Whenever you have blogs recommending "the best" per se, it digresses into a subjective shooting match as ubiquitous bloggers proffer their opinions disguise as objective facts. The same happens whether the product are pianos, tennis racquets, LED TVs or in this case LED lights. I applaud you monkeychief and Eraserhead on cutting through the hype and bs and shedding some "light" on the subject matter. As a consumer with limited funds and as most blog readers are in the same boat, we are more interested in the affordable and effective LED light where marginal utility balances with marginal cost. Of course Lamborghinis are desirable and quite nice, however a Hyundai Elantra will get you there and back effectively as well. Advancedledlights are fine but are they really worth more than 2 times the cost of similar Eshine LEDs with the same 3 year warranty and the same power draws? I would rather buy 2 EShine LEDS than one Advanced LED and have money left over for nutrients. Advanced LED doesn't talk to anybody and they operate out of a strip shopping rural area in Podunk, Arkansas. I would surmise that there are no botanists, fabrication labs, etc. on site. They in fact started out selling pet furniture on the internet who jump on the LED craze. Who's to says that they don't coop Chinese designs with minor cosmetic changes perhaps like Kind and Growace. One thing's for sure as monkeychief noted, you will be paying much more from any U.S. seller vs. the ubiquitous Chinese panels. In certain cases you may know but in most cases, you certainly have no clue who makes for whom in the nascent LED market and what parts they are using. We are growing weeds right, not rare orchids for crissakes. Just my $0.02.
Thanks E7,
I couldn't have said it better myself as this is precisely why I'm often misunderstood and labeled as a promoter of cheap factory directs. Reality is that not everyone's made of money and is in this for business. I can easily recommend high-quality/price makes and make myself look good but that's not going to do the majority of the people any good since most of the time, generics will always be a much bigger market share vs. brand-name.The reason being is this whole industry is a total rip-off cause they're basing on the finished product's extremely high market value so we growers tend to overlook the costs. Our meds are 1/3 the value of gold that can be produced every 2 months making it the new green gold and they know is therefore; on average we pay bout a 40% premium on canna-specific products.
I tried not to disclose who makes who as a professional courtesy, but this is what I've been talkin bout. There's no need to pay a so-called more cause they're so-called brand-name companies that claim to have their proprietary spec. that they've developed when most of the time it's just one of the 4-15band red spec. that's tried and trued by some real pioneer like Mike and his GLH Spectra's. 6 yrs. ago when there's only a handful of us based companies, Mike's panel was the first one that worked finally had the yield and density that was acceptable. Almost all other brands were still much farther behind in terms of spectral tuning and performance.
Back to the future.. Try these monkey steps that will hopefully help u avoid some bad experiences.
- Try to stay away from companies based in Hong Kong. Reason being that almost if all factories are based in Shenzhen a town within an hour from HK in China where most if not all of our grow lights are made. The ones based in HK are mostly brokers that buy direct from the factory and resell them via alibaba and the likes.
- First and foremost ask them for the actual draw wattage, par at 30/60cm, any secondary lens(nice but if not, ok as long as there's enough wattage). Make sure to take notice of the manner and willingness to provide the requested info. Any hesitant or excuses is a def. red-flag. U will find this on the current 5watters with the exception of A51 because they get it regarding the design and shortcomings of the 5w chip itself.
- Warranty and replacement/repairs of course.
- first time order Paypal if possible or similar merchant services.
- Try to stick to these factories and u should be fine. CT, E-shine. Evergrow, GEHL, and LG(TopLED). Others I can't comment. Please note that some of these are better than others but I rather name a few to be ethical.
Again, we should applaud EH for verifying what I've been saying. This shows his honesty and professionalism that this and many other industry lack that a person would say something on behalf of the customers even realizing it might ultimately hurt his business. As with any product and services, there will always be different levels and budgets, it's up to us to select the best option for our application. I don't get about these brand names patronizing thing. I always thought you're not supposed to be talkin or even remotely referring to your hobbie for security reasons. This is especially true these days when those professional grow jackers might be anywhere and accidentally overhears about the latest panel u just installed. At the end of the day most of the info u need is only a keystroke again but the problem is there's so much bs, biased, or just plain ignorant spin that u have to invest the time to be better informed.
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