I think LED's are the way of the future no question, issue right now is cost, once the good ones come down in price then i think more people will make the switch. but there is still differences
If we're talking high end led's they can't be compared to single end hps they have surpass them . maybe not cheap knockoff ones but higher end ones I think so.
Do the high end led's surpass the high end DE hps. Thats the question I've been trying to answer, and i'm not so sure. I think it really depends on how one looks at it
the differences between the LED's and DE hps for me are this, cost, my high end DE hps are 1/4 the cost, for every one led I can get 4 DE hps. so how many lights one runs is a factor, different plant growth and structure between the 2 , depend on how you view that one maybe a positive one maybe a negative, veg and flower time, I do think DE hps is faster maybe 3-4 weeks faster over a entire grow. so for every 3-4 ish led grows you'll get an extra DE hps grow in the same time. power consumption Led wins that battle, but if your running your LED's extra time/weeks to do the same grow it may not win by as much as it looks on the face of things. For yield I see really no difference. I think the higher end led's have caught up to DE hps, however there is some variables I'm not sure of like in bigger rooms. amout of fixtures,cross lighting etc thats a whole other subject lol. plus room environment differences etc. so I'm not sure there is a clear cut one is better then the other.