HID is still king IMO.
People are practically giving away old tech around here too, so not even sure I would fork out much unless you need 1 or 2. I see huge lots of mag ballasts go for so cheap in online marketplaces.
Its easy to repair\maintain any mag ballast (even a smoked one) and all the parts will be available forever. Can't say the same for digital.
No one here really talks about how LED\digital ballast's filthy frequencies affect health. If it's bad enough to be interfering with the cable company imagine what it could be doing to a baby's undeveloped brain...
Then again those cheap bay 6 mags might be using more toxic chemicals in the production process, hence the lower price. Who knows what the warm plastic wire coating (or whatever they pot the transformer with?) is off gassing for the first 6 months. Anyways..
Even the cheap HID bulbs are great, just replace them every grow for max lumen output. Skip the expensive types of bulbs.
Digital dimmable ballasts actually cause bulbs to not burn at the right temp, and reduce output. Even the bulbs marked as being made for digital are affected.
Just go with straight 600s for max efficiency.
If you live in a cooler climate, you would almost be a fool to buy LED, and still possibly have to run a heater or other additional gear to keep your leaf temps (VPD,environment, etc) in check. With HPS, all that infrared light that the plants don't absorb can be heating your house too.
Oh ya.. and I believe they still produce retrofit CMH bulbs that plug right into most mag ballasts (some have to hang vertically like the
Philips 860W CDM All Start grow lamp made for 1000 ballasts.) I have a CDM 330w bulb for my old 400 watt ballast. Not sure if you can find them still but they do cost more, and last longer.
You can have ceramic HID without buying all that new re engineered digital gear.
growgreenmi.com
