Lighting PPFD/watt Grow Light buying reference

[GreenMonkeyGrows]

@MesaBoogie thank you so much for this! Now getting a light I never even knew about because of this list. Cheers!

 

[NorthernLights_420]

@MesaBoogie thank you so much for this! Now getting a light I never even knew about because of this list. Cheers!

Check out post number 20. The last post on page 2. Found a great article from Migro today about purchasing lights also. And I agree. Thanks for posting this for sure. I didnt know any better either until now.

 

[elcoloan]

https://www.migrolight.com/whats-the-best-value-grow-light/ found a great article from Migro today.

 

[MesaBoogie]

did he just jack my list that I jacked from his testing lol !

 

[Death The Cultivator]

Lol! I just commented on that article on his site. Nothing against the list but I felt it was a bit incomplete considering different binning of diodes, spectrum, and waterproofing. $/w doesn't reflect the whole picture but that's just me

 

[Olderfart]

Ok, here is another way of looking at the data, especially for any home grower who is thinking about upgrading to a light with better specs than the light they already have.

On electricity costs only, the best 3 year bill is $1091, the worst $804, for a potential saving of $187/m2 over 3 years. During that 3 years I figure most growers can fit in 4 or more auto grows per year netting roughly 1200g/m2/year, for a total of roughly 3600g/m2 of bud over the three years. Many growers on here can do better than that. Savings per gram in this example would be only about $0.05 per gram.

Methinks it makes sense to ask whether a fancier light is actually justified to save 5 cents a gram in growing costs.

The same sort of arithmetic can also clarify comparison between lights. Again, the actual savings involved when comparing PPFD/watt do not add up to a lot for most of us home growers. Paying attention to a company's service reputation and other aspects of light design may be more important than focusing too exclusively on efficiency.

Just my two cents of course. Happy light shopping peeps.

 

[Filthy_Casual]

https://www.migrolight.com/whats-the-best-value-grow-light/ found a great article from Migro today.

His articles are IMO sort of misleading. If you look at those charts, lights that I know are not good quality and have bad warranties are above much better lights.

If mars hydro was really top 5 and 1/3 of the cost, why wouldn't all the big commercial guys use them and save millions? I'm sorry but they aren't the same quality as some of these other lights, and they shouldn't be considered in the top spaces.

Id love to be refuted with facts as I am not a professional, it just doesn't add up in my head.

 

[elcoloan]

Had not seen these comparisons from the begining of this year:

 

[MesaBoogie]

Looking over the last years worth of lighting it's become pretty clear it's more about samsung diodes than any particular led lighting company itself. I don't think we will be seeing any new real innovations or improvements for the time being from any company other than tweaking and maximizing of the existing tech. I started this thread because of all the fighting over what light is better than what other lighting and at what cost. So it's pretty clear that that the samsung for the most part came out to be the king. What I'm seeing now on places like amazon is a lot of deceptive marketing with the Samsung name. Samsung makes a lot of different diodes and you are going to want to make yourself familiar with them before you buy any light. If they only list the product as Samsung diodes and don't specify exactly what one, this should set up a red flag for you and move on. Popular ones are the LM301-B and the LM301-H. You don't have to buy these ones specifically but it should be a could starting point for you to be able to do your own research and make comparisons between diodes and settle on a light in your price range.