hi I'm welcome back to the Migro Youtube channel my name is Shane the
founder of Migro and today we're going to look at the best full-spectrum grow
lights for small grows particularly for to two by two grow area so you had some
of the older technology we've got t-55 fluorescence here a digital HPS setup
we've got some budget red blue panel LEDs we've got the Mars hydro and Viper Spectra
we've also got some of the newest best technology available at the moment so
we've got a powerful spectrum light from horticultural lighting group the QB
series we've got a cob LED from uptick one and we've got our own my girl 100 so
we're going to look at an overview of each the lights we've done a test of
course to look at the part I put and the efficiency for each light we've got a
spectrum comparison and we've got the fixture cost and running cost over three
year period to compare we'll start off looking at the HBS fixture it's got a
digital ballast see up there it's a pneumatic digital ballast it's got a
Howard aluminium reflector a wing reflector or byron reflector and it's
got a 150 watt geo spectrum bulb this is a Sun master
Gro plus photonic bulb and it's got a consumes about 165 Watts so 150 watts
for the bulb and about 10% extra for the digital ballast it throws the like wide
as you can see so it's a big spread of light and but not very efficient even
though we had it in a diamond miler 2x2 line space it and it achieved only 0.9
watts or sorry 2.9 micromoles per watt in terms of efficiency and the spectrum
is very limited not a very much blue in it
and sky people mainly switch from metal halide to HPS halfway through the growth
but in any case we have a dairy for reference and we'll see how it performs
against the others the next night we're looking at is the
t5 fluorescent fixture it's a fixture by enviro grove by lumi it's a 60
centimeter long or 2 foot long fixture with four tubes for fluorescent tubes in
this case therefore k color temperature so ideal for full spectrum growth all
the way from seed to harvest this though is the worst-performing fixture in terms
of fishin sea and relatively expensive for its output so it's a hundred euros
for this unit and 100 watt output so it puts a quite pricey and because of its
efficiency you just gotta use a lot of electricity to get the same amount of
output as you would from a different type of noise better specified light the
first of the budget LED lights is the piper spectrum you can see it there
it's the v-model v 300 just turn it on there
Fanbox junus relatively noisy a mixture of different LEDs in the panel so I'm
just gonna pull the spectrum okay push the efficiency however is just fairly
better than the HBS so it's one micromolar what output and although the
fixer cost is quite cheap because of its efficiency you'll see the cast around
the unit really makes it less value for money over the long term we've got
tomorrow's 300 beside it's very similar in terms of price and wattage to the
Viper spectrum and very similar in efficiency so it's one micromolar for
what unit which again the fixture cost Israel to be low but the running costs
is relatively high now you've got the first of the high-efficiency LED units
this is the horticultural lighting group hlg the quantum board
qb1 24k color temperature with a LED driver I mean while LED driver which is
about 88 percent efficiency so pretty good it's got a wide spread of lights
there's no lensing on us so we have located that when testing we did locate
it in the 2x2 or 60 centimeter by 60 centimeter tent with highly reflective
mylar walls to give it the best possible outcome in the test and for the 60 just
over 60 why I think it was 61 watt power consumption it delivered 1.9 micromoles
per watt so it's a very efficient light the next nice to look at is the optic
one it's a cub LED grow light I've got the
driver mounted on the back pan heatsink and we've got a class lens
with quite a rounded narrow beam quite a fine beam as you can see this unit
concerns about 54 watts so it's quite a small light individually the efficiency
is excellent at 2.0 4 so it outputs a paired 108 micromoles pbft so it's very
very good picture the only downside I guess with it is it's it's relatively
expensive for its output and the last night working at is the micro 100 the
micro 100 comes with dimmable LED driver like and you can dim up and down
you got your extension cables there ip67 rated up to your heatsink it's a fin
heatsink so passive as well as the optic one and hlg you've got glass lands bit
wider than the optic in terms of its spread and it's Gus diffusion so it's
got its diffuses the light out a little bit the lens to give it a softer light
and reduce hot spots the efficiency is just picked up the ight by the op
tickets its 2.00 in the 2 by 2 grow set up with the reflective walls so very
close its yeah it's going to be a great competition it looks like we're coming
down between the tomorrow and the hlg so let's have a look at the overall
conclusion in the 7 ways to compare all these lights we're going to show you a
chart with all of the 7 lights we've tested all compared together for
efficiency spectrum and cost cost of purchase and cost of running over a
three-year period though the efficiencies you've seen already but
it's clear that there are three lights which stand well above the others so the
hlg the optic and the micro can more efficient than the others when it
comes to spectrum they all have different spectrum but you know the
optimum spectrum certainly for a full spectrum grow light is going to be about
15 to 20 percent blue light and then the balance in red and green the 15 percent
15 to 20 percent blue is enough blue that it will regulate the plant growth
so that it's tight growth and the plant doesn't stretch but not too much too
much blue is basically a waste so in order to compare each of the grow lights
for cost we need to equate them in size first of all so the micro 100 had the
largest ppfd output of all the lights at 210 micro moles per meter square per
second that equates to a level of about 600 micro miles ppfd in a 2x2 or 60
centimeter by 60 centimeter grow area so it's about perfectly sized that's 600
micro moles is a good level for good flowering performance so in order to
bring the other lights up to that level so take for example the t5 fluorescent
fixture the t5 for us and is very similar to the my go it's 100 watt
output versus my go hundred and seven watts but because of its low efficiency
at 0.7 micro moles per second you'd need 2.9 t5 fixtures for every one 100 my go
100 fixture so the fixture cost the comparable fixture cost for these Lumi
fixture is 2.9 of them and similarly you'd be running 2.9 of them over the
period of the three years so let's look at the fixture and comparable sorry the
comparable fixture and running cost for all the grow lights on the bottom of the
chart the model at the highest cost of ownership over three years is the farest
and fixture the Lummi t5 yes digital is very similar and then you can see that
even the low or prone cast with the Mars 300 and
the Viper spectra doesn't really deliver your value for money over the long term
because you're just spending it again electricity over the three years the
uptick one although it's highly efficient and doesn't need a huge amount
of cast to run it over the three years it's got a high fixture cast which kind
of puts it out so we're down to the HL g and the micro we against each other the
HL g has a lower upfront cost for the fixture it's a little bit more of a
basic fixture but it's a so it doesn't have dimming for example and that lets
it down a little bit because between the lower efficiency and the lack of dimming
through the veg stage you need to consume a higher meant to power with the
HL g over the three-year period side by side they are neck-and-neck they are
within literally a few euros over the three-year period so it's a very very
close call so really close an interesting match in the end between the
DeMaio and the HL g both great lights it's a really great product the hig
really liked it an innovative and using high quality components so it's great to
see such such interesting lights now coming out on the market and it was a
really close contest and so hope you enjoyed if you've any further
suggestions or comments which I know you usually do and I really enjoy seeing the
comments coming in and the comments and criticism and trying to answer as best I
can that just means people are interested in they care and they're they
they want to make sure that being held to account here which is absolutely fine
it's it's good fun so yeah thanks for watching and please subscribe and look
forward your comments take care