Whats the best led?

J

Joeyo

New Member
Been trying to figure this out forever I find alot of good reviews than a lot of bad reviews on the same lights. What led have you used? How many watts is it? How many plants did you grow? How many grams did you yield? What strain? And what size room? And what was the price of the light?
 
bicit

bicit

Well-Known Member
There is no 'best' led system on the market. They all do something a bit differently based on your setup.

The best emitters for horticulture purposes would be the CREE CXB line and the bridgelux vero line of cobs. Choose a company that makes use of these emitters and you won't be disappointed.

Optic growlights, pacific lighting concepts, and area-51 are the best to choose from right now. However there are a few other companies still in the startup phase.

Don't buy cheap leds from ebay or amazon.
 
sanjuan

sanjuan

Well-Known Member
In addition to the good comments above, I'd say define the grow space and buy/build a light system specifically for it. Include the ceiling height in your decision.

I have a room of Lumigrow lights but I can't recommend them. Grows impressive bud but they pump out considerable heat, especially the older blue series. They do fulfill my mission of fire safety (compared to HID) and the last Pro 325 I bought has the UL hologram sticker. It is worth about half of what growershouse charges, though. I'm fantasizing about retrofitting the old Lumigrows with Cree COBs. The heatsinks are good but the fans fail in Lumigrow.

Edit for today's pic, Shackzilla in front row, Highland Mexican Blueberry in back. The plant in front was taken off life support two days ago. Note: my picture rotation was considered metadata by RIU, I guess.
Mature Sz_2.jpg
 
Last edited:
Sow to Grow

Sow to Grow

Well-Known Member
Those Mexican Blue's look really nice.

sanjuan said:
I have a room of Lumigrow lights but I can't recommend them. Grows impressive bud but they pump out considerable heat, especially the older blue series. They do fulfill my mission of fire safety (compared to HID) and the last Pro 325 I bought has the UL hologram sticker. It is worth about half of what growershouse charges, though. I'm fantasizing about retrofitting the old Lumigrows with Cree COBs. The heatsinks are good but the fans fail in LumiGrow.
View attachment 3490846
Click to expand...
I'm sorry to hear you're not totally happy with the LumiGrow fixtures. While it's true that the older fans on the ES330's have a higher failure rate, most of those are still under warranty and LG is happy to replace broken ones. The fans in the Pro units have been spec'd to be better.

For reference, here are some numbers for heat output.
LumiGrow Pro 325 - 800 BTU's / Gavita Pro 600 - 2600 BTU
LumiGrow Pro 650 - 1600 BTU's / Gavita Pro 1000 - 4000 BTU

I won't make the claim that LumiGrow's are the best LED fixture out there, but I will say that commercial growers love the economics and production of their Pro 650 fixtures. I've got a gallery of LumiGrow grows on imgur if anyone is interested.

 
puffenuff

puffenuff

Well-Known Member
Man those lumigrows are doing work! Thanks for sharing those pics. I've always felt lumigrow put out some of the better products available. Good stuff.
 
Yodaweed

Yodaweed

Well-Known Member
Lumigrow is far from the best LED on market, I would say only way to get top end LEDs in this market is to DIY. All the lights being sold right now have good and new technology but its not top of the line. Here's an example. The new area 51 light is using Vero lighting or CXB3070's but there are better CXB lights out there (3590) and vero's are kinda like the cheapest COB on market that work well but they aren't the best. So only way to truly get the best LED available is to DIY and use high end parts.
 
sanjuan

sanjuan

Well-Known Member
[I should have mentioned the plants in my photo were grown with all dimming pots at 12 o'clock.]

I don't have time to document my experience with Lumigrow thermal mgt. In the past, I have said (elsewhere) that Lumigrow is one of the few brands I can imagine being installed in a commercial greenhouse. The vapo-sleeve bearing fans were replaced by ball bearing units from Mouser.
 
wietefras

wietefras

Well-Known Member
Sow to Grow said:
Those Mexican Blue's look really nice.
For reference, here are some numbers for heat output.
LumiGrow Pro 325 - 800 BTU's / Gavita Pro 600 - 2600 BTU
LumiGrow Pro 650 - 1600 BTU's / Gavita Pro 1000 - 4000 BTU
/QUOTE]Even the best Cree cobs are only slightly more efficient than Gavita Pro HPS. So the heat production won't be that much different per Watt either.
Click to expand...
 
Sow to Grow

Sow to Grow

Well-Known Member
PSUAGRO. said:
that whole "lumipar"shit (credit guod for the catch) gave some of us a bad taste in the mouth though.
Click to expand...
Yea, LumiPAR was bad marketing. It was confusing to people. The concept came out of trying explain why certain light spectrums were more effective at driving plant growth. Credit to all of you for calling BS. If you noticed, after the discussion on this forum the LumiPAR columns were pulled out of the documentation.

Evaluating the effects of different spectrums at the same PPFD is going to take more time and research. Even the horticultural radiation standards committee (ES-311) comprised of scientists and engineers has backed away from weighted PPFD metrics.

It would be •nice• to know the why's, but at the end of the day, it's the accumulation of empirical data from growers that supports the technology.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top