Worth it to pay more for HQ HPS bulb?

The abb. is for "high quality". My local hydro shop has two different bulbs. One is $30 and the other is $92. Long and short I bought the $30 one. Next time I pick up a bulb should I stretch for the "high quality" bulb? Sorry I forgot the brand names.

bump nobody has tried different bulbs or know of anybody that has? This 400w hps bulb I'm using is a GE lucalux or whatever and it doesn't seem very bright. Not sure what brand the expensive one is.

Ive always went with Hortilux EYE bulbs until I recently switched to the Phillips Ceramic Metal Halide and Ive notice a good amount of difference with them! I cant say anything about any pother bulbs as I havent used them personally!

i've never used a name brand bulb and always got great results. I can't knock them cause I haven't tried them but cheaper bulbs will still provide you good results.

wiseguy316 said:

i've never used a name brand bulb and always got great results. I can't knock them cause I haven't tried them but cheaper bulbs will still provide you good results.

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Yeah I'm sure it'll grow some plants. My brother said his old 400w sunaggro was much brighter than this GE lucalux 400w which is what got me thinking about that $92 bulb. I just gotta be friggin sure about it before I drop a hun on a bulb

I'd say find one online and you can save a bunch of money. I don't mind helping out at my local stores but really the price in a lot of hydro stores is rediculous. generally i just buy my pots and soil locally but I wouldn't spend twice as much for nutrients or lights for the same thing. Check the specs on the light and see the lumen output and compare it to the light you already have and see if it's worth it for you.

i look for the most red and the most lumens and usually the thing is that those are not the expensive ones! Logically blue might make sense to have and might be worth the lower lumens. maybe. Maybe logic says it is the other way around and it is only my coffee twacked brain that too is making me look toward hortilux 80 dollar bulbs. Science says that flowers like red and lumens. But next time I gonna spend at least 70 bucks on a bulb on eBay.

maryland hydro has decent prices on bulbs, probably cheaper than ebay, i just checked and they are much cheaper than ebay..www.dchydro.com

I put a 400 watt Hortrilux in one side of my Producer cab and a regular $30 HPS in the other side. Both bulbs were brand new and there is definetly a difference. The Horti was much brighter and slightly more blue.

That being said Sunpulse makes the best bulbs hands down.
www.sunpulselamps.com

Coals said:

I put a 400 watt Hortrilux in one side of my Producer cab and a regular $30 HPS in the other side. Both bulbs were brand new and there is definetly a difference. The Horti was much brighter and slightly more blue.

That being said Sunpulse makes the best bulbs hands down.
www.sunpulselamps.com

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the hortilux was 2000 lumens less and brighter? maybe daylight brighter from the blue, the question is how much will it affect plant growth , so you would have to grow a plant under both of them to tell

wiseguy316 said:

maryland hydro has decent prices on bulbs, probably cheaper than ebay, i just checked and they are much cheaper than ebay..www.dchydro.com

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I am running 6 x 600w HPS bulbs in my digital ballast that I got from dchydro.com and have had good results . If I went all Eye Hortilux I would have spent 3x as much and probably seen a little better yeild. But not worth the exxtra $$$$ in my opinion since I change my HPS bulbs out every 3 to 4 months.

lumens aren't the best way to measure light in regards to plants but it serves as a guideline for how intense it is. I don't think that more red light is going to give the best results in fact I would imagine a light with plenty of blue light and red light wuld be more efficient than a strictly red light regardless of the lumen output but I am not an expert in any feild of MJ growing by any means.

you are right it is also about what spectrum of light the plant can use. The real question is a high dollar bulb worth it, maryland hydo is selling ge lucalux enhanced spectrum bulbs(not a standard bulb) for 19.95 thats hard to pass up. the high dollar bulb would have to produce an extra ounce to make it worth it.

wiseguy316 said:

you are right it is also about what spectrum of light the plant can use. The real question is a high dollar bulb worth it, maryland hydo is selling ge lucalux enhanced spectrum bulbs(not a standard bulb) for 19.95 thats hard to pass up. the high dollar bulb would have to produce an extra ounce to make it worth it.

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i run a regular ass sylvania that i think my buddies dad that werks on light poles gave me. i have GREAT results!

Heres a couple of snipits from the sunpulse website:

A. Sun Pulse makes an HPS lamp, but it can never be used in high frequency electronic ballasts. Millions of dollars were spent by Sun Pulse Labs, and research clearly proves the HPS lamp cannot be used for electronic HID ballasts, ever. Like the typewriter, HPS lamps are a thing of the past.
In addition, an HPS lamp is approx. 2.2K,( or 22% of the Sun) and has a narrow band of light. Red light also has the least amount of energy of all the colors of the spectrum; you couldn't light a solar panel with HPS light. Why pay money to make light that has the least amount of energy?


A. We don't post lumen numbers on our website because lumens are a measurement for the human eye and have nothing at all to do with plants. With plants, it’s about incident energy and the light that can reach the leaf that the plant can actually use for photosynthesis. That can be measured in watts per meter squared, or in foot-candles of incident energy.