Why all the arguments over LED vs HPS ?

stnr420

stnr420

Well-Known Member
Lola Grows said:
All the blurple statements, shady comparisons and ongoing arguments.
Is it over money ? Why is HPS being shoved down people's throats who show interest in LED/COB ? What's so wrong with LED????? I see absolutely nothing.
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I personally have nothing against them. My only beef is the price comparison vs hps and comparable yield.a thousand dollar led or a 150 dollar hps...with comparable yield...i dont understand y someone would want to spend that kind of money on a light...but hey to each his own.
 
ANC

ANC

Well-Known Member
At the end of the day what translates to growth on the plants is directly proportional to the amount of useful spectrum light is received.
CMH is equal to the best LEDs in this regard at about 1.7umol.
600WLED x1.7=1020W HPS
 
OldMedUser

OldMedUser

Well-Known Member
If I were just starting off, 20 years younger and had deeper pockets I'd likely get into the whole DIY COB thing. Always liked building shit and still do. I basically got all my ballasts and bulbs for free over the years and have spent about $600 on bulbs in 16 years and $35 on a capacitor last year to fix a 400W HPS a buddy gave me. Most of my grow room and my house is DIY, thrift store or garage sale and if something breaks around here I either fix it or it don't get fixed.

Use it up.
Wear it out.
Make it do.
Or do without.

I'm a hell of a poet too. ;)
 
kratos015

kratos015

Well-Known Member
GroErr said:
I don't push people one way or another nor have any vested interest in any companies. I do like trying tech as it's my hobby and try and push the limits, sometimes it's a fail, sometimes it works out.

I've used some of those older blurple panels (fail for flowering Imo) and still using some I bought 4+ years ago (Top LED which was bought out by Mars) for vegging, they veg well and I like the transition from blurple to flowering lights (CMH or COBs), makes them explode nicely when they hit the flowering lights. They worked for flowering but from a yield stand point you may as well flower with hps, you'll get much better yields. Of course at the cost of managing heat which is certainly doable, many folks have done it for years. It's just tougher to dial in hps and get higher efficiency yields, but it's done by many.

@a mongo frog had a good suggestion on the 315w CMH kits, if you think you can manage some heat those 315w bulbs cover off 3x3' really well, up to 3.5x3.5 ok, but 4x4' you'd be lacking coverage and 2x 315's would be overkill and give you a hard time managing heat. Slightly less heat than hps as. the 315's are very efficient, equivalent to somewhere in the 400-450 hps range, less wattage, less heat. I used that tech for a couple of years before a recent switch to COBs and I'd peg it as the best bulb tech available. Something in the spectrum tends to finish most strains faster as well, most of my strains finished in 7-8 weeks under the 315's.

More recently like the last year or so I converted the room in steps to COBs. Don't have time/space to build myself so bought some Tasty 3590 COB's driven at 1400ma, have 3x 100w, 2x (dimmable) 150w bars, and recently added 1x 200w bar of dimmable Citizen 1212 COBs. Main difference I saw between CMH and COBs was the terpenes and frost jumped another level, once I converted 1/2 the room and saw the yields (about the same watt-for-watt as CMH) and noticed a significant difference in terpenes loudness, I converted the whole room to COBs. Expensive up-front but best quality I've ever grown.

I think the big issue people have with blurples and particularly Chinese companies selling them stems from the way they over-hype/advertise and straight up lie about what the lights can do. Imo they give LED's in general a bad name. They also tend to be behind the curve in the tech they use in the lights which can make a huge difference in yields and quality. An example of that is the Advanced LED's you mentioned. If you look at their specs (which are light on details) you'll notice that their lights with COBs (mixed with 5w or 10w LED diodes) mention they are "CXA" COBs. Because they don't specify CXA-3590, I can almost guarantee they are CXA-3070's which are 2-3 generations behind the current CXB-3590 COBs. I've used and still use some CXA-3070 COBs in my breeding tent which I've had for ~3 years. While they are good, they produce ~25% less than the CXB-3590's I run, and the terpenes/quality while good aren't the same. I would flower with the 315w CMH before using CXA-3070's, only reason I haven't used them in the breeding tent is that tent is 2x2x4' and would end up at 110F throwing the CMH in there.

Which brings me to one last point in my long winded reply. No matter what lighting tech you use, it's an important but not overriding factor in how your yields or quality results. The environment, medium, nutes, water, all have to balance or you won't get the most benefit. In other words, if you're producing .5g/sq.ft. under hps and simply change your lights, don't expect to magically jump to 1.5 gpw, you'll be disappointed with any tech you upgrade to.
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I gotta say man, this was perhaps one of the most helpful and informative posts on this thread as well as LEDs in general that I've come across. Thank you for taking the time to type all of that out.

Before starting my current grow, I put a lot of research into LEDs as I had an impression that they must be at least as good if not better than HPS. However, from what I was able to find it seemed like most of the LED lights on the market are complete garbage and that the best results almost exclusively come with DIY COB grows. The other thing about LED that seemed kind of mediocre to me was the light penetration. Are there LEDs/COBs out that are capable of penetrating the same distance as HIDs?

What you bring up about the terpenes is definitely very interesting though. My thinking on LEDs were that pretty much just a way to put off less heat and save a little on your electric bill but I didn't have a clue about it's relationship with terpenes. Up until hearing about that, it kind of seemed impractical for me to go with LEDs because they cost 3-5x what HID does up front and I wouldn't start seeing savings for a good 2 years or so. I'm in a sealed room right now and due to a limited plant count in my state I have to grow 6 trees instead of 6 plants, trying to get the most out of my current set up. In order for the single plant per light set up to be practical for me though it has to have the penetration power of an HPS.

I've been looking into the CMH and the Gavitas as well and am considering switching to one of those as well. It hasn't been too easy for me to find much information about CMH or LED but I'm seeing a lot of people get insane results with Gavitas. If you or anyone happens to have access to some literature about other lights besides HID then I would love to give them a read. I try to keep an open mind so that I can always improve, but unless I'm sure that the results will be worth the time and/or money I tend to steer clear until I'm able to experiment with said methods myself.

I'm in a shed right now, and my start up costs were fairly limited, so that put LED and Gavitas out of the question for sure for me. But after this first crop I'd like to experiment with switching out one of the HPS for a Gavita or an LED and run the same strain/clones under the two lights and see what happens for myself. I mean I got 4 complete 600w HID set ups for under $400, came with both bulbs, a timer, and even rope hangers. For that price, I could get one COB and probably not even a Gavita. At the time, it of course made sense to go HID to keep start up costs down but if that stops becoming a factor for me I'd like to experiment with something new for sure. I guess I'm just still unsure as to where to start :p

Edit: Just found your journals in your signature, I'm sure I'll find a lot of great info in them seeing as they're all over 100 pages!
 
haze010

haze010

Well-Known Member
stnr420 said:
I personally have nothing against them. My only beef is the price comparison vs hps and comparable yield.a thousand dollar led or a 150 dollar hps...with comparable yield...i dont understand y someone would want to spend that kind of money on a light...but hey to each his own.
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Because a good led doesnt cost $1000. My lighting cost under $250 USD and is equal in performace to 400w of bulb. and ill never have to replace a bulb ever and wont have to deal with heat. Quit exaggerating to bolster your own opinion.
 
TacoMac

TacoMac

Well-Known Member
mr sunshine said:
Just use CFLs...
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If I were going to run florescent, I'd go with T5's. They are, without doubt, the most underrated light in the game. They're cheap, put out low heat and do a fantastic job.

haze010 said:
Because a good led doesnt cost $1000. My lighting cost under $250 USD and is equal in performace to 400w of bulb. and ill never have to replace a bulb ever and wont have to deal with heat. Quit exaggerating to bolster your own opinion.
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And a dimable 600 watt MH/HPS runs 180 dollars bulbs included.
 
cool2burn

cool2burn

Well-Known Member
OldMedUser said:
If I were just starting off, 20 years younger and had deeper pockets I'd likely get into the whole DIY COB thing. Always liked building shit and still do. I basically got all my ballasts and bulbs for free over the years and have spent about $600 on bulbs in 16 years and $35 on a capacitor last year to fix a 400W HPS a buddy gave me. Most of my grow room and my house is DIY, thrift store or garage sale and if something breaks around here I either fix it or it don't get fixed.

Use it up.
Wear it out.
Make it do.
Or do without.

I'm a hell of a poet too. ;)
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Awesome!

My biggest concern about hps is the heat and the energy use. I grow in a stealth cab. it is 20x18x42 inches. I have a generic 300w led in there right now
 
oldtimer54

oldtimer54

Well-Known Member
I've always been a nonconformist.
So when it came time for me to start growing inside It was an easy decision for me to go LED. The dilemma for me was deciding which light to purchase. So I just started reading posts on this fabulous site thinking that it might aid me in some way. But when it was time for me to purchase some lights and after months of research and reading hundreds of posts.... I was really no better off than when I began this journey there were so many to choose from it was somewhat overwhelming.
It really depends on 2 things . How much you want to spend and who's hype you decide to believe. I opted for a cheaper light . I really just wanted to see if I could make a go of it with LED's . I was presently surprised with the outcome from my first endeavor and decided to purchase another of the cheaper lights for my second grow and again I was quite happy with the outcome. One thing I realized during my second attempt was that the cheaper lights don't have the longevity they claim . I started having problems with my first light. I lost a couple of the individual lights and one of my cooling fans wouldn't start when the light came on but I could get it to work with a manual spin. My third purchase was a light of higher quality. I quickly determined that along with the higher price you got a better built piece of equipment. The company had great customer service and a good return policy if you had any problems. Which I didn't pay attention to when I purchased my first lights. So you can make do with the cheaper lights and they might serve you well and produce a good product by my experience has been you get what you pay for. So if you're in this for the long haul I would save my money and buy high quality.....but you can go the cheaper route as well it all depends on you !
By the way my first 2 lights were Blackstar 130's I think. My third light was a CLW 220 .
 
Lola Grows

Lola Grows

Well-Known Member
oldtimer54 said:
I've always been a nonconformist.
So when it came time for me to start growing inside It was an easy decision for me to go LED. The dilemma for me was deciding which light to purchase. So I just started reading posts on this fabulous site thinking that it might aid me in some way. But when it was time for me to purchase some lights and after months of research and reading hundreds of posts.... I was really no better off than when I began this journey there were so many to choose from it was somewhat overwhelming.
It really depends on 2 things . How much you want to spend and who's hype you decide to believe. I opted for a cheaper light . I really just wanted to see if I could make a go of it with LED's . I was presently surprised with the outcome from my first endeavor and decided to purchase another of the cheaper lights for my second grow and again I was quite happy with the outcome. One thing I realized during my second attempt was that the cheaper lights don't have the longevity they claim . I started having problems with my first light. I lost a couple of the individual lights and one of my cooling fans wouldn't start when the light came on but I could get it to work with a manual spin. My third purchase was a light of higher quality. I quickly determined that along with the higher price you got a better built piece of equipment. The company had great customer service and a good return policy if you had any problems. Which I didn't pay attention to when I purchased my first lights. So you can make do with the cheaper lights and they might serve you well and produce a good product by my experience has been you get what you pay for. So if you're in this for the long haul I would save my money and buy high quality.....but you can go the cheaper route as well it all depends on you !
By the way my first 2 lights were Blackstar 130's I think. My third light was a CLW 220 .
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I took the cheaper route the first time and I'm not really pleased with how things are turning out. I've decided to invest in better quality this time around.
 
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