I have a mix an match of leds in my garden. Mainly mars hydro an couple others even one with out a brand name. Thinking of going to just one brand. Just stuck on which brand. I do feel you get what you pay for. What are the so to say top 5 brands? Or should I just go all mars hydro ?
4 Likes
Solstrips 
best grow buy I’ve ever bought
6 Likes
I’ll check into them
1 Like
We have a thread here on OG all about them. @Baudelaire is the USA supplier.
4 Likes
Lol I was just checking out website
1 Like
Quantum Boards from Horticulture Lighting Group
Solstrips from Photon Solutions
Fluence by Osram if you have the money. I personally don’t see the cost being justified. But then again I’ve never ran one so take that for what it’s worth.
These are the ones I know of. They all use pretty much the same chips from Samsung just organized in different ways. Personally I’m digging the solstrips due to the better spread. Quantum boards have so many chips on a small physical footprint.
5 Likes
I’ve been checking them out. Just with lights now a days. The chips an cobs I get lost. It’s a lot of info at once. Which for me is homework so to say. Instagram I use a lot to see how some lights are working for others. But that only helps so much do to styles of growing. That an with being a dad of 4 money gets tight. Thank you for the tip tho. I’ll for sure do more homework on the chips part of it
5 Likes
I’d buy the strips from baudelaire.
It’s about $1.1/w with drivers
They use way less electricity. They increase yields. I haven’t been below 1.2gpw with them where I was doing about 0.6-8gpw with HID and they last way longer so more environmental friendlt
13 Likes
Yeah not a fan of hid. I use cfl for seedlings. For sure I’ll be reading up on the stripes tho
3 Likes
I will 2nd ,3rd and 4the the SolStrip’s
Best buy period in the game right now.
7 Likes
When looking for my setup, I decided to go with Solstrip’s just due to the journals on here.
've got the right equipment, just no experience in growing at all lol
6 Likes
I have little growing indoor. Lol I still do veggies out side never done cannabis outside only inside for now
2 Likes
Solstrips and @Baudelaire are where it’s at bro but I feel you. Even those are too pricey for oleskool!
5 Likes
Hey @oleskool830 ,
you can save a bit ,or sell a wee bit of bud n get yourself some solstrips - the Best Buy you’ll have done for your “hobby” bro.!
( Just my ÂŁ0.02 )
Good luck with aquiring some Solstrips …
Happy growing/smoking mate ,
Gaz
7 Likes
First post and I want to point out a few things. Good luck on your search.
The best you can do for the money right now is building your own fixtures from white mid-power LED strips. You customize the spread and density and you save a boatload by building yourself - they’re easy and there’s plenty of exact tutorials on the web.
The most cost effective DIY build on the market are the Samsung F strips with LM561C S6 bin in 3000k. Look at the various builds on www.LEDGardener.com for various sizes using various brands of strips, but consider my recommendation of the proper strips.
Spectrum doesn’t improve performance outside of the 3000k - 3500k for these mid-power white LEDs. Maybe a half percent here, 3/4 percent there, but overall don’t listen if people try to tell you to buy 5000k blue LEDs or 1700k ultra red. Also don’t bother with UV, IR, far red, etc. Total waste of time until your grows are 100% perfect.
Most of the LED lights you buy on Amazon or Ebay or from places like Mars Hydro are total garbage compared to these strip builds. I don’t know about the Sol Strips; I bet they’re good, but beware the profit motive of forum advertisers. They’re more expensive than the Samsung strips, and at what benefit?
If you don’t want to DIY, the top 5 retailers in the US for complete plug-and-play LED lights right now (if price is no object) are probably:
Fluence
Gavita LED
ChilLED
Pacific Light Concepts (PLC)
Horticulture Lighting Group (HLG)
Honorable mention to Timber COBs and the Chinese QB knockoffs that have started doing their own thing…and quite well.
The first two on that list are basically commercial DIY strip builds like what I recommended above. They use the exact same parts as you would in a DIY strip build, and the output is the same, at 2-3x the cost of DIY.
ChilLED and HLG and PLC off-the-shelf products are basically high density diode boards. I don’t like these as much as strip builds because canopy coverage is less, and you lose some of the benefits of distributed multi-point light sources because they act like smaller brighter single light sources. They still grow great weed, efficiently, but it’s not as effective IMHO as strips.
Timber and the Chinese boards are towards the bottom here, but still WAAAAAAAAAAAAY better, LIGHT YEARS ahead of your Mars Hydros of the world in performance and efficiency. Timber’s COB builds are on their way out, but still a decent option. They’re good but they’re being replaced by thousands of small led diodes distributed across the entire canopy. Chinese boards run low power without heatsinks are great if you buy from the right manufacturers, but the lack of warranty only feels worth the price of admission if you buy enough to get a large price break and cheap shipping.
18 Likes
Great info on these solstrips.
5 Likes
Thank you. Very helpful truly. The diy I would say I don’t have the confidence in myself to do them. As for the others thank you for the list as well, will be doing my research on them for sure. In a week or so will be updating on which kinda light I end up going for an why. The strips I honestly just started looking into. Now that I know of some good ones to compare.
6 Likes
DIY is about as easy as it gets. You just follow a build guide that you read about online. Super straightforward.
You buy aluminum angle and u-channel from a shop or Home Depot, get it cut to length, drill some holes, apply some thermal tape, bolt on the strips, wire from one strip to the next according to a diagram on the site I recommended, attach a power wire, then plug it in and turn it on. It’s literally that easy. If you have a separate dimming knob (potentiometer), you wire that into the dimming lead of the driver before turning it on. Some drivers have it built-into the driver and you adjust with a screwdriver.
Srsly, it’s the difference between spending about $500 USD to build a DIY strip light for a 4x4 for flowering or $1300 by buying a premade fixture. Same parts, same output, just a huge price difference. DIY is totally worth it. It’s fuggin easy man.
Also, don’t buy quantum boards kits or fixtures from HLG. I did some cost/benefit analysis with their PAR maps (output coverage in a given space when measured at a given height) and they are no longer a good value for the money now that strips have become more available. Strip builds are far superior in total spread and PAR numbers across the canopy if your build is done according to the guides I mentioned. And strips are cheaper and more powerful.
Hope that helps both you and @Bongedtobits
15 Likes
Ive seen some really nice, low cost strip builds on OG and I see why everyone likes them so much, and im going to be placing a order soon. However, I keep all options open always and I was looking at some comparative specs on some other gear and came across this :
2 Likes
No offense, but that’s a complete ripoff piece of shit. That’s like an Ebay or Amazon Chinese listing. Gimmicky - see the “420w?” And mystery chips run at mystery current with mystery cooling. And LOL at the spread and the package contents listing this as a 2000W LED grow light lolololol
Once you’re familiar with LED diodes and how they’re packaged and run, you’ll see that thing in your screenshot is just a knockoff gimmicky piece of crap advertised to appeal to low-information stoners with more money than sense. High quality LED lights utilizing the mid-power diodes have about 1/3 of a watt of power per diode, +/- a little, and are therefore extremely efficient. Unlike that thing.
5 Likes