The sun is 100 cri, wouldn't the closer to 100 be best?
That would be nice, but high CRI LEDs typically have a lower luminous efficiency than their 70-80 counterparts. So you're potentially losing photosynthetic photons for the benefit of better color rendering to the human eye.
you lose more lumens than photons.
umol/J is not that much different and the fact that theres more red should offset this slight loss
if lumens/PAR were everything wed all be growing with 6500k cobs or 450 nm monos
if radiant power is the same your photon count would go up with high CRI diodes. 1 watt of deep red light produces more photons than 1 watt of green or orange light and is more useful to plants.with all the unknown variables a comparison grow is the easiest way to determine which is bestIt would be nice to have the high CRI w/o losing Photons in one cob. If that were the case, I'd say yes all day.
I have done a side by side with 4000k 80 vs. 3200k 95+ CRI and the high CRI produced less larf. This was less than a 5% difference in weight and less than 1% difference in THC test. I think the extra stretch helped the high CRI. The lux meter shows that the high CRI is 10% less, but the plants said something else.