Led Grow Light Review - How To Find The Best Models Of 2010

When LED Grow Lights hit the indoor growing scene a few years back, they did so with a fair amount of controversy. How do they stack up against the standard HID grow light and can they produce results that are even close to the hype? If you do your homework and a little bit of investigating to find the best LED grow lights, the answer is a resounding "YES."

When using LED grow lights, it is vital to understand that you are trading the high-intensity brute force concept (expensive energy cost) of metal halide and high pressure sodium grow lights for the focused power of an LED grow light.

With the typical HID setup, you must spend a crazy amount of money on accessories such as heat extraction fans, ducting, ballasts, and so forth. Because all wavelengths of light are emitted - from red to blue and all the colors in between - your plants are bombarded with excess light and heat that do not help the plant grow. With an average efficiency of about 15%, most energy from HID grow lights is thrown away in the form of useless light (light that cannot assist in photosynthesis) and potentially harmful heat. You may as well be lighting your money on fire.

Top LED grow lights on the market get 95% efficiency meaning that almost all light emitted is easily absorbed by growing plants for photosynthesis. The lights produce a small amount of heat (remain warm to the touch) and almost none of the light is wasted. To accomplish this, years of research and development goes into determining what specific wavelengths of light to target that will give the biggest boost to the photosynthesis process. Blue, red, and to some extent orange light are the most beneficial colors for growing plants indoors. Logically, this makes complete sense as plants are green. This means they reflect all green light and most yellow light. For a plant, green and yellow light is basically useless for growing - so there is no need to waste electricity on a light that produces these wavelengths.

To be sure, choosing the right LED grow light for your indoor garden has its challenges. Just like any other product in existence there is a wide range of quality represented by the various brands available on the market. From the very basic models up to the Mercedes of LED grow lights, styles range in price, shape, light colors, and power output that all play a part in determining your success as an indoor grower. I can tell you from experience that, for the most part, you get what you pay for.

It's not to say that the only way to be successful is to buy the most expensive thing out there because cost is not the determining factor of quality. More important that cost is the quality and composition of the components used in manufacturing your LED grow light that is more closely related to growing success.

What you need to look for in an LED grow light is the power of each individual LED bulb. It is common to find 225 LED grow panels for sale very cheap - around $50-$100, however, you would totally waste your money. Each bulb in such an array typically has only 0.06 Watts. This is severely underpowered - unless of course you only want to grow a 4 inch tall plant. Because of the lack of power, you will get poor results, no canopy penetration, spindly plants, and some plants just wont grow or flower at all. The minimum power output to look for is 1 Watt per bulb - about 16 times more output than "bargain" LED grow lights and you are still saving a ton of money in electricity.

With the powerful, highly-targeted light from a high-quality LED grow light, you will experience thick, stocky vegetative growth with massive blooms and the biggest yields possible when growing indoors.