my opinion i actually would perfer Hid if i had a big grow set but if i had something smaller Leds are a go to Comment what you feel is better
I suppose it would depend on what you were using the lights for. The HID spectrum has a place within the flower cycle because it picks up the violets and blues you don't get in the HPS lamps. But with HID and it's wonderful strength, also comes massive heat. If heat is a concern...and temps play a HUGE part in the health and rate of growth of the plant, then I would go with the LED lamp. LEDs burn hotter to plants than other forms of lighting, but are cooler overall in the heat they emit. However, to get anything of real quality in the LED lighting today, you have to be prepared to lay down some serious money. LEDs are also very small bodied lights for the most part and have a very limited coverage area. For every plant you flower, light and plant as close as possible is how to get the fatter, more dense buds and get better bud development down inside the plant. If you have to raise a light just to cover more plants, you're robbing from all the plants. You'll always harvest more from a single plant that is tended properly and gets the ultimate conditions/environment and the highest wattage/proper spectrum lighting you can hang over it, than you will by flowering 3 in the same space. During flower, each plant needs space to spread so light can penetrate the canopy of the plant and develop out even the buds down inside the plant. No light is going to penetrate more than 18-24" deep in a plant, so the further away your light is, the less effect the plant gets from it. How many plants you can flower successfully and get a real harvest from depends on the available flower lighting you have...not the space you have to stuff full of plants. There is some new lighting on the market that is priced more in the line of the HPS but does the work of the high dollar LEDs because it combines both the HID and the HPS together in one lamp. The overall heat emissions are less and you get more good out of a lesser wattage bulb. Seriously considering to switching over myself. I believe it's caled CMh lighting....not sure on that one. I have a pamphlet I've been reading, but don't have it in front of me right now. My guy at the grow store said the LED makers were going nuts over it because they can't produce something as effective for that price. The god thing is that the technology in the indoor grow world is advancing at an incredible pace, so prices on some of this uber good equipment should begin to come down in the near future....at least we hope. TWW
HID: MH for veg, HPS for flower. If thinking LED then think COB instead. HID wins the cost vs product produced argument.
I'd disagree, you spent extra on venting, extra on electricity and with prices of led panels these days it's a no brainer, plus the fact that if you don't run an aircon in a lot of places you'll heat stress ya plant and yield stuff all. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Hid 600w ballast is around £100-120 a decent reflector is about £50-100 depending on quality the 600w bulbs are £30 each for a standard one. Bigger extraction fan needed. Bigger carbon filter an so on. Costs mount up quickly under hid an thsts not to mention the electricity bill..I use both hid and led. And im at a point where im in tramsition to full led rig. The futures bright the futures led
Are you saying that LED does not get hot? because they have heavy heat sinks and fans on the back of them for a reason. Are you saying that you dont have to have them further away from the canopy than a HPS..you know due to them having more intensity and bleaching the plants? Define " extra venting"? If you can afford and can run AC then no matter what light you use you should. It allows you to run Co2 in a sealed room. (which more than pays for the AC) Yes..heat stress is bad..no mater what light you use... Lets ignore HID for a second. Why would you go LED over COB?
Because led is much cheaper AT THE MOMENT, than cob. And the cool thing is, I don't have to pay for a reflector, led come with them, I don't have to pay for a driver, led come with them, I don't have to pay for "cool tube" ducting, case and fans, led come with them, essentially what I'm saying is, there's a reason commercial indoor growers (actual companies) hardly use hid unless they have solar panels. And most decent leds are dimmable so you can have them as close as you want, I finished flower with mine around 8 inches from the tops, no bleaching, no heat stress. Do me a favour next time your lights are on, grab the bulb, I just finished putting my spare led panel back together and decided to see how hot it gets, I can comfortably touch every component in it, can you say the same? oh and I work with leds on a daily basis, just keep in mind, companies wouldn't have spent millions of $ designing something to replace old tech if it's inferior would they. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Cmh setup watt for watt and still under 500$ id say learn more about phillips elite agro bulbs and square wave ballasts.
Not much at 350w will compete or even come close unless it's a diy cob cree kit even then it's still gonna cost ya more than 450$
They both have their place in the home growers game, A thread like this never ends well though, we all know where it's gonna end up if it hasn't already Booms summer scrog series Boom4200 winter spring SUMMER grow journal
If you got enough coin buy them all and run all of them at once led hid cmh and you'll probably be even happier with yields but not so much on electric bill
Led are great. But for a top of the line led you better be ready to shell out 1000.00usd. And that's low side of top leds. Quantum boards and cobs are the way to go in led. Diodes are great to diversify the spectrum beyond what the cobs and quantum boards give you. But heat is heat. And whether you have 1000w of leds or 1000w of hid you are still gonna have to cool your space somehow. But the biggest thing is what kind of penetration you're getting. I believe 1.7-1.9 umols is a good 1000w hps. For that same rating on an led you're gonna need some high end top bin stuff. And that ain't cheap. And how many watts of led match a hps? It's nowhere near what these manufacturers are saying. 250w is 250w for me. So what's better? I say neither. They're both great. Just gonna cost a bit more for the leds.
Large commercial facilities use HID for a reason. If the return was their in spending 5 to 10 times the amount per light then they would.
I grow with both as I see benefits to both, but when if comes down to it I prefer hid all day long. And a watt is a watt regardless of which lighting system leds do not compare to much larger hids. Total marketing gimmick and play on words. Learned that from a discussion with a friendly local led rep.....AFTER I bought my 1st led of course.