ECO Farm ECO-RAY 100W LED Grow Light Bar VS BIOS Icarus LLi 145W Veg Kit

Outdoor plants have access to an abundance of sunlight, essential for their healthy growth. If you’re growing plants indoors, you need to recreate this sunlight, and plants can’t always get everything they need through the filter of a glass window.

It might surprise you to learn that plants benefit from lights of all different wavelengths. White light covers all the bases, but more intense colors can help plants to thrive in the absence of natural light.
To encourage your indoor plants’ growth, it is best to have both red and blue lights shining on them.

Can LED Strips Emit Required Color Spectrum?

Plants rely on the full-color spectrum to thrive when they’re growing indoors. Natural daylight provides this, but your indoor lights will also need a variety of colors.

Plants require blue light to grow, with red light stimulating flower production.

If you do not provide both blue and red light wavelengths, you can expect your indoor plants, not to flower (and some types might not grow at all).

Intense blue light is vital during the early stages of growth to encourage a seedling to develop.

For optimal growth, plants should receive light around 6500K as it is closest to daylight. For budding, flowering, and fruit production, lights around 3000K are required.

Most plant growth lights are full-spectrum lights, with the red and blue lights required to see a plant through every stage of growth.

LED grow light strips can emit the required red and blue light wavelengths. Still, you must make sure that the strip lights you purchase emit the specific wavelengths you need — any white strips should advertise this on the packaging or in the specification if you’re buying online.

If they don’t, avoid as you might waste your money.

Single color strips will typically emit white light with a range of 2200K to 6500K, ideal for all plant growth stages.

You could also choose a dynamic tunable LED strip light, setting it for both high and low wavelengths simultaneously.

Other options include purchasing multiple separate strip lights, some red and some blue, or choosing an RGB strip light and alternating between blue and red settings.

For obvious reasons, the first of these options will be much more convenient than the latter.

ECO Farm ECO-RAY 100W LED Grow Light Bar

Features:

The ECO Farm light strip has a wavelength selection from 420nm to 800nm and has a full spectrum of light. The planting light belt has first-class LED bulbs, providing an excellent indoor farming experience. The 40 inches long and medium length is perfect for side canopy lighting in a 4-foot area. ECO RAY 100 Slim multi-purpose LED plant growth light bar with a 120-degree beam angle can be used for close-up planting, which can minimize the amount of light on the floor and concentrate it only on your plants. Can maximize Your growth rate, thereby achieving a greater harvest and return on investment. In addition, it has a service life of 50,000 cycles, which is great compared to other products on the market.

BIOS Icarus LLi 145W Veg Kit

Features:

The BIOS LED lighting solution features a sleek lightweight design so you can make the most of your growing space. With multiple mounting options including the all-new RapidRack™ system, the LLi grow light ease of use is unmatched. With exceptional output performance, unparalleled light uniformity, and a high-efficiency white light spectrum the LLi was built with the grower in mind. BIOS Icarus LLi LED low profile lighting solution allows you to make the most of your vertical farming square footage. Easy installation, exceptional output performance, and unparalleled light uniformity Seed the way for higher yields and increased profits. The certified power adapter makes this growth light bar durable. In addition, the aluminum body minimizes heat generation; this means less energy use and ultimately reduces bills. The product has a spectrum that can provide a wavelength of 420–800nm.

How to Pick a good Grow Light Strip?

While there are advanced techniques available to identify the quality of the grow light strips, you need expensive meters and time to test fully. Therefore, we will tell you the methods to spot a good grow light strip for yourself. After reading this, you will be able to pick a good-quality LED grow strip light. Make sure to go through this part as it will guide you in choosing from the few of the best lights we have reviewed below.

Let’s look at the desirable attributes of any LED grow light strip.

Solder Joints Check
For the manufacturing of most top-notch LED strips, producers use solder paste, SMT patch process, and reflow soldering; this makes the soldered part smooth and almost undetectable, unlike the lesser quality LED strips in the market. It is important to mention that the welding spot starts from the FPC circuit board and ends at the LED electrode, making an arc shape.

Observe the Label
Over our years of experience, we have found that good quality manufactures will label their strip bags where the low-quality ones will not. I know this sounds like an odd way of judging an electrical component, but trust me, we have found this over and over again.

Is LED Light Belt Surface Clean?
LED light belts, when made through the SMT patch process, don’t have any impurity on their surfaces. However, if the light belt surfaces are made by hand soldering, their surfaces are typically stained with hand imprints; these stains are really difficult to get off.

The point is, whenever you are buying an LED light belt, check its surface; if it’s clean and smooth, it is likely made from the SMP patch process, which is a far better product than hand soldering.

Quality-Check of the FPC
The LED light strips use one of two types of FPC: one is copper plate FPC, and the other, calendared copper FPC. A danger in opting for an LED that uses the copper plate FPC is that you will have to be extra careful while handling the strip; the solder plate will likely fall off if you handle the strip carelessly, and the strip will malfunction.

It is, therefore, better to go for the calendared copper; it is attached strongly to the FPC, and little bending won’t make the solder plate come off.

Package Inspection for Accessories
LED strip connectors and clips are an essential part of top-notch LED strips. Quality products also come with specifications and user manuals. So, keep an eye for the accessories as many fake products don’t have them in their packages.

Conclusion

LED strip lights can be used as your sole growing lights or part of a more complex setup. Their flexibility can be highly beneficial, allowing you more accurate control of your growth lighting position. With a full-color spectrum, you can be confident that plants will get everything they need. To maximize your chances of success, you will want to purchase brighter strip lights. These will cost more but have a higher output in lumens for successful seedling germination.

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