Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

If you view my Amazon reviews you can see that I've been running numerous agricultural science experiments for the last 18 months or so. I have purchased almost every single "LED Grow Lights" in the 300-600w range, all the 36w, 48w, and 60w "LED grow light bulbs", all the way up to to the majority of the 600-2000W LED panels. I have been been running everything in a laboratory environment with controlled conditions. I use an Apogee Quantum Par meter, and several other meters as testing redundancies. The plants in the recent experiments are: Basil, Strawberries, Dill, Variants of Lettuce, Lavender, tissue culture of California Redwoods, Marijuana (Indica and Sativa strain), tissue culture of peas. Nutrient delivery is computer controlled and precisely monitored. Over the last 18 months I ran experiments in DWC hydroponics STERILE, DWC "Bennie", Aeroponics, Ebb and flow, ebb and drain, Kratky method, and full aquaponic systems. These ROLEADRO Panels are built very well and have an external (small) ballast. The ballast gets mildly warm under continuous use 18/6hr. Mildly warm means 88-105f with an ambient temperature of 74f-88f, The backside of the panel is flat and looks to be tin, maybe aluminum. It doesn't get hot. Surface temp probe reads 82f on the metal backside, after it had been on 18hrs straight. Out of all the LED multispectrum panels that I tested in the 60watt (or below) category, these 45w panels delivered the SECOND best PPFD Photosynthetic Photon Flux Density and overall visible growth results in all plants when placed within extremely close proximity to the plants (micro greens) (top light tested is the Taotronics 36w bulb which even (sadly) beats out most of the “1200”watt LED lights ( https://www.amazon.com/TaoTronics-Hydroponics-Organic-Greenhouse-Applicable/dp/B01HPIPM70/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1492746912&sr=8-2&keywords=taotronics+grow+light ) Using an Apogee Full spectrum smart Quantum sensor, the SQ-520, the light performs very well for a 45w panel. It pulls: 330 micro moles at 4 inches 275 micro moles at 8 inches 192 micro moles at 12 inches 115 micro moles at 18 inches 70 micro moles at 24 inches 34 micro moles at 3 feet. That's impressive compared to the other cheap LED panels offered on Amazon which are putting out around 9-40μm and saying they are 4x the power. The spectrum falloff is within expected range, I would say the ideal effective range for these is relatively close, around 8-14”. You could place them higher however the PAR drops significantly after 1.5ft. Keep your expectations within scientific reasoning, don't expect to bloom 16 Costco sized strawberries off this one single panel. However you could grow TWO entire 20x10 trays of flowers on this easily. You could grow a SINGLE 20x10 of Microgreens (healthily) under this. To provide a comparative perspective, marijuana seedlings thrive when you start seedlings with a minimum of 150µmol, preferably 300µmol+, teen (2 weeks into VEG or futher) marijuana from healthy strains are known to prefer a minimum of 500µmol+ , something that most (singular LED lights) LED's are not capable of for long periods of time (4/21/2017). Most of the good LED lights kick out around 1200-2300µmol and the ones that do it continuously RELIABLY and run cool to the touch, will cost anywhere from $900-4000. You can use the following calculation to determine the hourly PAR. Substitute your actual instantaneous PAR measurement for the '55µmol’' below: Hourly PAR= (55µmol / m^2s) ( 60s / 1min) (60min / 1hr) (1 mol / 1 x 10^6µmol) = 0.36 mol / m^hour In case anyone isn't tracking along, here are some definitions: Humans use Lumens. Don't measure a lights effectiveness by it's luminosity. If you do, you're just an idiot. The FEIT 300watt LED $40 bulb is extremely bright and can light up a .25 acre backyard, it's marketed as "stadium lighting replacements" however it puts off a miserable 10µmol within 2" of the bulb and couldn't grow anything. Plants use PAR, PAR stands for photo-synthetically active radiation (PAR). PAR is NOT a measurement or “metric” like feet, inches or kilos. Rather, it defines the type of light needed to support photosynthesis. The three factors anyone (even little ol granny growing Magnolias indoors) should care about when growing under artificial lighting is: PPF - Photosynthetic Photon Flux, PPF measures the total amount of PAR that is produced by a lighting system each second. PPFD - Photosynthetic Photon Flux Density (PPFD), measures the amount of PAR that actually arrives at the plant, or as a scientist might say: “the number of photosynthetically active photons that fall on a given surface each second”. Photon Efficiency....Photon Efficiency refers to how efficient a horticulture lighting system is at converting electrical energy into photons of PAR. Many horticulture lighting manufacturers use total electrical watts or watts per square foot as a metric to describe light intensity. However, these metrics really don’t tell you anything since watts are a measurement describing electrical input, not light output. Micromoles (looks like this µmol ) – Intensity of a light is measured over a fixed area to understand the ability of a light to cover an area with that intensity (coverage). Micromoles of photons per square meter per second (µmol/m2/s) measures the intensity by taking measurements in a consistent 4 x 4 grid, measures the coverage of that intensity–commonly known as PPFD per 4 x 4 grid. Rather than measuring light intensity by lumens per watt with a lux meter, growers should use a quantum PAR meter to measure the micromoles of photons per square meter per second (µmol/m2/s) at the canopy level. To best calculate PAR light intensity coverage using PAR mapping 4 x 4 grids, be sure and measure at various heights. Spot readings (PPF) metrics are misleading. G rowers use PPFD per square meter to accurately measure intensity and coverage of that intensity. If you're like "whoa dood, I'm just trying to grow baby tomatoes for grams and you're going Bill Nye on me", I'm simply saying: These panels are great for certain applications like seedlings and microgreens, it is not suitable for any large blooming or fruit applications. I hypothesize that you cannot yield marijuana under these at all (unless you're crazy), you can however start seedlings. This is also perfect for sustaining Tissue Cultures and have been very reliable. I have ordered 8 of these now and use them in the laboratory. If you want to be MINDBLOWN......, the $26 Taotronics 36w LED grow light BULB puts out a WHOPPING multispectrum 1500µmol at 1.5ft You would need a couple per plant for large fruits, vegetables or marijuana, but you cannot beat the cost factor and....after running the lights for 24/7, you can easily fully grab the bulb/heatsink, unscrew it, and it won't even be slightly warm. I can conclude that while soil on Mars is healthy enough to sustain Strawberries, they are absolute water monsters with low positive environment benefits (oxygen consumption vs depletion) and not ideal candidates for space colonization... I love science!