LED bulbs for plant growth, which is best?

BobCajun

BobCajun

Well-Known Member
For my money, Osram/Sylvania. This page ranked them top among several 100w replacements and all customer reviews I've seen on store sites were positive. I've only ever had one burn out on me so far, probably a factory dud.

These LED bulbs work as well as COBs in my experience, and being much cheaper I don't see much reason to throw money away.
 
Randomblame

Randomblame

Well-Known Member
You can use this bulbs and they work great... if you are willing to pay more on you electricity bill month for month..?!

If you pay 30ct/kw or more you would probably look for a more efficient light than this 100/120lm/w bulbs...?!

BTW,
best bulbs I've seen so far are Osrams 20w and 25w bulbs...
 
nc208

nc208

Well-Known Member
BobCajun said:
These LED bulbs work as well as COBs in my experience, and being much cheaper I don't see much reason to throw money away.
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Cobs can be of varying qualities, from your no name cheap Cob/Multichips from ebay all the way to cree, bridgelux, citizen etc. You shouldn't make blanket statements like you have done, comparing a 15w bulb to a 100w Cob from bridgelux is night and day for performance for example. Yes those led bulbs will grow a plant, so will a cfl or a t5 or hps or led.
 
wietefras

wietefras

Well-Known Member
These are 100 lumen/W bulbs. Those are completely outclassed by proper COBs who will easily do 150lm/W and more. So you will be saving a third on your energy bill as well.

For instance a Citizen 1212 COB costs as much as one of those bulbs yet it produces as much light as 7 of them and it does it at well over 150lm/W.

So no, they don't work "as well" . Not even remotely and they cost a lot more too.
 
BobCajun

BobCajun

Well-Known Member
wietefras said:
These are 100 lumen/W bulbs. Those are completely outclassed by proper COBs who will easily do 150lm/W and more. So you will be saving a third on your energy bill as well.

For instance a Citizen 1212 COB costs as much as one of those bulbs yet it produces as much light as 7 of them and it does it at well over 150lm/W.

So no, they don't work "as well" . Not even remotely and they cost a lot more too.
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Yeah, but it's 100 lm/w with the diffuser on, which only has about 85% transmission. Besides that, I don't have a warehouse full so more concerned about price and convenience of obtaining than efficiency. They don't put out that many lumens under normal current anyway, it's in the 120s for cool white type.
 
BobCajun

BobCajun

Well-Known Member
nc208 said:
Cobs can be of varying qualities, from your no name cheap Cob/Multichips from ebay all the way to cree, bridgelux, citizen etc. You shouldn't make blanket statements like you have done, comparing a 15w bulb to a 100w Cob from bridgelux is night and day for performance for example. Yes those led bulbs will grow a plant, so will a cfl or a t5 or hps or led.
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I mean they grow plants as well, actually better because it's more spread out. To be ever clearer, I mean I have grown with both and found the bulbs better, no burning/bleaching. I didn't mean they are identical in all respects, just that they grow plants as well or better from my observations. Costing a lot less makes them more attractive to me.
 
wietefras

wietefras

Well-Known Member
BobCajun said:
Yeah, but it's 100 lm/w with the diffuser on, which only has about 85% transmission. Besides that, I don't have a warehouse full so more concerned about price and convenience of obtaining than efficiency. They don't put out that many lumens under normal current anyway, it's in the 120s for cool white type.
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Those led bulbs without filter are at best 120lm/W yes. COBs are well over 150lm/W. At least at the currents we use them on.

Besides the low light production, the price is simply a lot higher than COBs or led strips. They do not cost less. You can order them online. Not sure what's so inconvenient about that.

No burning no bleaching? COBs don't have that either. You have obviously NOT grown with COBs. Perhaps with a shitty burple led fixture (which indeed do bleach quite quickly)

Those led bulbs have inefficient shapes too.

There are only downsides to these bulbs for use in a grow room. Seriously why even bother?
 
BobCajun

BobCajun

Well-Known Member
wietefras said:
Those led bulbs without filter are at best 120lm/W yes. COBs are well over 150lm/W. At least at the currents we use them on.

Besides the low light production, the price is simply a lot higher than COBs or led strips. They do not cost less. You can order them online. Not sure what's so inconvenient about that.

No burning no bleaching? COBs don't have that either. You have obviously NOT grown with COBs. Perhaps with a shitty burple led fixture (which indeed do bleach quite quickly)

Those led bulbs have inefficient shapes too.

There are only downsides to these bulbs for use in a grow room. Seriously why even bother?
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How is the price higher than COBs? I mean including the driver of course. 1500 lumens for $8 where I get them, 14w bulb. A CXB3070, for example, can put out about 10,000 lm at best, 5000k. That's like seven 14w bulbs, $56. A COB costs about $30. Can you get a driver for it plus shipping for $26 or less? I was also referring to preassembled COB fixtures, not DIY, because the bulbs are preassembled so for a fair comparison the COBs would have to be too. Most I've seen cost about $2 per watt, the bulbs cost about 50 cents per watt. You do the math. Show me one commercial COB fixture for less than $1 per watt, and not on Alibaba either, which is all knockoff crap.

You don't know what's inconvenient about ordering stuff online as opposed to walking into a store? The store seemed a lot easier and convenient to me, got what I wanted within hours of wanting it.

I haven't grown with COBs? Gee I didn't see you hiding in my closet so how the fuck would you know?
 
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BobCajun

BobCajun

Well-Known Member
Johnny Lawrence said:
What cobs did you grow with? How hard were you pushing them?
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CXB something, the way they wired the fixture (high bay) was a combination series/parallel, running them on a 1050ma driver split to half that by the parallel part of the wiring in which two COBs are paired in parallel (12 COBs total), so pretty soft, they can take something like 1800 ma as normal. Came out to 216w output. You can find them just by googling CXB high bay, it's the only ones Cree sells. Come with a big aluminum parabolic reflector on them, which I took off because they weren't helping, just made it too intense in the middle. They worked okay with the reflectors off but still on the too bright side. I guess the problem was that the COBs are all together in an array about 6" across, so not spread out much.
 
Enigma

Enigma

Well-Known Member
@76W just two Vero7s produce around 22k flux, I'd hate to see how many bulbs it would take to match that.

However, I am using those LED bulbs for vegging/rooting/cloning since I can find them @9W/800lm for $1.

The sockets were $1.38?

Then an extension cord for $1 that I cut to wire them in.

Bright as hell right now, but I'm thinking about adding a fifth bulb.

:leaf:
 
nc208

nc208

Well-Known Member
BobCajun said:
How is the price higher than COBs? I mean including the driver of course. 1500 lumens for $8 where I get them, 14w bulb. A CXB3070, for example, can put out about 10,000 lm at best, 5000k. That's like seven 14w bulbs, $56. A COB costs about $30. Can you get a driver for it plus shipping for $26 or less? I was also referring to preassembled COB fixtures, not DIY, because the bulbs are preassembled so for a fair comparison the COBs would have to be too. Most I've seen cost about $2 per watt, the bulbs cost about 50 cents per watt. You do the math. Show me one commercial COB fixture for less than $1 per watt, and not on Alibaba either, which is all knockoff crap.

You don't know what's inconvenient about ordering stuff online as opposed to walking into a store? The store seemed a lot easier and convenient to me, got what I wanted within hours of wanting it.

I haven't grown with COBs? Gee I didn't see you hiding in my closet so how the fuck would you know?
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I've bought more fake crap from amazon and ebay then anywhere else. Even an SD card I bought at a best buy turned out to be a knockoff Samsung one. Alibaba has grown to be one of the largest online market places in the world, Just because its coming from China doesn't mean its a knockoff, do yourself a favor and research before posting whatever comes to your mind. Yesterday your blaming Cree for selling knockoff drivers when you hadn't even verified it was a knockoff.

Two Vero 29c with heatsinks, cobs, driver comes to around 125$ US Shipped from RapidLED(if you cant put together this you have no business growing anything) you plug literally a few wires in.
it would take 15 of your par bulbs to match that, at 8 bucks a pop thats 120$ just for bulbs, also gotta add sockets for each bulb which will bring you over the cob price, also 15 of your bulbs hits 210w vs the Bridgelux would run at 150w, so its cheaper, uses less electricity and you don't have 15 different power cords. Seems like a no brainer to see Cobs are cheaper and more efficient.
 
Johnny Lawrence

Johnny Lawrence

Well-Known Member
BobCajun said:
CXB something, the way they wired the fixture (high bay) was a combination series/parallel, running them on a 1050ma driver split to half that by the parallel part of the wiring in which two COBs are paired in parallel (12 COBs total), so pretty soft, they can take something like 1800 ma as normal. Came out to 216w output. You can find them just by googling CXB high bay, it's the only ones Cree sells. Come with a big aluminum parabolic reflector on them, which I took off because they weren't helping, just made it too intense in the middle. They worked okay with the reflectors off but still on the too bright side. I guess the problem was that the COBs are all together in an array about 6" across, so not spread out much.
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^ LOL

"To be ever clearer, I mean I have grown with both"

/thread
 
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