs from Jerry @ kingbrite and confirmed good performance in comparison to Mouser/digikey cobs which really opened up the DIY game for us. For sure, someone else would have done it if he never had but i really think that a big part of modern ledgrow history was kinda his responsibility as he made white high efficiency light price competitive.
Realz, if your out there; we remember.

Also the video is hilarious.
I do miss Realstyles - if you are out there buddy, I hope you are still smashing Mars lights across the globe........
 

Prawn Connery

Well-Known Member
Nice plants. What level of PPFD do you have at mid plant adjacent to side lights ?
Here's a PAR map showing the spread. The red outlines are the individal LED panels. This is over a 1.2x1.2m tent pulling about 640W from the wall (2x 400W drivers dimmed to 80%). For that particular grow, I ran the drivers a bit lower with an average PPFD of around 900-1000 (compared to 1128 got this PAR map, which you can see along the bottom under "Eav (lx)". The readings are in PPFD, not lux (that's just the default terminalogy used by Dialux).

1696944235946.png
 

sfw1960

Well-Known Member
You should look at the Migro site on youtube. He does some excellent reviews and gives you comparisons between brands. Very educational.
Good, bad, pretty, ugly or just FAIL - he's indifferent about the products and will tell you if his review subject is better than his own offerings.
Honesty is a refreshing thing for many people!:P
 
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