Where can you find reliable & UNBIASED information about LED lighting?

Hi there,
Just set up my grow-room and bought cheapo Chinese LED panels which were about 15-20% the price of expensive brand names like Kind or Advanced Platinum. I am not going to mention specific products here, because the prices vary a lot, but if you have shopped for LED grow-lights you will know what I mean by the price difference between no-name and branded. The reason I went with cheaper versions is because all the claims made about the VERY expensive lights being sold cannot be verified unless you actually buy them, test them (with an expensive PAR meter), grow with them etc. Apart from that you just have to trust what the manufacturers claim and why should we? The cheapo lights make exactly the same claims: balanced & complete PA spectrum with UV and IR; long-life of LEDs; low power consumption etc. They even give you graphs of PAR distribution / area for varying heights and these rival brand claims. Some people say that light intensity is the most important thing and you can buy 5 cheap lights for 1 branded one, so you can replace them many times if they do break.

So my question is, where can you find information comparing these radically differently priced lights? I don't want to hear from people who make money selling them, or have any kind of financial ties to the industry. Maybe nowhere? Maybe only people who have a vested interest put information online which means there is no reliable source of information at all. I have spent a LOT of time looking and found very few trials conducted by anyone who was not selling the products.

A LOT of money is being spent on lights, especially here in Canada where millions of people are about to start growing weed legally. People will always bullshit you to make money - we all know that, so my other question is: are the expensive lights really that much better so they justify the crazy price tags? If so, how did YOU test it? I am not interested in reading any more marketing information, I just want to see unbiased test results.

Thanks for reading another long (sorry) thread.
 
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MichiganMedGrower

Well-Known Member
I have been very slow to upgrade as I am happy with my setup and results but am more than ready to try led.

Seems the most manufacturer related reports of problems are in cheap Chinese Lights. Burned out diodes or while banks of them mostly.

And it costs twice to 3x as much to get a top quality manufactured unit like California light works or black dog.

So it seems that the quantum boards or cobs are the best money spent for the most par at this time.

In my opinion from my research.

I will likely start by trying a QB 135 or 100 in veg or as supplemental in flower.

I like that I can just add more as I go.
 

eyderbuddy

Well-Known Member
I think it'd be best to avoid the whole No names LEDs, and the big-clunky (ridiculously overpriced & underperforming) lights offered by companies such as Black Dog LED and Platinum LED... And just go straight into led strips, cobs or quantum boards.

There are many of guides posted around in this forum that explain step by step how to build them at a fraction of the market price, and even detailed performance charts.

I haven't been in the LED world for about a month now but as of a few weeks ago your best bet would either be:
STRIPS (Samsung Strips, Bridgelux EB series, etc?)
COBs (see: "cobkits", or timbergrowlights, or pacificlightconcepts, or whoever (there are dozens))
Quantum Boards or Similar ( horticulturelightinggroup )
 

meangreengrowinmachine

Well-Known Member
If you REALLY want to learn the hows of LEDs and the start at the very basic. I would go watch growmau5's led basics videos. They are very informative and he shows results GPW break downs and everything, well that is if you tube didn't remove them in their last crack down. Also I think Timber grow lights are awesome! After watching all of the aforementioned videos and looking into DIY that was what I ended up seeing as a no frills BS light that is easy to put together (or can buy it with a simple frame) and not have to worry about shipping from overseas and such. Good luck!
 

blowincherrypie

Well-Known Member
Ill start by saying the cheap LED panels will grow bud. Main issue is in order to get enough usable light they kick off a ton of heat... that leads to the fact that for the price you may as well get an hps/cmh. I use CMH in the colder parts of the year and LED during warmer.

The goal is to get as much light for as little wattage because then there is less heat/energy being wasted.

eyderbuddy pretty much summed it up.. Dont be intimidated about building your own lamp.. Its pretty much plug-n-play at this point. Good luck!
 

coreywebster

Well-Known Member
danmac. Its very frustrating the LED market. There are websites all over the net made to fool you the consumer. Trying to push some amazon light that is either cheap or has all the bells and whistles and cost a whole lot of cash.

The best thing you can do is check out forums like this one and all the others and look at what people are using and look at the results posted. As said above growmau5 has some great vids on building, he used to have some really good vids showing his actual plants growing through all the stages and a weigh in showing the dried results GPW and GPSF, he also had a good HPS LED side by side. But it does look like most of his growing vids have been removed and only his build vids are still up.

There are some good companies in the LED game right now, so its a good time to be interested but there are 100s more shitty companies.

YouTube can be a great resource but be aware its full of people who make a living from been gifted a product to create a positive vibe around that product. So try to look for growers who have a channel that involves showing evidence after evidence of repeated success rather than the guy who is "testing" out this new grow light he got sent. Because anyone can hang a light over some already cracking looking plants every time he want to post a vid update.

Personally I think the way forward is with COBs (not amazon bought) Strips (check out LEDgardener) Or Boards (like Quantum boards or chilLED) . Most of us are using white light these days too, rather than reds,blues and UV ect..

Good luck with the research.
 

GroErr

Well-Known Member
Any light will produce buds. My experience with the cheaper Chinese lights wasn't bad, I still have one that's 4.5 years old running in veg, it's run at 20/4 for years with no issues. Had others that dies out in the 3-4 year old timeframe. But I stopped flowering with them after a few rounds, at normal 30-35w/sq.ft. they produced next to nothing compared to the first upgrade which was CMH. Now I'm running COBs, mainly because I can run a bit more light in the same space with less heat, the quality is great too.

The biggest issue imo is warranty, don't count on any, or at least anything efficient or cost effective. The other is yields because they're not as efficient as the newer techs like COBs or strips. Basically to get any decent yields you have to run them close to the watt/sq.ft. you'd run using hps, which is much cheaper to purchase and more standard for getting parts/bulbs. CMH is a nice in between option, better than hps efficiency wise and can grow some great bud at as low as 25-30w/sq./ft.
 

Rakin

Well-Known Member
Quantum boards. Been using them shortly after they became available and keep adding to them. Other then that either Samsung strips or cobs. But quantum boards kick ass.
 

GBAUTO

Well-Known Member
As others have noted, the main difference in led's are their ability to convert electricity to usable photons for your plants. Older tech mono's used in cheapo chinese blurples don't even match HID's in efficiency so to get the same amount of photons it creates an even larger amount of waste heat in your space. If you are trying to reduce temps in your space it means that you will need to use less of your electricity at creating heat and more on photons of light. Current tech cob's, light strips or boards allow you to do that and offer many solutions to lighting your space. This site has a ton of info on DIY- http://ledgardener.com/diy-guides/
 
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Aolelon

Well-Known Member
Don't go with any of those brands. Start with Cobkits.com Rapidled.com Horticulutregrowlights.com and timbergrowlights.com Go from there.. those are the better choices for LED.. Advanced Platinum is an overpriced light that's not worth it. Same with King. They are just complete ripoffs. I would steer clear of Chinese brand lights to be honest. They tell you one wattage to draw you in, then you find out that they are not that wattage. I am still trying to figure out how nobody has a lawsuit for false advertisement.

like another poster has stated. Ledgardener is a really good website to gather up Information on LED lighting. Its where I got most of my information to start.
 

Aolelon

Well-Known Member
One of the best way is to just look at the numbers your self. There are plenty of diode calculators online for different products. Especially Data sheets. Find out which diode the company is using and find that data sheet. Then compare it with the next companies data sheet. TBH, in my opinion, you are not going to find any unbiased information. As it is a pretty cutthroat industry from what ive seen thus far.
 

eyderbuddy

Well-Known Member
Some people... lol

You ask for better info on LED's... willing to spend $36K on lights

Won't even click on a link to Quantum Board based HLG fixtures or COB Fixtures...
With some of those market LED's most reviews are actually just paid advertisements. Or people setting them up for traffic and amazon referrals, especially the higher ranked ones. That's regardless of their actual performance... Everyone and their mom will say good things about them if it encourages potential customers

Imo, the cheapest and most intelligent LED advice is to go with LED strips... If you know where to source and what to buy, you can literally build and ship ~150 Watt LED STRIP (Bridgelux EB 2ft) based grow light for less than 100.00
 
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