Good Morning,

I already have T5 HO lights and basically I'm pleased with them.  The downside is they still produce quite a bit of heat (only a plus in the winter).  Between the veggies, mulberry and extra fig cuttings I'm going to need more lights this winter.

I saw LED lights on Ebay :

http://www.ebay.com/itm/MarsHydro-300W-LED-Grow-Light-IR-Full-Spectrum-Veg-Flower-Hydroponic-Lamp-Panel-/390567591853?pt=US_Hydroponics&hash=item5aefa47fad

Lower electricity use and even cheaper than T5 HO sounds good.  

So is anyone using these?  

Thanks!

I too uaes them in the past when I still had trees. They worked well for me. I made sure I had a spectrum the induced green growth and not fruiting. You are right about the heat produced also. I had to keep the window open in the room they were in. Heated my small apt in the winter. I had a 48 inch 8 light set up.

Sometimes the way they label these is misleading.  The 300W that they quote is not the power consumption but rather the output power.  Often times this is the incandescent equivalent.  The power consumption is somewhere around 190W.  But that doesn't matter.  The important thing is lumens, that's the amount of light produced.  This one produces 7150 lumens.

This 54 watt T5 HO is about 4500 lumens and costs $2.74: https://www.1000bulbs.com/product/100544/EIKO-F54T5HO865.html.  Now I know you have to buy a fixture too, but those aren't too expensive. 

Now, theoretically this LED only produces light in the spectra that can be used by plants for photosynthesis.  So figure some of the T5 HO lumens are wasted since they are unusable.  Even if I figure half of the light is wasted, that puts the T5 HO at 2300 lumens.  So that would mean about 3 T5s to 1 of the LED fixtures to get the same amount of usable light for the plants.  I bet T5s turn out to be much cheaper at that ratio. 

Putting price aside, in terms of performance, I do think they work.  A couple years ago I bought one very similar to the one you listed.  The plants were happy underneath it and it did not produce a lot of excess heat.  On the other hand, the heat isn't entirely a bad thing for cuttings and most plants.  Unfortunately, mine stopped working the second winter I tried to use it.  Just didn't turn on.  It very well could just be a fuse or other component inside that came detached, but I haven't had a chance to open it up.  So for me it was not a good investment at all.

In summary, for this one, I don't think the lumens per watt or per dollar is very favorable compared to T5s

A friend of mine who owns a growhop here in Holland tested a lot of those LED's and the only one that came close to a 400watt HPS system was the Apache LED that NASA uses in their space program, and they are expensive ($ 859 )

In my opinion it is much better to use a 400 watt HPS system with a Philips Son-T Agro bulb (red and blue) and a cool tube to get rid of the excess heat the bulb produces. You'll get 55.000 lumen for a little more than $ 150.

Rob

I agree with rob, and what his friend has experienced based on talking to a few growers and manufactures of lighting (philips, gavita and a few others) some manufactures refused to discuss prices of their led lights because they are not giving you enough in terms of production vs initial cost and were promoting the hid lamps instead.  

I disagree with the 400 watt though, for me 600 is the smallest I think for reasonable efficiency in terms of light output and energy consumption.  I use a 1000 watt metal halide lamp for over wintering my tropicals and starting vegetables and flowers (figs get in there too) but the reason for 1000 watts in the space I need to cover and I didn't want to put in 2 lamps, for this purpose it works well for me, I do not have heat issues, the highest it gets is about 24 degrees in the winter, but this is in the basement (I need a floor drain for watering).  The basement also doesn't get below 19 degrees even on the coldest days as the furnace is there as well.  

The price of these lamps are not too great but look at your energy cost and how much space you need to cover, for me, electricity is rather cheap and running 14-15 hours a day will only cost me around 30 bucks a month.  I only spend roughly 180 dollars a year on it, maybe 210 this year with it being so cold, so for me it pays off since I like to grow my own starts and keep my tropicals growing well.

Bummer. I just bought an LED light. I was only planning on using it for sprouting, cloning or rooting (once leaves show). Hopefully mine is new and improved.