Once and for all.. L.E.D or H.I.D ??!

[hillbill]

Last led I bought was Citizen COB based unit 2 1/2 years ago and a couple Cree panels are now 6 years old and even those are clearly far superior to various HID I have run. They all work the same as when they were new.
Look around RIU as a lot of experienced HPS have and are making the switch. More and better light per watt. Haven’t plugged in a street light in 5 years. No one pays me or even winks at me.

 

[gwheels]

LED run for years with no bulb changes (COB/STRIPS/PANELS). Also available in many spectrums and can be tailored to grow period. But pick a good light or something build with good new gen cobs (1.75/2.75/3/3.5/4/5K spectrums are available)

CMH bulbs are good for 20k hours and maintain 85% of the original light spectrum (or something to that effect, i wake and baked and the memory aint what it used to be).
Beauty frosty buds too (pic was cheese with a 315 and 3.1k phillips bulb) . Amazing really. A phillips bulb is about 150 CDN (115 USD) You can full run on the 3100K or 4200K bulb (3100 is usually preferred)

HID/MH are rated for 10k hours i think.

I think they all grow great weed as long as you are using the new gen stuff. And if you need more heat because of where you grow HID works pretty good and its CHEAP to start.

Heisenbeans did side by side runs with cobs and HID same strains that were cloned. The cobs outperformed the HID at about 15% less wattage. It was something like that.

Dont be me. Pick one and run with it. All of those lights will fill a tent with nice dense buds. There really is no right answer.

 

[old buzzard]

the question itself is flawed.(Quality of growth and bud development).That is giving all the credit to the lights.they are only a small part.The growing medium is more important and understanding how to use it,watering at proper times.not over or under using nuts,temperature,and so on and so on.The light itself is not so important as how you use the light.I have seen cfl grows better than led grows by far.Does that mean cfl is better than leds ? and even then the strain your growing comes into play.Like others have asked why pay out the rear end for same results,perhaps not even as good if your dialed in with what your using now.The best light by far is the one you get good results yourself with and are comfortable with.The latest and greatest on the billboard may not be for you.each light has advantages as well as disadvantages as someone all ready stated.learning how to manipulate the advantages and avoid the disadvantages is the answer to what ever system you pick.

 

[Midnight Warrior]

I am still on my first grow and hardly as experienced with all the lighting types. I started with one of those KingLED blurple LED lights from Amazon, but after frequenting RIU a few members told me I would need more light so I bought a pre-made "1800w" (300w actual) 6 cob fixture to supplement while I researched and figured out everything I would need to build a DIY QB fixture. After building it and setting everything up QBs are where its at for me. Gives way more light than the plants need and they exhaust hardly any heat. I literally have to keep it around 70% or the leaves start clawing and my temps stay a comfy 71-75 using the central air to maintain temps. Whereas with my KingLED/cob fixture temps stayed in the 80s and was harder to get temps under 80 using central air.

If electricity costs are no concern, then the older lighting types: HPS, MH should work just fine for you I would think. I personally like the modular nature of my DIY QB light as you could plug and play a new board if one fails, or even add some far red to it. It's really just a matter of what works best for you. For around $20 a month in electricity costs I can grow my own and know whats in it. To me thats the most important thing.

 

[tstick]

To the bolded: I do not think that there is any sort of adaptation by exposure. What I think is more operative is that the plant has genetically-set light requirements, and indoor growers kept at it until they got good results. It is possible to get good results with the old T8 shop lights if you surround the plants, and other bits of acquired wisdom.

But I do think the plants did not adapt to artificial lighting. Unsuitable phenotypes may have been selected out, but that is a different thing.

I'm not sure. I've always just grown for my own use and never did any kind of experimenting with selecting phenotypes. For me, ANY phenotype could be the one that holds that "lost" secret of flavor or smell or effect regardless of its growth characteristics. But large-scale growers need to select for things like yield and pest resistance and length of flowering, etc. I would be more than thrilled to get a true skunk plant, again -even if it was scrawny and took forever to finish!

I learned a lot from Kevin Jodrey via his YouTube videos. He says that plants, in fact, DO adapt to their lighting/environment -even to the point that different terpene profiles can appear within clones that are grown in different locations and under different lighting conditions.

This has also been shown to be the case in grows that were done by former forum member greengenes (who has a lighting company now). He grew clones side-by-side...but under different lights...and then he tested the results among the different lights and the tests showed that certain lighting seemed to bring out different terpenes. The implication is that plants do respond and adapt to different lighting.

 

[1212ham]

After building it and setting everything up QBs are where its at for me. Gives way more light than the plants need and they exhaust hardly any heat. I literally have to keep it around 70% or the leaves start clawing and my temps stay a comfy 71-75 using the central air to maintain temps. Whereas with my KingLED/cob fixture temps stayed in the 80s and was harder to get temps under 80 using central air.

Lower 80's air temp is recommended for LED. HPS/HID produce IR that directly heats the plant above ambiant, LED has no IR and leaf temp is normally a couple degrees below ambiant.

 

[tstick]

Natural lighting over an entire growing season, outdoors, changes. So, when you take outdoor-grown seeds and grow them indoors, under consistent lighting, then that generation of plants will have to adapt and sort of re-code its information for subsequent seed generations before those plants will become familiarized with how to best-respond to the artificial, unchanging conditions-at-hand. Phenotype selections are made, based upon whatever conditions the grower is providing for the plants. Phenotype selection will differ from one growing environment to the next.

For example: If you grow outdoors, then your criteria for phenotype selection for subsequent outdoor grows will be different than if you were selecting phenotypes from indoor-grown plants for subsequent indoor grows.
Indoors, you have a lot more control over things like pest control, temperature and humidity.
Outdoors, you can only do so much. So, if you are growing outdoors, then you might base part of your phenotype selection on pest-resistant plants that can endure a wider temperature range. Indoor phenotype selection might have to do only with trichome production and/or smell.

I guess I kind of compare it to how people have adapted to live in vastly different weather conditions, too. I have a friend from Brazil...He moved here to the rainy, cool Pacific Northwest, years ago. Early on, he said he was amazed at how all the people in the PNW could go out and walk around without warm clothes on....when it was 65 degrees! His wife was also Brazilian and she said the same thing. But, their kids were born and grew up in the PNW. They now have adapted to the new climate and they don't like it when it gets hot! They prefer the cool rainy weather and snowboarding in the mountains! Even my friend and his wife say that they have adapted now, too. Living things have abilities to make generational adjustments as needed....but it may take a little time.

 

[diggs99]

60+ posts later

are we any closer to once and for all?

 

[a mongo frog]

One would think so.

 

[Flowki]

Led companys like fluence, hlg and timber etc. Are the real deal and I have no doubt in the next 5 years they will outdo hps, possibly by a good amount as tech improves. I will say this though. I can pull 2+ elbows out of my 4x4 or 5x5 with my spyder x plus or my hid 1000. My fluence does not heat up worth shit so I have a 1000 watt heater running in my tent 24/7 and with my 1000w hid only at night did I need it to keep environment perfect. My fluence has edged out my se 1000 hid but when I ran de1000 I got about the same yield or a tad more with the de 1000. Close from any of them. The biggest factor to me is the environment being perfect. Everyone is so stuck on lighting etc that they often forget all the other things that go into a grow. If you dont have the money or just starting buy Hps/mh or cmh. If you have the money buy whatever makes you happy. At them moment in running my fluence with 1000 watts of heater, exhaust etc. For veg and sometimes flower a 315 cmh. Both do the job well. Imo if you dont spend big on led you get shit results ( I have tried a few ). If you spend 1400+ you will do ok, if you dont have it buy hid or cmh. I'm not a pro on led nor do I work for fluence etc. Just my opinion but led has come far and is def a good option if you have the money. Hid will not go away any time soon and for good reason, it's been "the golden standard" for how long??

That said I'd buy the newest fluence spyder all day or a hps or cmh if it fits my needs at the time better. If you grow great bud I dont give damn what you grew it under... way to much arguing about it.. a good led is great and so is any hid that's been doing the job for a billion years.. this will never end.. all the shit LEDs should take a hike and let the good ones shine. Part of the reason LEDs get a bad name still. BOTH CAN BE GOOD! Run what floats your boat. Happy growing!

This is a good post and I agree other than one thing.

It is ok to use a hid light to keep temps up and reduce lights on heating amount in winter but that is still a band aid fix to an imperfect set-up, it's not really a valid argument in favour of hid. All techs will suffer the same during lights off in this situation so ofc that aspect is irrelevant.

With thermostatic cut off control over the in/out take you will likely get away with running newer techs w for w of the hid. It will create similar heat but give more light while the auto thermo better regulates temps over using radiator 24/7. Humidity will spike more and de-huey will be more active but it also adds some heat back into the room so that may level itself. Or, maybe you lose some/most of the thermo saving on heat due to more use of the de-huey, that's also possible. Assuming worse case and you balance out the environment costs, with thermo cut out+newer tech you still keep a more stable environment day and night while also getting more light per W and a better spread. On the more optimistic side you get those benefits on top of spending less W to regulate heat day/night.

 

[xtsho]

60+ posts later

are we any closer to once and for all?

No.

 

[a mongo frog]

This is a good post and I agree other than one thing.

It is ok to use a hid light to keep temps up and reduce lights on heating amount in winter but that is still a band aid fix to an imperfect set-up, it's not really a valid argument in favour of hid. All techs will suffer the same during lights off in this situation so ofc that aspect is irrelevant.

With thermostatic cut off control over the in/out take you will likely get away with running newer techs w for w of the hid. It will create similar heat but give more light while the auto thermo better regulates temps over using radiator 24/7. Humidity will spike more and de-huey will be more active but it also adds some heat back into the room so that may level itself. Or, maybe you lose some/most of the thermo saving on heat due to more use of the de-huey, that's also possible. Assuming worse case and you balance out the environment costs, with thermo cut out+newer tech you still keep a more stable environment day and night while also getting more light per W and a better spread. On the more optimistic side you get those benefits on top of spending less W to regulate heat day/night.

Yea but what about the quality of led vs HID. As in the bud quality. Doesn't new tech led just lack in most instances that you've seen?

 

[booms111]

I have both. Been running HPS for 19 years and QB boards for alittle while. I did a few QB only grows and watt for watt they produce more weight but quality wise hps is better for me. Now I got hps and QBs running together. I use the QBs to adjust the color spectrum to mimic the change in season from early summer to late summer/early fall. I'm perpetual tree style, so plants start at one end of room and move to the other end of room by harvest time. I have 3000k qb's on starting end of room , then 1k hps, then 2700k qb's, then 1k hps on finishing end. Works for me.

 

[coreywebster]

Yea but what about the quality of led vs HID. As in the bud quality. Doesn't new tech led just lack in most instances that you've seen?

I don't think it does. By eye and nose its equal, but the one thing I cant do in my country is test the THC levels. You would think with all the legal guys these days there would be lots of evidence showing results one way or another.

 

[hillbill]

Quality of bud definitely up with white LEDs and it seems spectrum and lack of shade in the plants are factors. Next in quality apart from density was cmh here. Cheap hps bulbs were about the same as horti bulbs.

 

[Bookush34]

I think it’s about creating a well rounded environment. For me I my circumstance I couldn’t get venting,humidity and temps all in the “zone” consistently when using a hps/mh. I got into COB LEDs to make the environment more manageable. In turn I Grow nice stuff.

Grow what you got. The quest for the best gets old.

 

[Thundercat]

This whole thing makes me really want to set up a new room to do a side by side with my current. Sadly financially that can't happen unless someone wants to invest in the experiment.

I really want to set up a real comparison. Currently I've got 1k hps over a 4x4 tray. I want to put a true 1k worth of LED over the same amount of space.

Mostly white probably QBs with some added far red strips. Basically I want to do as close to a real watt for watt spectrum for spectrum grow as possible. I don't care about efficiency, just straight performance!

 

[Flowki]

Yea but what about the quality of led vs HID. As in the bud quality. Doesn't new tech led just lack in most instances that you've seen?

I think of two different genres of leds from what is implied. The older type leds when blurple was around and the new type leds that seem to be more about quantum boards, strips and cobs with ''white light''. I'd also put cmh in the new tech bracket too, although it isn't led. A while back it was way too expensive so it has only properly caught on with the average grower the last few year once the prices became justifiable. Prior to that I seen a single cmh se/fixture selling for around $1400.. a joke.

Everything I read on blurples and of that time frame was very bad so I am not talking about that type of led. Maybe some good leds of that time existed I don't know. So if I say led I refer to the new types, like cob and Qboards (unless somebody corrects me on that terminology).

The new tech do a good job. They don't have the depth of 1k hps but they have the spread so they can effectively cover a wider area with the same W while a 1k hps could not (although some of the Qboards are way too big and focus too much light, bad idea imo). If the difference in canopy style between hps/led isn't taken into account and catered for then you will reach a false conclusion that hps is vastly superior. I did also read a few things on qb boards alone not being the most optimal, but again I don't know how much of that was down to bad fixture size, growing style etc.. difficult to know since a lot of info is subjective. I have never seen anything bad written about cobs, but that isn't to say they are better than Qboards, I suspect it's those big Qboards that people are having issues with, not the small ones. But I could well be wrong.

The quality of the new tech is very good, some say better than hps due to environment being easier to control, some say the same. You should also factor in that the new lights don't degrade near as fast like cheap hps bulbs or lack of renewal of the hps bulbs (how many hps users do you think use expensive bulbs and change out on schedule?) so the new tech adds to consistent quality in that way, but admittedly that's a weaker argument point. Worse case at the least, the new led are just as good as hps in quality if done right. Peoples opinion of yield differ, but mostly down to applying hps growing style to led and comming up short, so it's a tricky road to go down for objectivity. If you only have a 4x4 space an argument can be made to use a 1k to maximise width length and also depth. But an argument could be made to use the 4x4 space as a 3x3 with over head led and then also use side lighting led to increase canopy surface area to suite leds strong point.

People suggest that cmh has the best spectrum (although lower efficiency than led) but also has uv, so in theory mixing new led with cmh will offer the best results, the cmh bulbs I ''guess'' will also add a little more depth than led. Unfortunately I've read that the level of uv cmh gives off is not enough for a significant quality increase. So the question for me is if the spectrum of cmh is good enough to justify using it over the losses in efficiency/spread you take over not using more of the new leds in place. Since some people do say the new leds lack in some way (personally I don't see it) having the cmh there is a safe bet, but also an irrational bias attachment. I'd still use a mix of cmh even it it is worse than using all leds, at-least to a point.

If you run the same strain it's difficult to notice any quality shifts in mixing cmh with new leds, although I'd say more frost but that could be bias wishes. However the difference between hps and the new leds is noticeable. As in, how much more often you end up cleaning scissors and more visible frost. That alone I suppose is not proof, but If you yield the same as hps yet have more resin then who would blame a person for drawing a conclusion from that.

I don't think hps is far behind if at all, but to get the most out of it in efficiency, yield and quality takes a hell of a lot of skill and effort (that includes considering things like vertical cage growing). Objectively on paper that's fine, but in reality, having to do all that isn't easy or even possible for a hell of a lot of growers. They will consistently do better with led as it's easier to keep plants happy.. so long as you don't treat the tech like hps.

 

[Couch_Lock]

Arguing over lighting types reminds me of Nvidia vs ATI, yrs ago on pc tech forums. Gpu vs gpu, HPS vs LED vs CMH wars.....

 

[a mongo frog]

I think of two different genres of leds from what is implied. The older type leds when blurple was around and the new type leds that seem to be more about quantum boards, strips and cobs with ''white light''. I'd also put cmh in the new tech bracket too, although it isn't led. A while back it was way too expensive so it has only properly caught on with the average grower the last few year once the prices became justifiable. Prior to that I seen a single cmh se/fixture selling for around $1400.. a joke.

Everything I read on blurples and of that time frame was very bad so I am not talking about that type of led. Maybe some good leds of that time existed I don't know. So if I say led I refer to the new types, like cob and Qboards (unless somebody corrects me on that terminology).

The new tech do a good job. They don't have the depth of 1k hps but they have the spread so they can effectively cover a wider area with the same W while a 1k hps could not (although some of the Qboards are way too big and focus too much light, bad idea imo). If the difference in canopy style between hps/led isn't taken into account and catered for then you will reach a false conclusion that hps is vastly superior. I did also read a few things on qb boards alone not being the most optimal, but again I don't know how much of that was down to bad fixture size, growing style etc.. difficult to know since a lot of info is subjective. I have never seen anything bad written about cobs, but that isn't to say they are better than Qboards, I suspect it's those big Qboards that people are having issues with, not the small ones. But I could well be wrong.

The quality of the new tech is very good, some say better than hps due to environment being easier to control, some say the same. You should also factor in that the new lights don't degrade near as fast like cheap hps bulbs or lack of renewal of the hps bulbs (how many hps users do you think use expensive bulbs and change out on schedule?) so the new tech adds to consistent quality in that way, but admittedly that's a weaker argument point. Worse case at the least, the new led are just as good as hps in quality if done right. Peoples opinion of yield differ, but mostly down to applying hps growing style to led and comming up short, so it's a tricky road to go down for objectivity. If you only have a 4x4 space an argument can be made to use a 1k to maximise width length and also depth. But an argument could be made to use the 4x4 space as a 3x3 with over head led and then also use side lighting led to increase canopy surface area to suite leds strong point.

People suggest that cmh has the best spectrum (although lower efficiency than led) but also has uv, so in theory mixing new led with cmh will offer the best results, the cmh bulbs I ''guess'' will also add a little more depth than led. Unfortunately I've read that the level of uv cmh gives off is not enough for a significant quality increase. So the question for me is if the spectrum of cmh is good enough to justify using it over the losses in efficiency/spread you take over not using more of the new leds in place. Since some people do say the new leds lack in some way (personally I don't see it) having the cmh there is a safe bet, but also an irrational bias attachment. I'd still use a mix of cmh even it it is worse than using all leds, at-least to a point.

If you run the same strain it's difficult to notice any quality shifts in mixing cmh with new leds, although I'd say more frost but that could be bias wishes. However the difference between hps and the new leds is noticeable. As in, how much more often you end up cleaning scissors and more visible frost. That alone I suppose is not proof, but If you yield the same as hps yet have more resin then who would blame a person for drawing a conclusion from that.

I don't think hps is far behind if at all, but to get the most out of it in efficiency, yield and quality takes a hell of a lot of skill and effort (that includes considering things like vertical cage growing). Objectively on paper that's fine, but in reality, having to do all that isn't easy or even possible for a hell of a lot of growers. They will consistently do better with led as it's easier to keep plants happy.. so long as you don't treat the tech like hps.

Where have you seen a better overall quality in new tech led is better then hid bud. Ive noticed the opposite.