I thought that LEDs were relatively new to grow arena, you are rating them the best. Maybe it is just me who's relatively new. Lol. What are the drawbacks to each light to get your rating?
with lighting quality almost speaks for itself with watt to lumen ratio.
with every light source the higher the watts being used the hotter they run with the exception of leds which is why they like are the best. t5s and cfls are kind of tied i prefer cfls which is why i placed them above t5s i actually really like t5s so dont get me wrong but if your trying to jam 500 watts into a small area thats not really doable with fluros.
t12s and t8s give only about 1-2k lumens per bulb only really good for clones and mothers
cfls and t5s give about 60 lumens per watt
now the low pressure sodium is a extremely controversial topic so im not going to get too into it now thats just playing with fire
but basicly lps has a if not the highest watt per lumen ratio but also lps lamps use a vacuum glass envelope that is coated with a layer of indium tin oxide, a material used to reflect and stop infrared rays. The light is allowed to go through this coated glass, but infrared's are stopped by the indium, so almost no amount of heat comes from a LPS lamp but have a really low output so you would need a few of them but they are very expensive so its more reasonable to just get a hps with a cooltube
mh i believe is around 80
hps around 120
not sure about leds but other then they're quiet cool and cheap to run no matter what the wattage, and i feel that horticulture has just begun to skim the surface into leds its "the garden of the future".
what you said earlier about upgrading a little at a time take it from me i have so much unused crap laying around i bought it used it for 1 grow and upgraded over the years iv gotten quite the stockpile go out and buy what you need now i just bought a nice little mini 150w hps from htgsupply 68 bucks you wouldn't believe how cool it runs i have 250w cfls that run hotter
http://www.htgsupply.com/Product-FLORALUX-150w-HPS-Mini-Grow-Light.asp
i actually got it from their ebay auction thier site screws you for shipping if your only buying one thing