its been there for a while
not necessarily. more like there is a major dichotomy between manufacturers who understand and promote efficiency and those who understand that promising the moon regardless of the reality of your claims sells a shitload of lights (for awhile)
really not any different than understanding the nuances of HID. it was not that long ago that you couldnt even mention what you were growing and the shops would offer zero tech support, it was on you to know the light intensity, temperature, cooling, etc. your crop required. It wasnt long before that the internet didnt exist and you had to bribe your non-growing buddy with weed to ship an Ed Rosenthal/Mel Frank/Jorge book to his house instead of your house with the garden.
i have yet to see a competent experienced grower disappointed with the current tech. welcome aboard!
Honestly, as someone who works in a bigass hydro store. I can say, these reps like the bloomboss guy will come in, they don't know their product for shit, and they're hocking something, vastly overpriced, and massively outdated. Like, if you work, in that industry, you should know your product and competing products, I know most sales reps just want their money, I kicked major ass at phone sales and I knew exactly how each company sucked, including whichever one I was employed at in the moment. You have to know, your product. For me to see, someone charging 600+ dollars for a blurple 3 watt lensed diode panel that went out of fashion, several advances in technology ago, is like seeing a Pentium 4 on sale today for a thousand dollars.
People in my experience fall into a few categories. The rarest are people who - want to learn, research things like PPFD and DIY builds, or what's current in technology, and at least buy - a modern fixture.... then there are the majority of interested people who walk into a shop or go online and they just want someone to tell them what the best thing is. They buy anything you tell them to, even if it's garbage, because they haven't grown before, and are just interested in buying "The best one" or - conversely, the cheapest one (I saw these vipra spectras on amazon and they're 1.21 jiggawatts for a dollar!" - then you have the people who are HID growers, that have just seen a buncha mars hydro grows and they still don't believe anything good is out there, because of all the crappy results they've seen.
Personally, I think it's like anything - you have people who want to learn it and do it well, who understand the technology they want to use, and people who want a magic solution to everything in the form of "Just buy this" or "Just water this often" or "Feed exactly this" - and they don't understand that you can do anything well, you just have to.... you know, take the time to learn to do it well.