VIPARSPECTRA Reflector-Series Grow Light
Why do you need the Best Led Grow Lights?
If you are looking for the best LED grow lights, we are glad you came here! Our team has thoroughly hand-tested tons of grow lights on the market for cannabis and other types of plant vegetation.
Our reviewers have been in the marijuana growing business for many years and are qualified to give their expert opinion on helping you find the best LED grow lights. First and foremost, there is so much garbage out on the internet about growing marijuana, cannabis, weed, or other plants.
Everybody is hustling in this industry and just trying to sell you their subpar products or preaching their unqualified opinions. We are here is debunk a lot of myths and offer you material and information that is actually useful to you. Basically, if you are reading reviews where people are barely talking much about details, they are most likely incompetent about this subject.
Best LED Grow Lights Reviews
- Viparspectra Reflector-Series Grow Lights (Economic Option)
- G8 LED Grow Light (Mid-Priced Option)
- Advanced Platinum Series LED Grow Lights (Professional Option)
1. VIPARSPECTRA Reflector-Series Grow Lights (Economic Option)
Viparspectra offers the best led grow lights if you want a well-designed full spectrum of colors and value for your money at every wattage. By using a full spectrum of light, you can adequate energy for your cannabis at all stages of growth. Sure other companies do offer a full spectrum as well, but these companies usually don’t have good designs and direct light to the center, which leads to uneven lighting and subpar yields. With diodes that are balanced and reflect light evenly, the Viparspectra Reflector Series is able to spread out light energy evenly across all wavelengths of light.
Compared to similar lighting sources such as HPS, the reflector series consumes nearly 50% less energy, which in turn saves you a lot of money off of your energy bills. The full spectrum is also getting for other types of plants besides cannabis. The Viparspectra also has a great self-cooling system: it has multiple 4.72 fans built in that include aluminum cooling heat sinks that are great for getting rid of the heat that could potentially kill your plants. Because this cooling system is built in, you end up running nearly 70% cooler than HDS lights and you don’t have to go out there and buy a stand-alone cooling system.
With these led grow lights, no extra ballast is needed and it can be controlled with a timer. These lights also have a long lifespan of up to 100,000 hours, which is more than the average HDS light and also means there’s no need to ever replace your bulbs. These lights start at 300 Watts and go up to 1200 Watts, so pick the size that suits your needs. Bear in mind that most amateur growers only need 300-500 Watts for their plants and vegetation.
2. G8 LED Grow Light (Mid-Priced Option)
If you want the best led grow lights with a great proven track record of success, we advise you to look into the G8LED. We consider these mid-class LED grow lights because their price per watt is not as cheap as Viparspectra but also not as expensive as some of the high-end products. If it means anything to you, it was awarded the best led grow light multiple years by High Times Magazine, which at least says something about the efficacy, performance, and durability of the product.
The premium performance comes in its optimization of the diode ratio that is best fitted for growing cannabis in an indoor setting. Since growing marijuana only requires specific wavelengths of light in the necessary ratios, G8 LED lights have put a lot of research and development into the technology of the lights by observing the conditions needed for plant growth and photosynthesis.
Basically what we are trying to say is G8 LED has spent a lot of time and money on making their yields the highest possible in the industry at every given wattage. With the G8 LED, you can get yields that rival HDS or other HID lights, yet have 70% less off of your energy bill. These are some of the best led grow lights if you are willing to pay a bit more than the Vipaspectra Reflector Series but in turn, get more yield. G8 has watts for all types of growers from basic 240 watts to 900 watts, depending on your needs.
3. Advanced Platinum Series 12-band LED Grow Light (Professional Option)
Advanced Platinum makes the best LED grow lights on the market, as long as you don’t care too much about paying up! Advanced Platinum LED grow lights have the highest PAR (photosynthetic active radiation) per watt on the market. PAR is agreed upon by experts in the industry to do a better job than wattage draw in measuring the intensity levels in the LED grow lights.
Remember that in the end, wattage draws in not the final indication of growing power. The Advanced Platinum has nearly 2-3x the PAR levels of competitors at each wattage level. Not only does Advanced Platinum have its competitors beat at each wattage in terms of the intensity measured in PAR, but also it has a lush full 12-band spectrum with depths of ultraviolet to the heights of infrared.
When you compared the color spectrum to competitors, you will see more bands at every frequency. A complete light spectrum is always better for any kind of plant and vegetation growth. Couple these performance perks with deep penetrating lenses, an improved aluminum cooling system, and high-speed whisper-quiet fans, and you got the ultimate plant-growing machine! What this basically means is a 450W Advanced Platinum has the growing power of a 600W traditional HPS or LED light. Advanced Platinum is so confident in its product that it comes with a 5-year full warranty. It starts with the base model at 150 Watts (but really functions like 250 W) up to 1200W (which functions like 1400W). If you want the best led grow lights and have the money for the initial investment, we highly recommend you get an Advanced Platinum system. It really is the crème of the crop.
Choosing the Best LED Grow Lights – A Buying Guide
There are three main types of lights used to grow weed: fluorescent, high-intensity discharge (HID), and LED grows lights. Fluorescents come in CFL and T5 with T5 being the most common. CFL grow lights can be kept in tiny spaces and close to your cannabis since they are small. T5 grow lights are bigger and wider than CFLs and come in a tray or panel on them.
The advantages of fluorescents are that they are cheap, don’t use too much electricity per sq foot, can be kept close to your plants, and are great for clones, seedlings, and younger plants. The disadvantages of fluorescents are that they generally produce smaller yields per wattage, so they are only really fruitful during the flowering stage. Fluorescent lighting doesn’t penetrate deep into plants so they are generally not good for growing tall plants. Basically, what we are trying to say is fluorescents (CFLs and T5s) are great for small young plants/clones to provide supplemental lighting or to grow them in small tight spaces. If you want higher yields, you’re better off with HID or LED.
Next up for HID Lights, which offer the highest yields for growing cannabis out of all the other lights, but also require the most upfront investment and maintenance. HID lights include metal halide grow lights (MH) which produce blue light, high-pressure sodium grow lights (HPS) which produce a yellow light and offer the highest yields per watt in the flowering stage of any grow lights, and ceramic metal halide (CMH)/light emitting ceramic (LEC) which are more efficient than metal halide lights but less than HPS grow lights.
Because HID lights offer some of the highest yields/watt (0.5g – 1g/ watt), they also have some pitfalls: they run hot and need a cooling system, and they need additional setup, and more parts to install. Having a cooling system is especially important for lights with more than 300 watts of power because the heat can end up destroying your plants. Many people use an exhaust fan with ducts to vent out heat, which can be intimidating for many inexperienced growers.
Finally, you have LED lights, which are a popular alternative to high-pressure sodium grow lights (HPS) and other HID lights. The best LED grow lights run much cooler and many come with built-in cooling systems that push heat away from plants vs beaming heat directly down at that like in HIDs. They are plug-and-play and don’t require much of a setup. They also offer great penetration so you don’t need to move them around as much vs fluorescents. However, with high-wattage LEDs, you still run into the same heat problems and still need a cooling/venting system. There is also a learning curve to LEDs to get the best yields out of your cannabis. You need a lot of air space to use the best LED grow lights since they need to be kept far away from your plants so that you don’t burn them. Although some LEDs can get better yields than HIDs, on average they yield less. They can also be extremely expensive to buy initially.
So LEDs, HIDs (HPS), or fluorescents: which one is the best? Well, it depends on how much you want to initially invest, the ongoing electricity run rate you want to pay, your yield, the amount of work to set up the system, and the amount of maintenance work. With fluorescents, you are looking at the easiest and cheapest setup and electricity run rate (electricity of $20-50 per month depending on your provider and equipment cost of around $500). However, this only yields 1-2 ounces per harvest, which is about once every two months if done correctly. LEDs offer the next highest yields at around two to four ounces per harvest (every two months) but require a bit more electricity per month to run and more initial setup costs.
Finally, HIDs offer the highest yield of two to ten ounces per harvest (every two months) but require electricity bills north of $100/month and an expensive initial setup in the 4-digit range. With that being said, these days growers primarily focus on HPS vs LEDs. The best LED grow lights are gaining lots of popularity these days because offer similar quality buds to HPS and you can get similar yields if you set up your system correctly. LEDs are also cheaper to run because they don’t have the same electricity requirements, last longer, produce minimal heat (so no need to vent), and save space from having smaller units.
References:
hightimes.com/grow/beginners-how-to-grow-just-one-pot-plant-in-your-home/
