I'm an LED newbie. I read up as much as I could before eventually settling on a
Spider Farmer SF-4000. I was immediately impressed with the brightness, compared to my 600W HPS or MH. It uses 450 watts at the wall as purchased. Switching abruptly from the MH to
Spider Farmer caused major drooping and yellowing almost immediately. After 4 days, the plants showed slight improvement. I had to take my brand new 900 dollar (to my Canadian door) apart to dim it, so I made a bracket and mounted the driver on its side to facilitate access to the screw and maybe help dissipate a little heat.
I ended up getting SF-1000, SF-2000, and also a Mixjoy brand 'equivalent' to the SF-2000. The same diodes and same driver, and a thicker board that didn't flex were selling points. Also, 'dimmable' did not mean taking it apart- and it was cheaper. It's easily as bright as the SF-2000. But here's the thing; the SF-2000 has 606 diodes, and the Mixjoy has 444, IIRC. So the Mixjoy pushes the diodes harder to get the same amount of light with less diodes. Less diodes and potential longevity for less money than
Spider Farmer.
I'm not going to bash
Spider Farmer, but their communication could certainly stand improvement. I asked very specific questions and got responses from them, but the responses did not answer my very specific questions. I gave up, to be honest. I asked the same questions elsewhere, again with answers, just not answers to what was asked. I'll give a little background and then state the question I can't get a good answer to. The SF-2000 uses 202 watts at the wall. The SF-4000 uses 450 watts. I verified this to be close to right on. The SF-2000 has exactly half the diodes of the SF-4000, which has 1212. The drivers are identical. These are the facts as I know them. My question is: why are the SF-2000 lights rated to flower a 2X4 area, when an SF-4000 is rated to flower a 5X5 area. 2 of the smaller lights would give better versatility and better light spread. Also, I have another concern. Are the diodes in the SF-4000 being over-driven, OR are the diodes in the SF-2000 being under-driven. The disparity defies logic, in my opinion. This was a very important thing for me to know, since I switched to almost all
Spider Farmer. Any information I got from
Spider Farmer was information freely available, and I'd already read it before my purchases. I did chose to go with more SF-2000 because the intensity in the middle of a 4 1/2'X4 1/2' flower area was too much with the SF-4000.
That's part of my 'story' about the journey into LED lighting. Oh, one last thing. Side by side with a 600W HPS, the SF-4000 kicked its ass.