Inventronics drivers vs Meanwell drivers

medicaloutlaw

medicaloutlaw

Well-Known Member
Does anyone have any experience with these. Ive seen some lights with these and read some discussion about Inventronic Drivers mostly in commercial applications and they seem to have much potential and flexibility but versus the tried and true Meanwell how does it compare for us home growers?

I know there are some pretty smart cookies here and even a few engineering degrees I love to know what you think!
 
Upowertek

Upowertek

Member
They are both very good LED driver manufacturers, but Meanwell doesn't have any new products for grow lighting market in the past year. Some other companies are rising with new products, such as Upowertek plug and play LED drivers.
 
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Hairybuds

Well-Known Member
I’m currently using Inventronics drivers, I like them, they have more flexibility in their voltages and amps. You can also use their online app to program them to increase or decrease intensity as you see fit. I matched them up with dual channel bridgelux vestas so it could serve as my all around light for veg and flower
 
Rocket Soul

Rocket Soul

Well-Known Member
Meanwell, inventronics and powerland seems to be the best speced driver brands. Meanwell became the norm due to their nice warranty and just being more available than the other two, but id probably go inventronics before meanwell, especially for 320w and upwards (the higher watt meanwells seem to have a fair bit of failures conpared to 240ish w).
 
visajoe1

visajoe1

Well-Known Member
my light has an inventronics driver, 650w, seems quite capable. daisy chain up to 100 devices and optional controller for larger applications

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HippieDudeRon

Well-Known Member
Elephant in the room here is programmability.
Inventronics, Powerland, EldoLED, Autec... All programmable with all other specs equal to the market standards. A single SKU that is as capable as 5 meanwell SKUs. Not every DIYer is going to need it...but pretty much every fixture manufacturer will want it(inventory wise, and capability wise).
Not to mention better price of others compared to meanwell across the board.
 
Babalonian

Babalonian

Well-Known Member
Rocket Soul said:
Meanwell, inventronics and powerland seems to be the best speced driver brands. Meanwell became the norm due to their nice warranty and just being more available than the other two, but id probably go inventronics before meanwell, especially for 320w and upwards (the higher watt meanwells seem to have a fair bit of failures conpared to 240ish w).
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Sipping my coffee, on my one day off, eyeing my new (and first) meanwell 320h-c2100 that I’ll be lighting up for the first time here shortly, and then I read this. :) lol

Been using an inventronics eum240 on another setup for a couple months now, love it, and decided to build another (bigger, better, etc.).

*Big sigh*

I’m sure it’ll be fine, maybe, lol
 
Upowertek

Upowertek

Member
Babalonian said:
Sipping my coffee, on my one day off, eyeing my new (and first) meanwell 320h-c2100 that I’ll be lighting up for the first time here shortly, and then I read this. :) lol

Been using an inventronics eum240 on another setup for a couple months now, love it, and decided to build another (bigger, better, etc.).

*Big sigh*

I’m sure it’ll be fine, maybe, lol
Click to expand...
They will be fine!
 
Rocket Soul

Rocket Soul

Well-Known Member
Babalonian said:
Sipping my coffee, on my one day off, eyeing my new (and first) meanwell 320h-c2100 that I’ll be lighting up for the first time here shortly, and then I read this. :) lol

Been using an inventronics eum240 on another setup for a couple months now, love it, and decided to build another (bigger, better, etc.).

*Big sigh*

I’m sure it’ll be fine, maybe, lol
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Its not to say your driver will fail, its just based on what i heard from HLG steve on the gml show: they mostly had driver failures (however few) on higher wattage meanwell drivers, the 240 versuon being the one with the least failures. They started moving towards inventronics and with the new diablo bords being a bit higher in forwards voltage (+54V) there isnt really that many good meanwell alternatives.
 
Grow Lights Australia

Grow Lights Australia

Well-Known Member
Rocket Soul said:
Meanwell, inventronics and powerland seems to be the best speced driver brands. Meanwell became the norm due to their nice warranty and just being more available than the other two, but id probably go inventronics before meanwell, especially for 320w and upwards (the higher watt meanwells seem to have a fair bit of failures conpared to 240ish w).
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We really like the Mean Well HLG-320 drivers as they not only punch above their weight in terms of output, we have so far seen no failures (touch wood!). The HLG-240 drivers are also very good. Nearly all the failures we've seen have been HLG-480 drivers. In terms of range, the XLGs seem to be less reliable than the others. I guess the other side of the coin is you get a seven-year warranty with the Mean Well HLG series so even if they do fail you are generally covered. But you still have to deal with the down-time.

On a related note the 54V Mean Well drivers can handle higher voltages of over 58V. We sell a lot of these with our lights. We mainly use the HLG-480H-54V drivers because they can't be turned up over 10A, which would exceed our current ratings (5A per board x 2). Some of the HLG-480H-48 drivers will go past 11A. Normally if a driver punches about its weight it's considered a good thing but in our case with the 480W drivers it's not.
 
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HippieDudeRon

Well-Known Member
-I have seen the highest failures in meanwell 240-c's. Nearly 3X the failure rates of other meanwells HLG wattages.
-320-csw meanwells being the next to fail most
-And the 600w-54v have failed the least. And have designs running both 320w or 600w and the 320w'er fail 2X more than the 600w in the same system.

This is out of ~5000 240w, ~5000pcs of 320w, and ~10,000pc of 600w. So can speak on it with good confidence in the sample size of my usage.
All small amounts of failures from the total in use, maybe ~1.5+% on the 240w'ers compared to ≤1% in the others.

Getting meanwell to RMA something vs others... is where you will see other companies actually service and stand behind their products. Meanwell is a shit company to work with.
 
Rocket Soul

Rocket Soul

Well-Known Member
Grow Lights Australia said:
We really like the Mean Well HLG-320 drivers as they not only punch above their weight in terms of output, we have so far seen no failures (touch wood!). The HLG-240 drivers are also very good. Nearly all the failures we've seen have been HLG-480 drivers. In terms of range, the XLGs seem to be less reliable than the others. I guess the other side of the coin is you get a seven-year warranty with the Mean Well HLG series so even if they do fail you are generally covered. But you still have to deal with the down-time.

On a related note the 54V Mean Well drivers can handle higher voltages of over 58V. We sell a lot of these with our lights. We mainly use the HLG-480H-54V drivers because they can't be turned up over 10A, which would exceed our current ratings (5A per board x 2). Some of the HLG-480H-48 drivers will go past 11A. Normally if a driver punches about its weight it's considered a good thing but in our case with the 480W drivers it's not.
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What i like with the inventeonics drivers is their versatile ranges : while the meanwell xlg constant power is divided in L, M and H range inventronics have many more versions per model. What i cant really make out is the difference between their different model ranges, do you know which would be their best model?
 
Babalonian

Babalonian

Well-Known Member
super informative and a valuable perspective you all have.

My meanwel hlg-320 is up and running. I am satisfied with it. I think I would/will buy an inventronics next time, either to upgrade the hlg-320 or my next build.

Having a meanwell running beside an inventronics (both running different 2-board settups), they’re good drivers.

I do agree and understand the comment made about meanwell s being less versatile, my 240w inventronics just seems to handle/control/dim its output better, I feel/notice that “versatility”. *My comment is very “bro-science”, and the settups I’m using are not similar enough to be a real test/comparison. Call it novice-user gut feeling and observation.


Edit: and I’ll be the first to bet that after I purchase my next inventronics driver for my 3rd (whenever), I decide to buy a meanwell for my 4th driver purchase.
 
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Bignutes

Bignutes

Well-Known Member
Rocket Soul said:
What i like with the inventeonics drivers is their versatile ranges : while the meanwell xlg constant power is divided in L, M and H range inventronics have many more versions per model. What i cant really make out is the difference between their different model ranges, do you know which would be their best model?
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You’ll want either their EUG or EUD models for NA, I have both. Other versions I’m not sure of for Europe but they have Euro specific ones
 
Grow Lights Australia

Grow Lights Australia

Well-Known Member
Rocket Soul said:
What i like with the inventeonics drivers is their versatile ranges : while the meanwell xlg constant power is divided in L, M and H range inventronics have many more versions per model. What i cant really make out is the difference between their different model ranges, do you know which would be their best model?
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You are in Europe, yes? Unlike Mean Well which makes drivers for all AC inputs that can be used almost anywhere in the world, I believe Inventronics divides their's into low-voltage and high-voltage models to improve the efficiency of their low-voltage models. But I think there are some mistakes on their website because the EBV-500 is stated as being "suitable for North American use" but its input voltage is 176-305V AC, so I can't see how that would work on 110-115V mains. The ESD-320 is even more confusing because the datasheet lists its minimum input voltage as 249V AC, so that wouldn't even work in Australia where we have 230V mains. Yet it is listed as "suitable for North American use". All I can think of is that they are intended to be used on three-phase power, but I don't know for sure. I wish I could help you but I am just as confused!
 
Bignutes

Bignutes

Well-Known Member
I suspect the 176-305 is for 220V high bay type lighting in NA. I’m no electrician tho. Once you get the proper one specd out they are much more flexible I can run mine in multiple configurations in either voltage or current way handier to have especially if you repurpose the driver for a new light or different configuration.
 
Grow Lights Australia

Grow Lights Australia

Well-Known Member
Bignutes said:
I suspect the 176-305 is for 220V high bay type lighting in NA. I’m no electrician tho. Once you get the proper one specd out they are much more flexible I can run mine in multiple configurations in either voltage or current way handier to have especially if you repurpose the driver for a new light or different configuration.
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I'm not familiar with all the electrical mains voltages and frequencies (Hz) in NA, so I can't really comment. I didn't know you had higher voltages for high-bay lighting. But I've also looked at both types of Inventronics driver and I honestly can't see any difference except for the safety ratings, so I'm guessing that's the only difference. Our Mean Well distributor can't get XLG drivers in Australia for the same reason as they don't meet Australian safety standards. We had to buy ours from overseas to test. But we don't sell XLGs.
 
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