Any LED info would be welcome, recommendations, warnings for or against certain products etc etc.
Thank you.
Okay, I'm just passing along my opinions here since I've looking into this LED stuff a bit, take nothing as an endorsement, rather just my musings on a few LED brands that I think are suitable for different types of buyers.
One thing to pay attention to is actual power draw vs the listed wattage of the LED. For example there are LED panels listed as being 600w that only draw 300 watts or less. Point being, even if you have a board of 200 3w LEDs and it's only being powered with 200w (30% max) then you're not really getting the benefit of 3 watt leds.
It looks like the Blackstar's are powered at about 60% of their listed wattage, Growledhydro's at about 66%, and Blackstar LED at around 88%.
OTOH it's been said that the light gain from powering an LED beyond 50% of it's max power, declines. That is: there is a diminishing return on brightness for additional power beyond 50%. Also it's been said that the LEDs themselves will degrade faster when drawing more power so that an LED that is drawing 90% of it's max power will more likely degrade faster than an LED drawing only 50%. Hence there are arguments to go in either direction, and your preference for a brand may depend on what you feel is the right design choice.
Another important factor is the warranty, I feel this separates a lot of vendors in terms of the faith they have in the quality of their product. GrowLedHydro has a 5 year warranty, which imo is pretty impressive (
EDIT: just checked the site and it looks like it's been reduced to a 3 year, which is still good but obviously not as good as 5. I believe they used to do 5... ). Blackdog and Gothamhydro/Lighthouse LED have a 3 year warranty which is good.
My personal opinion is that I'd eat the cost and go with either a GrowLEDHydro or a Blackdog based on my tolerance for having to replace the lights. In other words if I didn't so much care about replacing or repairing a light in a few years and I was mostly interested in short term performance I'd go Blackdog. If I wanted more longevity I'd go with GrowLEDHydro.
However both the GLH and BD panels are a bit pricey, there are a lot of people who aren't shopping in that price range. If cost was an issue then I'd probably go with a Blackstar.
Regarding Chinese LEDs. I don't think there is any inherent reason why Chinese manufacturers can't make good LEDs, I just think the LED hype and craze has led many first generation manufacturers, both Chinese and USA based, to make shoddy products in attempts to cash in on the craze.
If you research each board according to the following criteria
1. Max power vs actual power draw,
2. wattage of LEDs
3. LED angle
4. Make up of each board in terms of various types/spectrum of light it emits
5. Warranty
Then you should be able to get a rough idea if it's a good board or not without being thrown off by country of origin. OTOH I think it's going to be a major inconvenience to have to ship something to China in the case that it breaks so you may wish to at least deal with a vendor who has service location in your area, be it in the USA or Germany, or where ever.
That was the good and bad, now the Ugly
One LED maker that I would have nothing to do with is HydroGrowLED (Not to be confused with GrowLEDHydro.) This particular vendor had all sorts of negative fall out on a website where the owner was active as a poster. There was a lot of controversy about the quality of service, handling of returns and the conduct of the owner on this particular forum. Finally, a story emerged about how the owner narced or threatened to narc on a previous buyer who was giving the company negative reviews. Steer clear of that one. Without much effort you can probably do a bit of google-ing and dig up the back story if you must know the details.
