Mars Pro II Epistar 320 and 4x4 Tent Review Journal

Heya everyone, here are two products that I will be using in this journal. I'll be reviewing them throughout the journal and at the end I'll compile a summary of all the relevant information about them and put it in one of the first posts so it can be found a little more easily





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(Edit 22/12/16)
My first impression of this light is wow, it's huge lol

Believe it or not, that's an A4 sheet of paper in the photo


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(Edit 31/03/17)
If anyone is looking for an LED of around 640watts, wants to grow around a pound of great quality bud, but doesn't want to pay a fortune for it, then this light is for you. I have no doubt it would perform better in the MarsHydro 4'x4' tent as it's taller and wider compared to my own 2.5' x 4' tent so you would get a more even spread and fit more plants in.

I was originally concerned about the heat build up because the only thing that is exhausting the tent is a small 4" systemair fan. I'm used to using air cooled HPS lights where they also have their own fans cooling the light before they heat up the tent. But I was very surprised in this case. That little 4" fan had no trouble keeping the tent cool. In fact I have this tent in a small room with another tent which has a 600w HPS and a 150w LED and the temperature in the room did get borderline "too warm". But when I turned the 150w light off, both tents were running at 28°C without any problems. Then when I turned off the HPS light too, the room dropped several degrees and the Mars II Pro Epistar 320 tent dropped so much that I realised that the 4" systemair fan is actually a really good match. The LED has been running 24/0 too and had no temperature problems even when I've had a few warm days recently

Another thing that really surprised me about this light was how quiet it is. It has 4 pc fans, and an older LED that I have has just 2 pc fans and it does throw out some significant volume. So as this light has twice the amount of fans and they are bigger too, I was expecting it to be loud. But it's actually quieter. The fans run extremely smoothly, the fans must be better quality, and I think they spin slower.

The distance between the light and plants was quite big, next time I'll hang it closer. I was expecting the plants to grow taller so i set the light quite high, and then when I could see that the plants were quite stocky and bushy, I just didn't get around to adjusting the height. But I didn't get any problems. I have had some leaf damage in the past with other LEDs being too close so as this one is so high powered I was expecting some degree of damage. But literally none at all. All the way through the leaves have been in good health.

The light runs completely cool to the touch, barely even warm, which is a stark difference from the HPS lights which I'm used to. Bump your arm on to one of those and you will know about it.

I want to balance this summery with some negative points here are two. The price, its a bit more costly than the HPS equivalent, but I'm sure it's still the cheapest 640w LED on the market today. The other thing isn't directly a negative point but it's something I would personally change given the choice. The one thing I would change would be the ability to run just the white diodes on their own, and thats simply for taking photos not for the growing itself. I understand this would come with an extra cost and I suspect most of MarsHydro's customers wouldn't care too much about taking photos. Switching it off and using the flash on my camera works ok too

 

For this grow I have started 6 autos in a compost soil/perlite mix of 70/30 ...

Auto seeds - auto chemdog
Cream of the crop - cash crop auto
Sagarmatha seeds - smurfberry
Short stuff seeds - onyx
Sweet seeds - black cream auto
World of seeds - amnesia auto

 

For the first run I'm doing just a straight up grow, nothing fancy or complicated. Doing autos means we get to see the results in just 10 weeks.

It also means that they will finish around the same time that my 600wHPS & 150w LED grow finishes. This frees up both of my 4' x 2.5' tents and I can do a full side by side comparison between the HPS and LED using clones. That should be an interesting race

I haven't checked exactly how much electricity the 600w HPS actually draws, but I suspect it's probably about 640 watts.
I just checked the Mars Pro II Epistar 320 and when just the veg switch is on, it's using 320 watts (I guess that's where it gets its name)



And when the flower switch is on too, it's using a very convenient 660 watts of electricity



So a great match for the 600w HPS I believe

 

I haven't checked the weight but yeah it's pretty heavy. Looking through the vents I can see a massive aluminium heat sink, so I can see why it is as heavy as it is

Well I'm currently testing it out with a 4" fan as that's all I have. I was planning to buy a 6" fan but this seems to handle it perfectly fine. I'm honestly really surprised how cool this thing runs.

With no lights on in the room, it's usually about 19°C and with my HPS on in one tent and the Epistar 320 on in the other tent, the room is about 22°C. The HPS tent is currently 27°C and the Epistar 320 tent while on veg switch is managing at 25°C. I will try with the flower switch on later to see how high it will climb

The HPS tent has the same 4" exhaust fan, plus an additional 5" fan with its air cooled hood