Maxibright Daylight 200W PRO LED Grow Light VS Lumatek Attis LED Grow light 200 Watt
If you’ve recently decided to try indoor growing, preparing for success is essential; after all, you want to produce the highest quality yield possible. In order to achieve this, investing in the right tools and equipment is absolutely essential.
While there are several supplies you’ll want to put on your list of things you need, lighting is arguably the most important. After all, every plant, no matter the variety, needs light to grow. Typically, this light will come from the sun; however, if you are growing indoors, you will obviously not be able to get sunlight, which means you will need to invest in artificial grow lights.
While there are several different types of grow lights, today’s growers seem to prefer one type: LEDs.
Advantages of LED Grow Lights
There are many benefits to using LED Grow lights in your indoor grow room or even in a protected outdoor environment like a greenhouse.
Simplicity is Cool
LED grow lights run cooler than MH/HPS HID grow lights, and the bulbs last much longer.
Compared to an HID indoor grow setup that requires a lot of electricity, cooling, and ventilation efforts, LED grow lights can be set up effortlessly in a closet, grow tent, or similar space without renovating it completely.
The beauty of LED grow light technology is that they are as easy as plug & play for most situations. The fans and/or built-in heat sink will keep the grow light at a comfortable operating temperature.
This means that you do not need to spend the money or effort into building a super deluxe indoor grow room in order to grow a healthy plant crop. Just buy a grow light, crack some seeds and get growing.
Low Wattage + High Efficiency
As opposed to HPS and MH lights, LED grow lights run at a much lower wattage while producing more PAR light-per-watt for plants to absorb and grow with.
This high efficiency and low power draw opens up the door for alternative energy sources, such as solar-powered grows. For a few hundred bucks, you can buy a solar panel, deep cycle marine batteries, and an inverter to make your own solar-powered indoor grow room. To do it the cheapest way, you can just run the light during the nighttime and move plants outside to grow with the sun during the day.
A big step up from fluorescent lights, LED lights have enough penetration to stack even the inside of plants dense with fat nuggets. Whether they’re in vegetative or flowering cycle, LED lights can do the whole job well done. The “blurple”, pink, or white glow emanated from these grow lights is strong and bright enough to give you a dizzy feeling. Remember to wear eye protection when operating LED grow lights.
High Yields
Modern LED grow lights of today surpass the earlier models of years ago in the available spectrum, durability, and light strength.
Yields for indoor growers finishing plants under full-spectrum LED lighting average ½ gram per watt among growers in the United States. This is considering the true power draw watt, not the rated equivalent advertised.
The ballpark ½ gram per watt figure takes into account that your grow room will follow the proper space guidelines of the grow light and that the plants will be optimized for growth, e.g., soil, water, nutrients, and care.
Maxibright Daylight 200W PRO LED Grow Light
Features:
The Maxibright LED Grow Light provides the same full spectrum of light in a single energy-efficient and thermally efficient unit. They are perfect for smaller grow spaces/tents of 0.8 x 0.8 meters. This LED light gives your plants all the light they need from seed to harvest. These units feature dimmable light output, so you don’t need to change the light fixtures depending on the growth stage of your plants. It is capable of controlling multiple units via iLink cables or DAYLIGHT lighting controllers. This means you can tailor your lighting needs, including sunrise and sunset settings, specifically to your plant.
Lumatek Attis LED Grow light 200 Watt
Features:
Lumatek full spectrum LED solutions to balance light quality (spectra) with light quantity (intensity and duration) sufficient to provide single-source lighting for the entire grow cycle from vegetative through the flowering period. The Lumatek ATS series is a range of full-spectrum LED grow lights featuring top bin LUM LED LEDs and dimmable Lumatek drivers. This lightweight fixture is available in 300W (1m2 area) and 200W (0.8m2 area) versions and is ideal as sole-source or supplemental grow lighting for the propagation, vegetative, and flowering growth periods of indoor-grown crops.
Factors to consider before buying a grow light
How much does a grow light cost?
The first thing to consider before buying a grow light is how much money you want to spend. With more states coming online with adult-use legalization, homegrowing is becoming more popular and growing technology is getting better and more efficient all the time.
You can find lights for under $100, but they may be low quality and not produce the right spectrum of light, and you can also easily spend as much as $2,000 for a large, state-of-the-art LED.
Consider how often you’ll be growing plants and how long it will take to pay off the initial investment — if you grow once a year, it’ll take a lot longer to pay off an expensive light than if you grow multiple harvests a year.
Aside from the price of the actual light, also take into account utilities — all lights will add to your electricity bill every month, but some more than others. High-intensity discharge lights — known as “HIDs” — may be cheaper to buy but can gobble up electricity, whereas LEDs are more efficient and kinder on your electricity bill but usually more expensive to buy.
Another consideration with cost is that some lights run hotter than others — HIDs, for example — so they may require additional fans or an AC unit to cool down a grow space. Extra equipment means more electricity, also driving up your utility bill.
How many grow lights do I need to grow plants?
The typical homegrower will only need one or two lights. Most states limit grow amounts to 6 or 12 plants, and one or two lights should be plenty for that. If you plan on running two separate rooms, one for vegetative plants and one for flowering plants, you’ll need two lights.
How big a light you need will depend on the number of plants you plan on growing, but also on the size of your space. If you’re growing in a closet or a small grow tent, you’ll only be able to fit one small light in there. If you have a wide open basement, you could invest in a bigger light as opposed to two smaller ones.
Power equals poundage, so if you want big yields you’ll need more wattage. Professional LEDs can start at as little as 200 watts, and go up from there. A high-watt light can double the work of several low-watt bulbs.
Other considerations when choosing a LED grow light
Ventilation
Ventilation is also a concern. If you’re growing in a tight space with a light that runs hot, you’ll need to have fans in there, which also take up space. If there’s not enough room for a light and a fan, you may need to invest in a light that doesn’t run as hot, such as an LED. For example, grow tents are usually built tall to allow room for equipment up top, not to grow plants all the way to the ceiling.
Plant stage
Young and mature plants, or vegetative and flowering plants, respectively, like different types of light, and you can buy grow lights that target each spectrum. Commonly, growers using HIDs will use MH bulbs for vegetative plants and HPS bulbs for flowering. Some LEDs are also designed to target different light spectra.
Safety
Make sure you have enough outlets and power available in your breaker board for your grow space to comfortably accommodate all equipment. Figure out all pieces of equipment, such as lights, fans, possibly an AC or dehumidifier, and calculate how much power they’ll require. You’ll be running this equipment every day for months, so if you don’t have enough power it can be dangerous. Never overload an electrical outlet.
Conclusion
Overall, when deciding on the right lights, growers need to establish their key objectives. For those who want greater environmental control or need to introduce new spectra and light intensities to optimize plant attributes like morphology, overall yield, LED grow lights should be the first option.
That said, cost is often top of mind for growers and HIDs can sometimes win out here. Just remember to factor in all long-term expenses including the upfront price, utility fees, and replacement costs when calculating expenditures.
