LED light options - Advice/recommendations

HighlanderRecluse

HighlanderRecluse

420 Member
Hi folks

I'm just about to start my fist grow and looking to buy a LED light

I have a tent 1.2m by 1.2m and 2m in height

I live in the UK so some brands are a little tricky to get it seems here - mostly USA ones

My thoughts from looking online are between

Black Dog LED 100 watt £300
Omega Luna 630 watt £400
Mars hydro sp150 watts for about £100 each (maybe two/three of these?)
Mars Hydro FC 3000 also looks decent and good price

The black dog LEDs seem to get good reviews - website says 340 grams from one 100watt light not sure how accurate that number will be

I have found a site with the Omega Luna 630 watt led in the sale for £400 which seems decent price too

Any thoughts appreciated, or personal reviews from using any of these lights

Cheers
 
HighlanderRecluse said:
Hi folks

I'm just about to start my fist grow and looking to buy a LED light

I have a tent 1.2m by 1.2m and 2m in height

I live in the UK so some brands are a little tricky to get it seems here - mostly USA ones

My thoughts from looking online are between

Black Dog LED 100 watt £300
Omega Luna 630 watt £400
Mars hydro sp150 watts for about £100 each (maybe two/three of these?)
Mars Hydro FC 3000 also looks decent and good price

The black dog LEDs seem to get good reviews - website says 340 grams from one 100watt light not sure how accurate that number will be

I have found a site with the Omega Luna 630 watt led in the sale for £400 which seems decent price too

Any thoughts appreciated, or personal reviews from using any of these lights

Cheers
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U can shop eBay get.good.lights a lot cheaper than those name brands there just as good I seen 5000/watt for.18$+tax
 
the 340 gram yield guesstimate is perhaps quite optomistic and accomplished by a skilled grower

in USA black dog are the cheapies sold in Home Depot, however Mars has good reputation and is a site sponsor of 420 Magazine plus there are other led vendors representing as sponsors here too

hyperlinks show up as green text so click on that
 
HighlanderRecluse said:
Hi folks

I'm just about to start my fist grow and looking to buy a LED light

I have a tent 1.2m by 1.2m and 2m in height

I live in the UK so some brands are a little tricky to get it seems here - mostly USA ones

My thoughts from looking online are between

Black Dog LED 100 watt £300
Omega Luna 630 watt £400
Mars hydro sp150 watts for about £100 each (maybe two/three of these?)
Mars Hydro FC 3000 also looks decent and good price

The black dog LEDs seem to get good reviews - website says 340 grams from one 100watt light not sure how accurate that number will be

I have found a site with the Omega Luna 630 watt led in the sale for £400 which seems decent price too

Any thoughts appreciated, or personal reviews from using any of these lights

Cheers
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My advise is...lights and genetics are the most important part of a grow...don't go cheap on either.
 
the 340 gram yield guesstimate is perhaps quite optomistic and accomplished by a skilled grower
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in USA black dog are the cheapies sold in Home Depot
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Home Depot sounds amazing, yeah the yield estimate from the black dog seemed pretty high :)
U can shop eBay
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I'm watching a couple mars hydro ones that end soon on ebay think I'll pick up a FC3000 or the E version
genetics
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I have some Anesia seeds - Black Berry moonrock seeds im about to start, the description seems beginner friendly / good resistences and flowering time isnt too long, hopefully all will go well. High THC should help with a good nights sleep :) Bought some Durch Passion seeds too last night noticed they had a sale on, Auto Lemon Kix

Cheers:thumb:
 
HighlanderRecluse said:
Home Depot sounds amazing, yeah the yield estimate from the black dog seemed pretty high :)

I'm watching a couple mars hydro ones that end soon on ebay think I'll pick up a FC3000 or the E version

I have some Anesia seeds - Black Berry moonrock seeds im about to start, the description seems beginner friendly / good resistences and flowering time isnt too long, hopefully all will go well. High THC should help with a good nights sleep :) Bought some Durch Passion seeds too last night noticed they had a sale on, Auto Lemon Kix

Cheers:thumb:
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Dutch.passion got.good.genetics too I love there reg FEMS .
 
HighlanderRecluse said:
Hi folks

I'm just about to start my fist grow and looking to buy a LED light

I have a tent 1.2m by 1.2m and 2m in height

I live in the UK so some brands are a little tricky to get it seems here - mostly USA ones

My thoughts from looking online are between

Black Dog LED 100 watt £300
Omega Luna 630 watt £400
Mars hydro sp150 watts for about £100 each (maybe two/three of these?)
Mars Hydro FC 3000 also looks decent and good price

The black dog LEDs seem to get good reviews - website says 340 grams from one 100watt light not sure how accurate that number will be

I have found a site with the Omega Luna 630 watt led in the sale for £400 which seems decent price too

Any thoughts appreciated, or personal reviews from using any of these lights

Cheers
Click to expand...
@Mars Hydro make a very good plus they are daisy chainable + have a 5yr. Warranty. Many successful grower’s are using them.
 
Given those options, I'd go with the Mars FCE-4800. That model not on this list but I put it there for a few reasons.

I ruled out Black Dog straight off. The "fans in box" design? I'll refer to that as a "legacy" design. That design was needed when blurples roamed the earth but that age is long gone. Let's call COBs "modern" and bar lights "contemporary" (those are the best I could come up with at short notice).

The legacy design - lights in a box with fans which is assumedly due to low efficiency and you can't dismount the driver. Light measurements are vague (no hang heights) and in place of a PPFD map or third party light measurements they have a table of coverages. This is the only place I've ever seen data in that format and once is enough. Lots of hype in the write up. I don't recall any other manufacturer making a claim for yield the way they do. There's nothing about this light that stands out to me as good design or good light output.

Omega Luna - modern design, dismountable driver, good spectrum, high efficiency. But a no go unless there's a PPFD map.

Mars SP 150 - not a contender. I'm fine with Mars products (I own an SP 3000) but the SP 150 isn't in contention because of poor light output and strange spectrum. I've never understood its appeal - perhaps as a fill light?

Mars FC 3000 - the runt of the litter in their "commercial" bar lights. PPFD map is notably weaker than one step up and it's only slated to fit a 3' x 3'. Light values fall off pretty quickly, so you're not going to be able to light a 4' x 4' grow area all that well. The FC line uses Samsung diodes which is a price driver whereas the FCE line is less expensive, one reason being they use Bridgelux (I assume less expensive).

The FC models have higher output and better uniformity but the FCE 4800 will still get you a lot of light (more than most growers dare to use) and pretty even coverage to all but within 6' of the edge of the tent. No question, the FCE 4800 is a significant price jump from the FC 3000 but FC 3000 just isn't up to the task of lighting a 4' x 4' tent no matter how cheap it is.
 
Thanks for the replies and info :thumb:

Yeah I was a little curious about the black dog ones or the California light works solar system type ones etc with the big fans build on board. I had a small "blpurple" light a good few years ago now ago for my normal garden plants and reminded me of that.

I will have a look at those recomendations, the FC 4800 is diffinately a consideration

I have a small light similar looking light to the HLG ones - a propagation light I use for my normal plants/herbs by Omega g-line i think its called which I'm going to use to start off.

Its quite bright and seems to do a good job and happy enough with it for a small light, really light weight too which i like --- my only issue is the covering they use for the leds, it has a very slight stickiness to it which makes any hairs stick to it and hard to clean without damaging the soft led covering, are the HLG ones like this do you know?
 
HighlanderRecluse said:
Thanks for the replies and info :thumb:

Yeah I was a little curious about the black dog ones or the California light works solar system type ones etc with the big fans build on board. I had a small "blpurple" light a good few years ago now ago for my normal garden plants and reminded me of that.

I will have a look at those recomendations, the FC 4800 is diffinately a consideration

I have a small light similar looking light to the HLG ones - a propagation light I use for my normal plants/herbs by Omega g-line i think its called which I'm going to use to start off.

Its quite bright and seems to do a good job and happy enough with it for a small light, really light weight too which i like --- my only issue is the covering they use for the leds, it has a very slight stickiness to it which makes any hairs stick to it and hard to clean without damaging the soft led covering, are the HLG ones like this do you know?
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BlackDog is interesting to me as in "What's their market?" I just don't get it…

If the FC 4800 fits your budget, it's definitely worth considering. Check the FC vs the FCE - for the extra $$ you get more light at lower hang heights and that pays dividends if you want to raise the hang height to get a more uniform light cast. The FC, putting out a not-insignificant number of photons will allow you run it higher and therefore get a more uniform spread.

Personally, I'm a high light guy. I drank deeply of the Bugbee Koolaid. I ran the last couple of months of my last grow very close to 900µmols and am glad that I did.

"are the HLG ones like this do you know?" - no practical knowledge of HLG. I'm familiar with the PPFD maps and have created the table below.

There's long been discussion about what tools to uses to measure PPFD of grow lights. A PAR meter measures the PPFD very accurately, in most cases. The top end products are pretty pricey but they're the standard to which other equipment is compared. Some growers use a smart phone app called Photone while other growers use a lux meter and use a conversion factor.

When I started growing ( 3/21) I tested the predecessor to Photone and found it wanting so I put the money into an Apogee and looked askance at using a light meter. Some of that was, I'm sure to some extent, self-reassurance but it was also ignorance. That drastically changed when ran the numbers in the table below. I do like to have accurate data for my grow but I realize that I don't need highly accurate measurements - set things up even pretty well and cannabis grows like all get out.

When I saw just how close you could get with a lux meter, I'm not going to get rid of my Apogee but, in terms of value, a light meter + a conversion factor beats the Apogee by a mile and gets you more than close enough.

Just my tuppence…

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Hayron1088 said:
I have the FC-E4800 and I absolutely love it. Dimmable, the light bars are movable, power supply is removable. I’ve had absolutely amazing yields. For the price and warranty you can’t beat it.
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@Mars Hydro make great light’s.
 
Phytoplankton said:
Given your location, and availability of product I’m gonna throw in with the fc4800 crowd, might need a slightly bigger fan for the heat.
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Even at 100%, in a 4x4 the heat is easily manageable. Providing that @HighlanderRecluse has ample inline fan/airflow. I use a digital controller from AC and it manages it extremely well even on hot days 85f and above. I also have @Maxsisun lights which I’ve had for three years now and they have been consistently on for 18 hours a day since I purchased them. I remember going crazy buying a light back in the day! Drawing comparison charts on paper, 500 bookmarks in my phone, etc. Migro would probably be my first choice based on your location though. Shane’s lights kill the game and he has the science to back it and puts it up for all to see with dozens of other lights for comparison.
 
Lots of good options out there it seems, hopefully get one sorted out this week

In terms of wattage for a 1.2m by 1.2m tent would 400watt to about 600watt be what im idealy looking for?

Noticed a Blackdog phytomax2 600 for £250 (think these go for over a thousand euro) but its a heavy beast 14kg not sure if my budget tent could handle the weight, and not sure about the noise from the on board fans but tempting :D
but from what your saying they are not that great so think I'll have to give it a pass

I was originally considering a CDM 315 watt type light fixture after reading up on those a couple weeks ago they seem to get good reviews.
 
HighlanderRecluse said:
Lots of good options out there it seems, hopefully get one sorted out this week

In terms of wattage for a 1.2m by 1.2m tent would 400watt to about 600watt be what im idealy looking for?

Noticed a Blackdog phytomax2 600 for £250 (think these go for over a thousand euro) but its a heavy beast 14kg not sure if my budget tent could handle the weight, and not sure about the noise from the on board fans but tempting :D
but from what your saying they are not that great so think I'll have to give it a pass

I was originally considering a CDM 315 watt type light fixture after reading up on those a couple weeks ago they seem to get good reviews.
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Vivasun makes a good led panel u may like 1000watt for 69$/ issnt bad st all.
 
HighlanderRecluse said:
In terms of wattage for a 1.2m by 1.2m tent
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Wattage is a misleading term. That is how much you draw from the powerpoint and different lights have different efficiencies. Some LED manufacturers even use the HPS equivalent wattage, i.e. they name their products '1000W' when they only pull 100 or so watts from the wall.

You will need to look at each manufacturers PAR/PPFD charts to see what their lights are capable of.
Shane has done an analysis of some of the leading brands here for a 1.2 x 1.2

HighlanderRecluse said:
Noticed a Blackdog phytomax2 but its a heavy beast 14kg
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These days most of us are using modern lightweight LED's, some with drivers you can place outside the tent to keep the heat in the tent down.

j
 
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