ECO Farm DBL5000 Full Spectrum LED Grow Light 480W VS TotalGrow MH Lumyre 480W LED Grow Light
There is no underestimating the importance of the right LED grow lights to help you produce the juiciest, most potent buds, along with the highest yields possible. When looking for the right lights for your grow, you’ll need to consider your power needs, space requirements, and most importantly, budget.
The market has exploded in the last few years, with the grow light market accounting for $3.05 billion in 2018. This means tons of grow light innovation, more available options, and so much bud. There can be no doubt that the industry is here to stay, so you’ll need the best lights possible in order to get your slice of the pie. So, how do you wade through the ever-expanding and often confusing waters of grow light options?
Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered! We’ve distilled the massive array of available lights down into a concise list to help you choose the best lights for the grower on a budget. We’ll take a look at the best budget-friendly lights and help you decide which one will give you the best bud for your buck.
ECO Farm DBL5000 Full Spectrum LED Grow Light 480W
Features:
This ECO Farm LED Grow Light uses 1296 LED diodes, a high-efficiency driver with a photon efficiency of 2.5 umol/J and an actual power of 480W, providing a sufficient light source for plant growth. Composed of 660nm red light, IR, 3000K and 5000K white spectrum, this LED grow light provides everything plants need in natural sunlight at all stages from vegetables to flowering. LED grow lights can be widely used in home growing (grow boxes and grow tents), climate chambers, commercial growing (horizontal and vertical), greenhouse growing, vertical shelves, hydroponics. All housings are heat sinks that allow heat to escape from the lights. Specially designed for home growers, the fan will make noise when used for a long time, bringing you a fanless and quiet growing experience.
TotalGrow MH Lumyre 480W LED Grow Light
Features:
TotalGrow LED grow lights feature multiple high-intensity light strips in a slim profile and built-in power supply to distribute the ideal light intensity evenly across your growing area to meet your growing goals. Superior, customizable full spectrum supports efficient, high-quality growth of any life stage and crop variety. This plug-and-play solution with direct daisy chaining is easy to implement, has low up-front and ongoing costs, and sustainably produces high-quality crops. The efficacy of this LED grow light is as high as 2.8 μmol/J to meet the light intensity your plants need. Robust, reliable, ideally shaped design for ease of use and excellent uniformity.
What to Consider When Choosing the Best Grow Light
Whether you’re hunting for a grow light to supplement natural light for indoor overwintering of potted patio plants, or you’re looking to start seeds indoors for transplanting to the garden in spring, a grow light can help.
Cool, Warm, and Full-Spectrum
Grow lights are labeled with numbers like 2,500K or 6,500K, which tells you the temperature of the light according to the Kelvin scale of measurement. The higher the number, the cooler the light. So a bulb with a Kelvin rating of 6,000K will have a white or bluish tint, whereas a 3,000K bulb will be yellower. Each type of light — warm or cool — stimulates specific plant behavior.
If your goal is to improve foliar growth in your houseplants or grow leafy greens or seedlings, choose a cooler spectrum bulb around 6,500K. Warm light will have a lower Kelvin rating and is ideal for flower production in houseplants and fruiting plants like citrus. When in doubt, full-spectrum lights take out the guesswork and offer a combination of both cool and warm light for the best of both worlds.
LED vs. Fluorescent Bulbs
Standard fluorescent bulbs are a weak home light source but they’re great for supplementing natural light for houseplants or starting seedlings. Their cooler light makes them one-dimensional, so they’re ideal when lush foliage, not flowers, is the goal. Because their light cannot penetrate plant leaves with strong intensity, the grower must locate the light within a few inches of the top of the plant to be effective.
Full-spectrum compact fluorescent lights (CFL) are a better option. Available in tube and bulb forms, CFL grow lights are more intense than standard fluorescent lights.
LED grow lights, not to be confused with regular LED lights, are more expensive than fluorescent lights but they make up for that with longevity and energy savings. LEDs have both blue and red lights to mimic the full-color spectrum of the sun and might emit a bright, purplish glow. That’s not a big deal if the lights will be in a basement or a garage, but it’s something worth considering if they’ll be in a living area. Like fluorescent bulbs, LEDs are available in tubes for lighting a tray of seedlings or as bulbs when you want to light a specific plant.
Bulb or Stand Setup
The number of plants or seedling trays you want to grow is a good indicator of the kind of grow light best suited to your situation. Although a single bulb is perfect when positioned above a sun-loving succulent during the winter, seedling trays are better suited to a stand system that allows you to raise the light as the seedlings grow taller. So, whether it’s a premade stand with lights attached or one you build from scratch with an inexpensive wire rack and a hanging grow light bar or two, ultimately, your budget will have the final say.
Premade stand setups are pricey and if your seed-starting plans are modest, consider building your own system. However, houseplant enthusiasts might gravitate toward a more aesthetic premade grow light stand better suited to indoor living spaces.
Bells and Whistles
For houseplants, consider a full-spectrum grow light attached to a bendable or gooseneck arm that allows you to position the light directly above the plant. Some are stationary lamps for tabletops, and others have a clamp at the end of the bendable arm so you can attach the light to the edge of a desk or table. Intended for use with one or two houseplants, these lights often come with timers so you can cater to a plant’s specific light needs and a USB connector for plugging into a computer.
For seed starting and flowering houseplants, some full-spectrum grow light panels come with timers as well as remotes that allow you to change the type of light emitted based on the plant’s growth stage — cool light for seed starting, warm light for flower production, and full spectrum when you’re uncertain about the type of light you need.
Mistakes To Avoid Using Grow Lights
If you are new to growing plants indoors, and have most of your equipment checklist covered, it is important to consider a few things before buying your grow lights. Below are some mistakes to avoid and bad habits that you do not want to develop.
1) Low Intensity Lighting:
Indoor plants thrive under intense lighting and will produce the biggest and best looking, smelling, and tasting flowers possible. If you choose to use H.P.S, then avoid using 400w high-pressure sodium lights as these will only yield small-sized buds and stick with 600–1000w.
2) C.F. L’s For 18/6:
When it comes to seedlings and clones that require soft lighting, then compact fluorescent work very well. Once the plants clones and seedlings reach a certain point of maturity, then avoid using C.F.L for anything else than a starting point and switch to H.P.S or L.E.D for flowering.
3) Checking for Lumens
Lumens are a measurement of light that is created as a reference for the human eye. Plants rely on the P.A.R levels which will indicate how much red, blue and white light is present and the spectrums the plants require. The brightness of a growth bulb should not be a way to calculate the efficacy of the grow lights.
Conclusion
For growers seeking a budget-friendly light option or for new growers looking to dip their toe into the indoor growing world, our first choice would be the ECO Farm LED. This light will give you a full-spectrum, powerful yet energy-efficient grow light that won’t break the bank. Its veg and bloom options and long lifespan will give you all you need to grow juicy, resin-packed bud for years to come.
Choosing the right light can be an unnerving experience due to the huge number of available power options, sizes, and prices. Hopefully, we’ve made it easier and less confusing to get you the best bud for your buck
