ECO Farm Z6–600 Samsung LM301B LED Grow Light VS Aceple AG-6000 660W LED Grow Light
No matter what you want to grow in your indoor garden, you need the proper equipment.
And LED lights are the most important component.
Today, we will look at the list of the best LED grow lights and check what makes them so good. Plus, you will learn how to find the most suitable option for you and your plants. Let’s dive right in!
Which kind of light is better suited for plants during the flowering stage?
When it comes to the flowering stage, lights that are either red or red-tinted suit the best. These grow lights help boost flower size as well as help you get more yield per square foot. Lights that are towards the bluer end of the spectrum are better suited for plants at an early stage, while these red-spectrum lights are the better choice for those growers who want to add an extra punch to their blooming plants. This is why people prefer buying either additional flower-booster red lights or lights where reds and blues can be controlled manually.
How to prolong the life of your grow light?
Make sure you aren’t overloading them upon each other while daisy chaining — this is a common mistake that many growers tend to make. This can cause circuit issues and can cause the lights to fuse out. Other than that, two big enemies of your grow lights are heat and water. Make sure your lights are running at cool temperatures — and if they tend to heat up, or if you live in a place which has hot temperatures, make sure you’re using an air conditioning unit to keep it cool. Lastly, make sure you keep water as far away from your grow lights as possible to ensure there’s no water-led damage to the electric circuits.
What kind of grow lights should I choose to avoid overheating?
When it comes to avoiding overheating, you need to ensure that you are getting grow lights that do not emit a lot of heat. These lights need to either come with strong fans and powerful heat sinks, or they need to feature a fanless mechanism — but ones that operate at temperatures that do not generate heat. Of late, there are a lot of LED lights coming out which operate at very cool temperatures and do not generate even a little heat. When buying an LED grow light, make sure you’re checking their heat dissipation system really well.
ECO Farm Z6–600 Samsung LM301B LED Grow Light
Features:
This ECO Farm LED grow light works with Samsung LM301B full spectrum white light diodes, 660nm red diodes, IR+UV diodes, independently controlled, with market leading efficiency to 2.9 µmol/J and 2.5g per watt yield, an average increase of 30% PPFD, with an actual power of 600 watts, can cover a 4x4ft planting area. The light intensity can be adjusted according to the needs of the plants. The LEDs are all new technology SMD LEDs, including 1632 SMD LED lamp beads, including 1512 3500K LEDs, 72 660nm red LEDs, 24 OSRAM 730nm LEDs, and 24 SEOUL 395nm LEDs. No fan and no noise, the light box is an all-aluminum radiator, a low-energy growth light with 6 passive cooling strips, an aluminum radiator, with long heat dissipation performance and long service life, and 50% lower electricity bills than HID lights.
Aceple AG-6000 660W LED Grow Light
Features:
Equipped with OSRAM DURIS LEDs, this LED grow light has an actual power consumption of 660 watts instead of the 2000W or 3000W of other virtual standard LED grow lights — this high power grow light can provide plenty of power for all growth stages of plants illumination. This grow light is ETL certified as a whole, which means it is highly compliant with safety standards. With a high energy efficiency of 2.5 umol/J, the PPF output of this plant light is 1650umol/s. Compared to older generation purple (red and blue) LED grow lights or HPS lights, our daylight LED lights are more energy efficient. This 660W fixture is an obvious replacement for a 1000W HPS. This full spectrum of red, white and warm white (660nm, 6000K, 2700K) provides the precise and useful light plants need to grow. When these lights are mixed, the CCT is about 3250K — it’s easy to see the true color of the plants when working under this grow light.
How to Choose the Best LED Grow Lights
LED grow lights mimic the sun’s light spectrum, and are therefore an artificial way to deliver ‘sunlight’ to plants. This can help at all stages in the plant’s lifecycle, from germination, to seedling, to bearing fruit.
Choosing the best LED grow light can be a complicated process — there’s a lot of specialist terminology and know-how tied up in the subject.
The following information will clearly explain the basics, to help you on your way!
Useful Technical Terms
If you’ve already stepped foot into the wonderful world of LED grow lights, you’ll likely have noticed that there are a lot of abbreviations used. These can be complicated to understand at first, but are useful to have an awareness of.
These are the most commonly found abbreviations, along with what they mean and why they’re relevant.
LED vs. HID
You’re probably already familiar with ‘LED’ (light emitting diode) — in simple terms, these are a type of bulb that emit light. Nowadays, these are often very bright and energy efficient. When presented as grow lights, lots of small LEDs are used to make one grow light. The LEDs are different colours, in order to simulate the full spectrum of light when used altogether.
HID stands for ‘high intensity discharge’. This is used as a broad umbrella term for all gas-discharge lights. The most popular of these lights today, especially for use as grow lights, are metal halide (MH) and high pressure sodium (HPS). MH bulbs can be more useful in the vegetative stage of a plant, whilst HPS are better associated with encouraging flowering.
LEDs for grow lights have become more popular in recent years because they can produce the same light potency as HIDs whilst using less energy. Therefore, they are much more economical to run. Some people find the intensity of HIDs more effective for growing; however, the bulbs can get very hot, which is less of a problem with LEDs.
PAR
This abbreviation comes up a lot when looking at grow lights and it may be confusing if you’re unfamiliar with the term. PAR stands for ‘photosynthetically active radiation’; in simple terms this refers to the amount of light that is available to be used for photosynthesis. Different grow lights will produce different levels of PAR. Also, just because the light produces PAR, it doesn’t mean that all of the PAR is produces will be available to the plant. That’s where PPF comes in.
PPF
PPF stands for ‘photon synthetic photon flux’. PPF measures how much usable PAR could arrive at the plant from the grow light. This might be improved by lights that are angled in a certain direction. Sometimes, manufacturers will claim a high PAR rating, but it will only be relevant if the plant is directly under that one small area of LEDs. PAR needs to be distributed across the whole light canopy for it to be effective, which can be better measured by PPF.
The Importance of ‘Full Spectrum’ Lighting
Different lights are more effective at boosting certain stages of a plant’s growing cycle.
Nowadays, most grow lights have the potential to deliver a ‘full spectrum’ of lights, including IR and UV. This means that they can supply plants with light that has the same qualities as sunlight.
Nevertheless, if you want to make sure that your plant is channelling all of its energy into a certain process — for example growth, or flowering — you may wish to “artificially” influence this yourself. This is where different colours and light settings come in.
Different Light Settings
Not all LED grow lamps have the option to use only some of the lights; however, some of them will make it possible to only use certain colours at a time.
Red light is required for growth at the germination stage (as well as later in a plant’s life). It helps roots to grow and seeds to germinate. There are studies to suggest that blue light could actually impede germination.
Blue lights are responsible for assisting plant growth — helping them grow strong stems and leaves. Therefore, these lights are often used for the vegetative growth stage of a plant.
Red light is also used to encourage plants to flower and produce fruit. For this reason, it is useful later on in the plant’s lifecycle as well. At this stage, often a combination of red and blue lights will be used.
For these reasons, it can be useful when a grow light has settings for illuminating only bulbs of a specific colour. If this is the case, the grow light will usually have two settings, a ‘veg’ setting, and a ‘bloom’ setting. These can be used individually, or together.
Power
Whilst it can be tempting just to assess the wattage of a particular grow lamp, it’s actually more important to be aware of its PAR output.
Wattage refers to the amount of power inputted into the lamp to create a specific brightness, whereas PAR (and PPF) will be a more accurate way to assess how effectively the light will help plants grow.
Many LED grow lights will display to ‘wattage’ ratings — the actual numbers of watts that the light will consume, and the number of watts that would be required to achieve the same brightness if using HID bulbs.
Energy Efficiency
LED lights cost less to run than traditional HID bulbs. They also produce less heat so you will not need to use as much energy cooling the lamp or the space as you would with HID lights.
Optimum Light Placement
LED lights can be placed much closer to plants than HID light because they give off less heat. This is a great advantage as it means the lights can be placed closer to the plants and therefore the light can penetrate the canopy of the plants more easily. In addition, it means you don’t need such a tall growing space.
Positioning the LED light the correct distance from your plant wills result in strong healthy crops with no burning or yellowing leaves. When your light is placed too close to the plants you may see bleached or yellow spots on the leaves.
If the LED is too close it can also result in nutrient deficiencies for your plants.
However, it is not always easy to calculate how far away your LED light should be — it’s something that differs depending on the size and power of your lights. It’s best to check the directions that come with your grow light and follow their recommended distances.
However, the following are general distances, to give a broad idea:
For germination: Hang roughly 92–100 cm above plants (for approximately 10 hours/day)
For seedlings: Hang roughly 81–92 cm above plants (for approximately 12 hours/day)
For plants in vegetative stage: Hang roughly 60–80 cm above plants (for approximately 18 hours/day)
For plants in flowering/fruit stage: Hang roughly 45–60 cm above plants (for approximately 12 hours/day)
Conclusion
Trying to find suitable LED grow lights may seem like a challenging task.
But once you figure out what factors really deserve your attention, you will easily narrow down the options and pick what would work for you. Just make sure you get the suitable wattage and light intensity for your plants and tent size. Plus, don’t forget to always check the warranty and what it covers.
