What separates Amare is the judicial use of diodes to enhance the PAR spectrum. Others are good, but amare is a step beyond
I like the idea of an enhanced spectrum. I also know that plenty of professional growers and light builders have tested 'enhanced' spectrums and found that any benefit is negligible at best and ends up adding cost and losing efficiency in most cases. It sounds like a great idea in theory. The bottom line though is that there isn't a difference that is even noticeable to the majority of users.
Here's a great example. The 900w Amare Pro 9 is $2000. The Timber 400w Vero 29v7 is $540. For $2160 you get 1600w of Timber cobs in a prebuilt system.
So now tell me, will you grow more from the 900w Amare or will you grow more from the 1600w of Timber? One thing for sure is that neither gives better quality. You get a better warranty with Amare but have you ever heard of anyone even having to use a warranty with a pre-built cob system? Very few failures from reports I've seen. LED's are extremely reliable, as are meanwell drivers.
So yeah, you could spend $2000 and get a 900w Amare. Or you could spend $1080 and get 800w of Timber cobs.
I get that the Amare are a very decent pre-built system, even if their website is dysfunctional and they don't publish thorough specs. I would love to own one actually but I'm on that huge boat full of people that need to get the most out of their dollar. So even if the 400w Timber light gets me 95% of the yield that an Amare will, it costs almost half the price. It's a no brainer for most people.
The 400w Timber light costs $1.34 per watt. Lower than anything on the list shown earlier in the thread by a mile and almost half of an Amare SE 450.
Half price is pretty hard to pass up on when you consider the results are basically identical.