Does anyone have experience with Spider Farmer LED units?

Howdy ho, I'm just curious if anyone out there has experience with Spider Farmer branded LED units available on Amazon? The reviews are great and the boards are powered by mean well drivers with Samsung LM301B chips just like the vastly overpriced HLG units. I ordered the SF-4000 operating at 450w actual power draw. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07TXFR69M/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o05_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
Yesterday morning when I ordered it there were 16 in stock. By last night they were sold out.

I'm expanding my flower room and I feel LED's are the only viable way to go these days. If all goes well with the SF-4000 I will add another to my flower room. I almost went with a MARS unit, but opted to stay away from their products. MARS uses no name drivers and chips. That was a major concern for me. In their TS-3000 unit they provide an upgraded name brand mean well driver, however they still use the no name chips manufactured by the lowest bidder.

Essentially I paid an extra $100 for name brand chips and drivers. I feel the investment was well worth it. For what it's worth a friend of mine has several of the MARS units and claims they perform as well as his high end over priced HLG units. As a matter of fact he claims the MARS units are brighter. No sale for me though. Samsung chips are the standard. Why would any manufacturer not use them? Cost savings at the expense of quality construction.

There's quite a few videos on youtube with people having good results with the spider farmer lights.

I have a Alibaba sf1000 I am using with a 315 cmh and so far so good. I am going to buy 2 sf2000's from Spider Farmer next since the Alibaba sf2000 is only €60 cheaper because shipping is almost as much as the light.

chronnie49 said:

There's quite a few videos on youtube with people having good results with the spider farmer lights.

I have a Alibaba sf1000 I am using with a 315 cmh and so far so good. I am going to buy 2 sf2000's from Spider Farmer next since the Alibaba sf2000 is only €60 cheaper because shipping is almost as much as the light.

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Man you just opened my eyes to a whole new world. It's been years since I have been on Alibaba. It looks like the Spider Farmer guys are just buying in bulk from this outfit on Alibaba and slapping their logo on the units for sale on Amazon. Interesting.
https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/Shenzhen-sunlight-lm301b-quantum-Bar-grow_62551149687.html?spm=a2700.7724857.normalList.32.77e11eb7THchzT
That's basically 6 SF-1000's for the same price I paid for 4 SF-1000's. Me thinks I'll go straight to the source for my next order. Thank you my friend. I know I'll have to wait 3-4 weeks for anything from China, but when you're talking about a $300 retail savings I'll gladly wait. I paid $589.99 for 4 SF-1000's tied together into 1 structure on Amazon. On Alibaba I can get 6 SF-1000's tied together for $504. That's about $100 cheaper than what I paid on Amazon and 200 watts more power. Just wow man. I am a cunt hair away from canceling my Amazon order and replacing the order through Alibaba for the unit I linked to above. Man oh man am I glad you made that post.

Happy to help. If i was going to get the 4000 I would definitely go with Alibaba since you pay about half what you would from Spider Farmer. The sf2000s really aren't that much cheaper so I figure the extra 60 is worth it because I am not too confident in after sale support with Alibaba.

Reviews on Amazon / Alibaba will claim that the Spider Farmer lights totally rock - because they just want to sell shit. But as one who fell for those "they totally rock" reviews when I purchased my Viparspectra blurples a couple of years ago, you will find that anything 3" below the tops turn out to be LARF.

The spectral graphs of the SF series lights are identical to the spectral graph of my blurples. Great amount of blue for good vegetative growth - but not good enough red for great flowering.

Having gone to the HLG route for this flower cycle, I am getting bud 10" - 12" below the top of the canopy. Yesterday we entered Day 29 (Week 5) of bloom so the good bud beefing days are yet to come.

So when you end up with LARF all through the middle of your plants, you might want to look at those HLG QB/Timber COB lights.

chronnie49 said:

Happy to help. If i was going to get the 4000 I would definitely go with Alibaba since you pay about half what you would from Spider Farmer. The sf2000s really aren't that much cheaper so I figure the extra 60 is worth it because I am not too confident in after sale support with Alibaba.

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Dude I can not effing believe I just paid $504 on Alibaba for a unit with 2x more SF-1000's and a mean well driver for $125 less than Amazon. You're a good person to have around my friend. Seriously, you just saved me from a good old fashioned fucking.

To address your concern about after sales service. If you ever have an issue and the vendor on Alibaba is unresponsive I would simply order another one of the same units. When the new unit arrived I would stuff the failed unit in the box and return it as dead on arrival for a full refund. If the vendor gave me any trouble I would then file a claim with my bank. They issue provisional credit for the offending transaction immediately. Problem solved. There's a work around to every problem in this world

By the way, I do that on Amazon all the time. Fuck dealing with warranties. Just order another one of "whatever item" and send the piece of shit back as defective. Let Amazon monkey with getting credit back from the vendor. I ain't got time for that shit

Also, I'll go ahead and use the Amazon spider farmer unit until my Alibaba unit arrives. Then I'll return the Amazon unit. Easy peezy lemon squeezy

StareCase said:

Reviews on Amazon / Alibaba will claim that the Spider Farmer lights totally rock - because they just want to sell shit. But as one who fell for those "they totally rock" reviews when I purchased my Viparspectra blurples a couple of years ago, you will find that anything 3" below the tops turn out to be LARF.

The spectral graphs of the SF series lights are identical to the spectral graph of my blurples. Great amount of blue for good vegetative growth - but not good enough red for great flowering.

Having gone to the HLG route for this flower cycle, I am getting bud 10" - 12" below the top of the canopy. Yesterday we entered Day 29 (Week 5) of bloom so the good bud beefing days are yet to come.

So when you end up with LARF all through the middle of your plants, you might want to look at those HLG QB/Timber COB lights.

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Are you saying the Samsung LM301b chips are no good? Or are you saying the mean-well driver is no good? HLG uses the same components. Your comment confuses me. I don't know anything about Viparspectra blurlples. Maybe there's a reason for that?

jonnynobody said:

Dude I can not effing believe I just paid $504 on Alibaba for a unit with 2x more SF-1000's and a mean well driver for $125 less than Amazon. You're a good person to have around my friend. Seriously, you just saved me from a good old fashioned fucking.

To address your concern about after sales service. If you ever have an issue and the vendor on Alibaba is unresponsive I would simply order another one of the same units. When the new unit arrived I would stuff the failed unit in the box and return it as dead on arrival for a full refund. If the vendor gave me any trouble I would then file a claim with my bank. They issue provisional credit for the offending transaction immediately. Problem solved. There's a work around to every problem in this world

By the way, I do that on Amazon all the time. Fuck dealing with warranties. Just order another one of "whatever item" and send the piece of shit back as defective. Let Amazon monkey with getting credit back from the vendor. I ain't got time for that shit

Also, I'll go ahead and use the Amazon spider farmer unit until my Alibaba unit arrives. Then I'll return the Amazon unit. Easy peezy lemon squeezy

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Thats a good idea for returning a broken light. I've heard of most people being told they need to pay for shipping back to china which is usually about the same cost at the light so some people don't even bother.

jonnynobody said:

Are you saying the Samsung LM301b chips are no good? Or are you saying the mean-well driver is no good? HLG uses the same components. Your comment confuses me. I don't know anything about Viparspectra blurlples. Maybe there's a reason for that?

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Some people have it in their mind that only HLG make good lights.

You commented that the Amazon reviews for the SF lights were good.

Two years ago I fell for the same marketing schpeel that Viparspectra proponents put out there on Amazon. But when the Viparspectra Reflectors went into action during flowering, the tops of the canopy were good but over 1/2 of the plant was chucked because it was LARF. So the final results didn't quite match up with the glowing reviews.

And the spectral graph of the SF light is identical to the graph of the Reflectors. So in a nutshell - just be cautious of reviews on Amazon / Alibaba.

StareCase said:

You commented that the Amazon reviews for the SF lights were good.

Two years ago I fell for the same marketing schpeel that Viparspectra proponents put out there on Amazon. But when the Viparspectra Reflectors went into action during flowering, the tops of the canopy were good but over 1/2 of the plant was chucked because it was LARF. So the final results didn't quite match up with the glowing reviews.

And the spectral graph of the SF light is identical to the graph of the Reflectors. So in a nutshell - just be cautious of reviews on Amazon / Alibaba.

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Good point. Amazon definitely has some shady stuff going on in their marketplace. I was shopping for a light the other day and there was a unit with over 600 reviews with a 4.7 star rating. I thought that was pretty dam impressive until I started reading the reviews. The merchant sold another item under that listing that amassed over 600 reviews with a 4.7 star rating, and then they changed the item on the listing to some cheap garbage LED unit making it appear that the LED light amassed all of those glowing 4.7 star reviews. As I read the 1 star reviews numerous people complained of the deception and poor build quality of the light.

That's why it's important to look at specifications. What components are actually on board the unit? How many watts does the unit draw? What kind of LED chips are onboard? What kind of driver? What kind of heat sink? Samsung chips are the standard. Accept nothing less. Mean well drivers are the standard. Accept nothing less. I have 2 cheap LED units branded as "HI GROW" I received from a friend as payment for 18 hash plant clones. I would never (and I mean never) purchase crap like this. They give off a lot of heat for the light output they produce, and I only use them for vegging in one of my two nursery tents. I intend to remove them from service as soon as I can. They were essentially free to me. The only price that makes them worth using at all.

By the way, I have no idea what LARF means. I don't understand most of the new aged acronyms the young thundercats use nowadays.

This is the light I have and it owns; https://smile.amazon.com/Spectrum-lm301b-Board-Light-RED660nm/dp/B0817D5D6K Price went up a little as I got mine for under $350. Here is the company on Ali; https://cannalight.en.alibaba.com/

Best $ I ever spent

jonnynobody said:

By the way, I have no idea what LARF means. I don't understand most of the new aged acronyms the young thundercats use nowadays.

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Lower
Airy
Really
Fluffy

It's the lower flowers of the plant that didn't fill in as well. As called popcorn bud by some

NeWcS said:

This is the light I have and it owns; https://smile.amazon.com/Spectrum-lm301b-Board-Light-RED660nm/dp/B0817D5D6K Price went up a little as I got mine for under $350. Here is the company on Ali; https://cannalight.en.alibaba.com/

Best $ I ever spent

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Are you sure you don't want to give spider farmer another $208+tax to assemble it for you?
That is a sweet kit. Your research paid off and kept more of your money in your pocket. Samsung diodes and mean-well driver's can't be beat at the moment. Great suggestion!

NeWcS said:

Lower
Airy
Really
Fluffy

It's the lower flowers of the plant that didn't fill in as well. As called popcorn bud by some

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Okay. In that case LARF sucks. Good bubble hash material for edibles though.

I have both SF and HLG products. They are both good LEDs. If i had to pick one tho, id go with the HLG. No real science behind it, it just looks twice as bright to me.

I love my Spiderfarmer SF4000! Just finished my 2nd grow with it. 1st grow, I yielded over 8 oz off of 2 plants in a 4x4. I have the 2nd harvest drying right now, 4 plants in a 4x4. Im guessing about 12 oz on this run. I grew with 2 Viparspectra 600s before , they were decent lights, but lacked penetration like some have mentioned.

ebcrew said:

I have both SF and HLG products. They are both good LEDs. If i had to pick one tho, id go with the HLG. No real science behind it, it just looks twice as bright to me.

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Interesting. Does the spider farmer unit and HLG unit you are comparing have the same number of chips? The reason I ask is because HLG presently uses the Samsung LM301H versus the Samsung LM301B on the spider farmer units that are presently available. Let me look at the spec sheet and I'll report back. Chip for chip and driver for driver the HLG and spider farmer units are almost identical. We'll get to the bottom of this

Samsung LM301h is listed as a horticultural lighting solution producing white light.
The Samsung LM301b states the following: High performance, highest lm/W for fluorescent lamp replacement.

Samsung LM301b spec sheet: https://www.samsung.com/led/lighting/mid-power-leds/3030-leds/lm301b/
Samsung LM301H spec sheet: https://www.samsung.com/led/lighting/mid-power-leds/3030-leds/lm301h/

Samsung like many other companies likes to bend the truth in their marketing. They are not different chips. They are the exact same. Green Gene has covered this extensively also. Both chips are manufactured on the same assembly line. One says H one says B. The (B) box shows output in LUMENS for the main market, and the other (H) shows output in Umoles specifically marketed to the indoor horticulture market. They are not similar diodes. THEY ARE THE EXACT SAME DIODE. Anti sulfurization coating is on them both. It's just marketing bullshit.

After looking at the spec sheets they are the exact same chip. When I say exact same I mean the exact same. The "H" designation is just marketing bologna. Stephen from HLG has stated multiple times on podcasts that they are the SAME diodes-just marketing hype.

We officially got to the bottom of the bullshit here.

In a nutshell the HLG and spider farmer units use the exact same chips and drivers as the HLG units. Not similar. Exact. Chip for chip and driver for driver there is no performance difference. The only difference is how much you paid for the same components and which company got your money.

The chips and drivers are all made in China. HLG is just assembling all of the "made in China" components here in the US and stocking their warehouses with those assembled lights. Nothing was made in America. And then they charge their customers a 40% surcharge for their lack of knowledge. Awesome, right? Just like Whirlpool, nothing is actually made here anymore. It's too expensive. "Assembled in America with globally sourced materials." Just a bunch of hooey.

chronnie49 said:

There's quite a few videos on youtube with people having good results with the spider farmer lights.

I have a Alibaba sf1000 I am using with a 315 cmh and so far so good. I am going to buy 2 sf2000's from Spider Farmer next since the Alibaba sf2000 is only €60 cheaper because shipping is almost as much as the light.

Click to expand...

Jr5873 said:

I love my Spiderfarmer SF4000! Just finished my 2nd grow with it. 1st grow, I yielded over 8 oz off of 2 plants in a 4x4. I have the 2nd harvest drying right now, 4 plants in a 4x4. Im guessing about 12 oz on this run. I grew with 2 Viparspectra 600s before , they were decent lights, but lacked penetration like some have mentioned.

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