Rayonled GLM 640 LED Grow Light vs ECO Farm ECOS 600W LED Grow Light Reviews 2021 Updated
LED Grow Lights are becoming more and more popular in all types of indoor gardening. The best led grow lights can help you to grow strong, healthy plants. They can give you a huge yield plus great quality of fruits and flowers. Indoor growing offers many advantages. The biggest benefits are the most obvious! Garden pests can’t get at your plants, and you have total control over the weather.
Experienced growers know that the success or failure of your cannabis cultivation relies on three major factors: Soil, water, and light. No matter what other variables you’re going to tweak, you must get these three elements dialed in if you want to enjoy an abundant harvest.
For the overall cost of your grow, though, choosing the right light can make it all seem worth the time and effort… Or break your wallet and your overall yields. While LED grow lights may not have been a great option even 5 years ago, advances in LED technology have made them our hands-down favorite style of light for consistent, low-maintenance indoor grows!
About LED Grow Lights
A grow light is artificial light which helps to increase your plant growth. It’s an artificial source of light which replaces the need for sunlight. For example, in the winter the available hours of sunlight may not enough for the plant to grow.
The grow light will help the plants in penetrating enough spectrum for photosynthesis. The spectrum it provides is the same as the sun or a little that need for cultivation. Not all spectra are necessary for every plant and produce fruits/flowers. It depends on the plants needs.
Buying LED Grow Lights: Factors To Consider
Whether you’re new to growing indoors altogether or just new to growing cannabis plants with LED plant lights, you may not be familiar with some of the unique characteristics of LED lighting. Here are the main factors you want to check on when purchasing LED horticultural lights for your cannabis grow.
The factors are listed in no particular order. Only you can know which one is most important to you, given your specific growing situation.
Real Wattage And Theoretical Wattage
You may have noticed that most LED lights have two different wattage figures. One of these is the potential wattage and the other the actual wattage. The potential wattage is the wattage the light could run at if the LED chips were running at full power. For example, a light with two hundred 3w LEDs has a potential wattage of 600.
LED chips are never run at full power, though. Doing so would considerably shorten their life span. Generally, they are run at 50 to 60% of their potential power. This is their real wattage and is the amount of electricity the light will actually consume.
The 600 watt LED grow light from the example above would probably have a power draw of 300 to 400 watts. And lights listed as 300w don’t actually have a power draw anywhere near that much either, especially if it’s a Chinese brand (they tend to exaggerate a lot).
Light Spectrum
Most indoor horticultural LED lights use LEDs in multiple colors. The majority will be various shades of red and blue, with the better lights also using some white LEDs as well as some infrared and ultra-violet ones.
This mix of colors gives you all the light plants, including cannabis, need for every stage of growth: cloning, veg and bloom. It is referred to as full-spectrum light and is generally what you want. All of the fixtures above, from BestVA to Phlizon, offer some variety of this light spectrum.
There are a few exceptions. If you are looking for a light to only grow clones or to just veg plants, then you might want to check out one with mostly blue LEDs. If you are looking for a light to supplement your existing setup to give your plants a boost during the flowering stage, you’ll want one with mostly red LEDs.
Finally, I need to mention all-white LED fixtures. These lights use only white LED, which gives them a spectrum similar to natural sunlight (which is also a mix of the HPS and metal halide spectra). Proponents of white light claim it is best for plants, because it gives them the light they are used to from the sun.
More and more, the indoor cannabis industry as a whole is moving toward white light. White LED grow light fixtures are becoming much more common on the market as a result.
And white light does work well to grow and flower plants. But it includes a lot of light in the yellow and green ranges, which is light plants do not use much during photosynthesis. Thus, it goes to waste, right?
That has been the case made by manufacturers (and fans) of fixtures with mostly red and blue LED lights. They say these are more efficient, because you are not using any of the electricity you paid for to produce light that plants don’t want.
But plants do want that light. Sure, they don’t want as much of it as they do of light in the red and blue wavelengths, but they do still want it. That is why the best-selling LED grow lights these days all include white LEDs on their lights. And many use mostly white LED light.
Light Intensity
For LED lights, the most widely used measure of intensity is PAR (technically, it is PPFD and not PAR, but most still refer to it as PAR). It stands for Photosynthetically Active Radiation and is used to measure the amount of light in the wavelengths that plants use for photosynthesis. Some brands will list the lumen output, but that isn’t all that useful for grow lights.
Some brands give PAR readings for their indoor plant lights; others do not. Those that do often only give one value, which doesn’t really tell you much about its effectiveness for vegetative growing, much less blooming.
That value was taken dead center beneath the light. A large value here means you have a powerful light in the middle of the coverage area, but it tells you nothing about the strength of the light around the edges.
Ideally, manufacturers will provide a PAR footprint that shows PAR readings throughout the coverage area. Most do not do this, however, so you will often have to look to tests done by third parties, such as review sites, for this information. For white LED lights, lumen output can have some value. For others, it is mostly useless.
Coverage Area
This refers to the area a grow light can cover while still providing enough light for the plants in that space. For the flowering stage of growth, plants need more light, so you will have to move the light fixtures closer to the canopy. This increases the intensity, but also decreases the coverage area.
This is why LED lights have a smaller coverage area for the flowering stage than they do for vegging. Always make sure the space given by the manufacturer is for blooming, unless you only plan to veg with your light.
Cooling System
The best LED grow lights give off far less heat than HID bulbs, but powerful LED diodes still emit enough heat that they require cooling. Any larger LED fixture must have heat sinks to reduce the amount of heat emitted and internal fans to disperse whatever heat remains.
You want to make sure that a LED light’s cooling fans and heat sinks are adequate for the amount and strength of diodes in contains. If it isn’t, this will considerably shorten the life span of the LED chips and make them far less efficient.
Another issue to consider is noise. Fans can generate a lot of noise, so fixtures with multiple fans will be much louder than you might think.
When you add their noise to that of oscillating fans and exhaust vans for your tent, you can end up with a fairly high noise level. If this is a concern, consider a fixture with fewer, or even no, fans.
Rayonled GLM 640 LED Grow Light
Experienced growers know that the success or failure of your cannabis cultivation relies on three major factors: Soil, water, and light. No matter what other variables you’re going to tweak, you must get these three elements dialed in if you want to enjoy an abundant harvest.
For the overall cost of your grow, though, choosing the right light can make it all seem worth the time and effort… Or break your wallet and your overall yields. While LED grow lights may not have been a great option even 5 years ago, advances in LED technology have made them our hands-down favorite style of light for consistent, low-maintenance indoor grows!
About LED Grow Lights
A grow light is artificial light which helps to increase your plant growth. It’s an artificial source of light which replaces the need for sunlight. For example, in the winter the available hours of sunlight may not enough for the plant to grow.
The grow light will help the plants in penetrating enough spectrum for photosynthesis. The spectrum it provides is the same as the sun or a little that need for cultivation. Not all spectra are necessary for every plant and produce fruits/flowers. It depends on the plants needs.
Buying LED Grow Lights: Factors To Consider
Whether you’re new to growing indoors altogether or just new to growing cannabis plants with LED plant lights, you may not be familiar with some of the unique characteristics of LED lighting. Here are the main factors you want to check on when purchasing LED horticultural lights for your cannabis grow.
The factors are listed in no particular order. Only you can know which one is most important to you, given your specific growing situation.
Real Wattage And Theoretical Wattage
You may have noticed that most LED lights have two different wattage figures. One of these is the potential wattage and the other the actual wattage. The potential wattage is the wattage the light could run at if the LED chips were running at full power. For example, a light with two hundred 3w LEDs has a potential wattage of 600.
LED chips are never run at full power, though. Doing so would considerably shorten their life span. Generally, they are run at 50 to 60% of their potential power. This is their real wattage and is the amount of electricity the light will actually consume.
The 600 watt LED grow light from the example above would probably have a power draw of 300 to 400 watts. And lights listed as 300w don’t actually have a power draw anywhere near that much either, especially if it’s a Chinese brand (they tend to exaggerate a lot).
Light Spectrum
Most indoor horticultural LED lights use LEDs in multiple colors. The majority will be various shades of red and blue, with the better lights also using some white LEDs as well as some infrared and ultra-violet ones.
This mix of colors gives you all the light plants, including cannabis, need for every stage of growth: cloning, veg and bloom. It is referred to as full-spectrum light and is generally what you want. All of the fixtures above, from BestVA to Phlizon, offer some variety of this light spectrum.
There are a few exceptions. If you are looking for a light to only grow clones or to just veg plants, then you might want to check out one with mostly blue LEDs. If you are looking for a light to supplement your existing setup to give your plants a boost during the flowering stage, you’ll want one with mostly red LEDs.
Finally, I need to mention all-white LED fixtures. These lights use only white LED, which gives them a spectrum similar to natural sunlight (which is also a mix of the HPS and metal halide spectra). Proponents of white light claim it is best for plants, because it gives them the light they are used to from the sun.
More and more, the indoor cannabis industry as a whole is moving toward white light. White LED grow light fixtures are becoming much more common on the market as a result.
And white light does work well to grow and flower plants. But it includes a lot of light in the yellow and green ranges, which is light plants do not use much during photosynthesis. Thus, it goes to waste, right?
That has been the case made by manufacturers (and fans) of fixtures with mostly red and blue LED lights. They say these are more efficient, because you are not using any of the electricity you paid for to produce light that plants don’t want.
But plants do want that light. Sure, they don’t want as much of it as they do of light in the red and blue wavelengths, but they do still want it. That is why the best-selling LED grow lights these days all include white LEDs on their lights. And many use mostly white LED light.
Light Intensity
For LED lights, the most widely used measure of intensity is PAR (technically, it is PPFD and not PAR, but most still refer to it as PAR). It stands for Photosynthetically Active Radiation and is used to measure the amount of light in the wavelengths that plants use for photosynthesis. Some brands will list the lumen output, but that isn’t all that useful for grow lights.
Some brands give PAR readings for their indoor plant lights; others do not. Those that do often only give one value, which doesn’t really tell you much about its effectiveness for vegetative growing, much less blooming.
That value was taken dead center beneath the light. A large value here means you have a powerful light in the middle of the coverage area, but it tells you nothing about the strength of the light around the edges.
Ideally, manufacturers will provide a PAR footprint that shows PAR readings throughout the coverage area. Most do not do this, however, so you will often have to look to tests done by third parties, such as review sites, for this information. For white LED lights, lumen output can have some value. For others, it is mostly useless.
Coverage Area
This refers to the area a grow light can cover while still providing enough light for the plants in that space. For the flowering stage of growth, plants need more light, so you will have to move the light fixtures closer to the canopy. This increases the intensity, but also decreases the coverage area.
This is why LED lights have a smaller coverage area for the flowering stage than they do for vegging. Always make sure the space given by the manufacturer is for blooming, unless you only plan to veg with your light.
Cooling System
The best LED grow lights give off far less heat than HID bulbs, but powerful LED diodes still emit enough heat that they require cooling. Any larger LED fixture must have heat sinks to reduce the amount of heat emitted and internal fans to disperse whatever heat remains.
You want to make sure that a LED light’s cooling fans and heat sinks are adequate for the amount and strength of diodes in contains. If it isn’t, this will considerably shorten the life span of the LED chips and make them far less efficient.
Another issue to consider is noise. Fans can generate a lot of noise, so fixtures with multiple fans will be much louder than you might think.
When you add their noise to that of oscillating fans and exhaust vans for your tent, you can end up with a fairly high noise level. If this is a concern, consider a fixture with fewer, or even no, fans.
Rayonled GLM 640 LED Grow Light
Pros
Cons
- Timer
- Remote programming
- Great coverage area for the size
Cons
- This system is the “in-between” light that doesn’t suit many growers.
Pros
Cons
- Great price for the quality system
- 12 wavelengths with UV and IR
Cons
- Small coverage (this is preferred for some buyers)
- LEDs die before the 100,000 hours but a few going out doesn’t severely reduce the amount of light.
ECO Farm LED grow light can be your great choice.
Final thoughts
Grow lights can have a huge impact on the quality of your weed and the health of your plants. By choosing full spectrum LED grow lights, you can ensure that you get a lot of consistent, high quality results with power-efficient, reliable grow lamps.
Grow lights can have a huge impact on the quality of your weed and the health of your plants. By choosing full spectrum LED grow lights, you can ensure that you get a lot of consistent, high quality results with power-efficient, reliable grow lamps.
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