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recreationaluse
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ok here it goes there are a few factors to understand about led lighting. what they draw in wattage should really be the last thing you look at. #1 hid lighting is always advertised in wattage draw because they are selling you an efficient form of light. only 10 % usable lumens. so when your 400 watt hid is no longer doing it for you you go to your local light store and the guy says i got this nice 1000 watt set up for you that will work nicely. first and foremost IN MY PERSONAL OPINION BASED ON FACTUAL VISUAL EVIDENCE OF MY OWN, wattage draw helps but only to determine the benefits from a combination of intensity, coverage area, and MOST IMPORTANT USEABLE SPECTRUMS. so when you are shopping for lights if you are looking at just wattage draw stick with hps because that is all that matters in hps lighting because they are ALMOST ALL CREATED EQUALLY. some will argue by some brands being much better than others but hey if you got a 45000 lumen 400 watt cheap brand with only 4000 usable lumens and i sell you a hortilux for 2 or 3 times the price and in paper you will only see a 10-15 % increase in USABLE lumens, was is it worth the extra price for say 4600 usable lumens instead of 4000.? of course it is to the clueless who use them. but unfortunately in led lighting NO ONE BRAND IS CREATED EQUALLY OR EVEN CLOSE. #2 not only are there different brands but different power modules driving them, some more efficient than others, different chips with sometimes specific ranges of wavelengths and even wired differently from one another, some are wired in series, some are wired in parallel, and some in combination of both. NEVER MEASURE AN LED BY WATTAGE DRAW i can hand make you a panel that draws 1000 watts but if i use 1 watt chips you will lack intensity and penetrating power. also if i use the wrong wavelengths you now have 1000 watts of annoying party lights and not growing lights. wattage in led lighting is ONLY good for determining how much money you are going to use or save. #3 when it comes to the chipsets a 3watt led has the ability to draw 3 watts but hardly ever does and YOU DONT WANT IT TO because peaking power draw shortens led life. look at 1 watt led panels if you count the leds you will discover that they will only draw 50-80% of the 1 watt/led. so rule of thumb the higher wattage capable leds will always be brighter than low wattage leds. #4 because of the different ways to wire the circuitry you can have 2 panels each with the same number and same brand of leds each using the exact same power module but have different power draws. in my personal experience i have seen side by side 2 watt led panels in which a lower wattage drawing unit was visually brighter than the higher wattage drawing unit. so please do your research before buying an led light. also never go by someone selling you a unit by par value once again what good is a par value of a million if your spectrums are wrong
