205w LED vs 400w HID Let the battle begin!

dont make us wait so long....

bump. we are waiting

right...i got blue balls at this point.

hey been following this thread, very interesting Indeed, i might even consider buying one Are the prices the same for over the boarder north?

haven't stopped by here in a while and I'm already anxious to hear the numbers, this has been a nice grow show, thank you blaze


-DrGreen

Time for the results...

205w Penetrator Led 203 grams total.

400w Hid (Metal Halide) 276 grams total.





Total Weight
Gold goes to the HID with 276 grams...

GPW
Gold goes to the LED with 203 grams...

Smoke comparison tells me that both are tasty, The hid nugs seem slightly stronger (More Lung Expansion) However its very close and taste nearly identical.

The overall density is actually very close not much of a difference I could put a gram nug on the scales of each for a comparison...

I am impressed with the led light, It produced very well better then normal gpw than I average with HID. It's actually a great veg light and good overall veg/flower light.

For the small grower LEDS are a very valuable peice of equipment, Much more effecient than HID's.

That being said I think they are great for a small personal stash grower or a stealthy style mini cab setup.

For the heavy growers looking to produce lots of weight HID is still the best bang for your buck. Reason why is to get a 1k comparable LED it would require multiple lower wattage lights to equal 1 1k hps.

Example
250w HID 210$

205w LED 700$

Not to bad right. In this situation the LED seems reasonable in pricing. In this situation I would get a LED light its worth 2-3x more in cost IMHO.

Now when you get into larger operations commercial etc, Leds are not worth the price...

1k hps 400$

2 345w LEDS 2000$
1 205w LED 700$
2700$ for a 1000w comparable led setup.

Thats over 6x the cost of a 1k light..

This is where the price becomes more then the worth IMHO.

I would say they are worth 2-3x the price of HID, Anything above that and they are no longer worthwhile IMHO.

For smaller 200w - 400w setup leds are at IMHO acceptable prices.

For 1k and above LEDS just cost to much and are not worth the price.

For 550$ you can get the best 1k light hood ballast bulb combo out there, Which in order for me to switch to leds personally I'd need a 1k comparable LED light for no more then 1650 which is 3x the price of HID.

Anything more then 3x the cost of hid IMO its not worth it to switch...

Conclusion
LEDS are very effecient lights, More effecient then HID no dought about it.

Great show blznp. +K

Hey whats up Blaze! thanks for takin the time to do this thread and posting you honest opinions from the very begining.....now that its all said and donw u can enjoy the fruits of your labor What are your plans for using led now that this test is over? I think u have just helped to sell a few units to those who were on the fence lol.....take care

good stuff blaze - here is my attempt at a grams per watt comparison

a 400 HID actually uses at least 475w - probably more like 500 but we'll say 475...

276/475 = 0.58 grams per watt for the HID

the 205 LED actually uses 182watts

so 203/182 = 1.11 grams per watt for the LED

great test blaze, thanks

VG

Irie_Lion said:

Hey whats up Blaze! thanks for takin the time to do this thread and posting you honest opinions from the very begining.....now that its all said and donw u can enjoy the fruits of your labor What are your plans for using led now that this test is over? I think u have just helped to sell a few units to those who were on the fence lol.....take care

Click to expand...

Honestly I'm probably going to put it into the veg room for a veg light or for moms or something, I got a 2k perpetual room that I could keep up and running with it and the 400w mh...

nice...thanks for the quick reply. I kinda figured thats what u had planned with the 2 1ks already in use for bloom. Great job once again!

yeah these LED's beat the pants off flouros/cfl for veg and dont use much power.

You have changed my mind about Led lights, but i think i will still hold out until the price comes down a little. Nice job blaze.

nice gpw numbers. thanks for this thread it was cool to follow. id like to try their 63 watt system for a micro setup at some point.

nice number's there! It's sweet to finally see the final outcome, feels like i started watching this 5 months ago. THANK YOU BLAZE

Led's definitely have their spot in the future when prices drop, I'm very impressed!

-DrGreen

nice job blaze, thanks for the great comparison. definitely going to start saving up and get an LED or two for my veg room.

Very nice thread Blaze! You did such a great job on this test! It's nice to see that these lights can work but I see what you are saying about the LED's being efficiant on a smaller scale. I would personally like to see the test done with a HPS but that's just me. In my personal experience, I've found it difficult to get 1 GPW with a 400 HPS but I've put a lot more focus on 1000's instead of 400's and I found it a lot easier to get over 1 GPW with 1000's as opposed to 400's. Verdant stated that his 400 watt uses 500 watts of power which would be 25% more power being used which is pretty high. I don't know if that is true but if it is, it shows that small HID's are less efficiant than 1000 watt HID's. My 1000 Watt HPS only uses 1050 watts so it is using 5% more power. Here are the pictures to show that:



If I had a micro grow, I would be using LED's to maximize my yields for the price but anything over 600 watts, I would use HID's because of how efficiant they can be and for how much space they can use to fill canopies. You have shown that LED's can compete with HID's but to me it seems pretty similar. It has been said in the past that the 205W LED will yield the same as a 400 HID but we can all see that it wasn't true, at least in this test. It's nice to see that you can get a GPW with LED's though, so I'm sure people will be happy about that.

After reading your thread, I see that you are using 30" x 30" for each space. That would be 6.25 square feet of growing space per light. In my opinion, there were too many watts used for the HID space because you used 64 watts per square foot and that is a little much for me. Personally, I don't like to go over 50 Watts per square foot of HID's cause it doesn't translate into more bud weight and it's just throwing extra electricity out the window. I'm sure some of you know what I mean. To have to spend $2,700 for 1000 watts of LED to get 1000 grams is just crazy. It was a great test though!

The results are still somewhat skewed.

If you placed ALL your plants under the HPS alone, you still probably would have yielded upwards of 400+ grams.

If you placed ALL your plants under the LED alone, you still probably would have yielded only 200 or so grams.

HPS has an overflow of energy that isn't being used in the experiment whereas the LED - almost ALL of its energy is being used.

Thanks Blaze. Nicely done test grow.