How to Choose a Grow Light: T5 Fluorescent vs. CMH vs. LED Grow Lights Explained

Buying your first grow light for your indoor or even outdoor garden can be really, really intimidating. And there's just so many options as you can see here on this table. That's why in this video, we're going to go over the different types of grow lights, their advantages and disadvantages, and give you some insight on the one that might be best for you. Kevin Espiritu here from Epic Gardening, where it's my goal to help you grow a greener thumb. And really if you're getting into the world of indoor grow lights, it is totally, totally overwhelming. I mean, I just have one, two, three, four, five right here representing, well, six actually, representing three-ish different types of lighting technology. There's a huge budget range on these guys. And so that's why what we're going to do is we're going to say from low end to high end through each type of light, we're going to talk about why you might choose that one, what its advantages are over different lighting tech, as well at the very end of this video, this big light right here, this is the HLG 550 V2 R-Spec, quite a mouthful, but it's quite a light. We're giving it away at the end of this video. So stay tuned, cultivate that Like button for 20,000 hours of Epic sunlight. And let's get into it. The first thing we all must understand when we're choosing a grow light is what's the purpose of the light? Well, the light is there to replicate sunlight, which is the ultimate grow light. We don't have that indoors. And so we've invented a million and one different ways to replicate that to provide light to our plants. Now, the type of light really matters. There's a lot of important terminology in the grow light world. Now, I'm not going to dive all the way into that in this video. I've prepared a video called Three Things You Must Know Before You Buy an LED Grow Light that goes into exactly how to evaluate a light's efficiency and efficacy. So that's a whole other topic, which we'll get into if you want to check that video out. But basically what a grow light's trying to do is it's trying to emit light at a dense enough level in the right spectral range. And so when I say dense enough, what I mean is light emits as photons. You need enough photons hitting the plant canopy, hitting those leaves in the right wavelength. So light has different color temperatures. Those color temperatures are used by plants in different amounts at different parts of the growth cycle. So it can get very complex. And that's why I'm not talking about specifically that in this video. What we're going to do now is look at the very first light, T5 fluorescence. This big guy right here is a T5 fluorescence. This is the Prism Lighting Science High Output T5. It's a four foot fixture and there are four bulbs inside the fixture. So it's putting out a considerable amount of light over a nice large footprint. And that actually gets to the very first benefit of a T5 fluorescence is that they're typically sold in either two foot or four foot lengths. And then you can get either one, two, four, six, eight, 12 different bulbs in each one. So these can be very, very large or they can be relatively compact and small depending on your needs for your unique growing situation. This guy comes in at around 150 bucks and that's pretty cheap for a grow light that performs this well. Now the thing that's nice about a fluorescent is number one, they don't run very hot compared to some of the ones that we'll see later on. So you may not even have to ventilate your grow space depending on how you're growing. Number two, you also get a lot of customizability because you can pop these bulbs out and swap them with bulbs of a different color temperature. So for example, if you're growing something early on in its life, it wants a little bit more of that blue purple light, you can throw in the 6,500 Kelvin bulbs. And then as it moves on, you can throw in some 3,000 Kelvin bulbs and you have a nice transition. So you get a little bit more customizability there. Like I mentioned, they come in at a pretty low cost and they run pretty efficiently for the technology. Now the bulbs also come in either normal output, high output, or very high output. So NOHO, VHO. I recommend you probably want to just stick to the HO because that's the sweet spot of output and minimal heat output. So good light output, minimal heat output. So these guys, again, a lot of different configurations, a lot of different options, but this is probably most people's very first grow light. We're now moving into the world of HID or high intensity discharge lights. Now I only have one here, but before we talk about this one, let's talk about kind of the progression. A lot of people, a lot of growers will use a metal halide MH or a high pressure sodium HPS light. Now what they would typically do, at least in the past is you would grow with an MH at the start and you'd finish off your plants with a high pressure sodium. And if you're wondering why, well, if you've been listening, you know it's probably because the metal halide lights are putting out more of that blue purplish light. And then when you switch over to an HPS, you get more of that orange red light. And so vegetative flowering. That's the way to think about it. Now CMH lights, these guys kind of combine the best of both worlds. They put out a more blended spectrum of light. So you can use one light throughout the entirety of your grow. They put out quite a bit of light. So these are going to beat most high output T5 setups like we saw earlier. And they're pretty affordable. They're coming down in cost. When these first came out, they were really expensive. These days they're coming down in cost, but they're just a really fantastic system. And what I really like about them is first of all, they're very efficient. And when I say efficient, that means efficiency in the terms of converting energy into usable light for your plants. But number two, they have a very high CRI or color rendering index, which means that it looks like natural sunlight when it's coming out of the light, which means you're happier. Because when you open up your grow tent, you don't see this sort of blurple crazy look. It makes it easier to spot any disease, any pest issues, any environmental growing issues. So it's really nice. Now you need to buy a separate bulb when you get a plant or a light like this. So what we have here is the Philips Master Green Power Elite Agro. These things always have a lot of different names to them. 315 watts. So this is a 315 watt CMH. I just want to show you what this bulb looks like. Looks very high tech. So there you go. There's your CMH light bulb. This is what you plug in and this little guy right here is what lights the entire system. Installing this light's really simple. You have one perfect circle and you have one circle with a slight edge cut out of it. That's going to let you know the exact way to line it up in here. And you go in very gently, wiggle it around a little bit until you find that sweet spot, just like that. And then you turn it into place. Boom. Now as with everything in life and lighting, there are some downsides or there's some trade-offs you make whenever you choose a light. So with CMH, ceramic metal halide lights, they're going to be a little bit more expensive as far as your initial cost. But the runtime on this light will put it eventually, it kind of amortizes that cost out somewhere between a high pressure sodium HID style light and an LED light, which we're going to talk about later in the video. The other thing is there are some harmful rays that come out. It puts out ultraviolet light. And so you need to actually wear proper protection when you're working with CMH lights. And then third, it does put out quite a bit of heat. And that's something that either your T5 fluorescents, like we talked about or LEDs like we will talk about, will have a slight advantage over this type of light. We've left other types of lighting in the dust to discuss the next family, if you will, LEDs. I have four LED grow lights to show you starting with this very simple one from Prism Lighting Science. So this is sort of a vestige of the old school design of LEDs where you have this compact little box. There's two fans here to cool it down. And then you have a bunch of little diodes here. And so that really speaks to the first difference between LEDs and other styles of grow lights is the fact that they're made up of many different light emitting diodes. What that means is you can customize your spectrum. So you can create diodes that have more of a blue output, more of a red output, et cetera, and you can create custom blends. Now you'll see in the future why this style is sort of going the way of the dinosaur. But in general, LEDs have a much longer lifespan. These are going to last way longer than the bulbs we've seen in other lights. They are more efficient at converting energy into photons of usable light, although there are some considerations there that we'll talk about. And they run a whole lot cooler, especially because they have some built-in cooling, but they're just not putting out as much light and they're not putting out as much heat. So some disadvantages of LED grow lights. Number one can be their cost, although there are very low cost LEDs now. Sometimes those ones really aren't the highest quality, which speaks to the second disadvantage. There really has been an explosion of LED brands coming in from all parts of the world. Now I've talked about some of them here in the channel. And it can be very difficult to do quality control or do research on a particular brand. You don't know if what they say they're putting in is exactly what they're putting in. And so I find in the LED world, it's harder to find a quality brand that you can trust. So there's a little bit of that going on. And then finally, in actuality compared one to one, they're actually putting out less light than say your ceramic metal halide that we just looked at until you get to the very, very high end. So you can see, there's quite a bit of difference in this style right here with these diodes spaced at this distance and even the design of the diode itself than you have with this guy here. And that's because HLG is using a quantum board, which sounds really fancy. Basically what we're doing here is we have Samsung diodes, a really high quality diode that's putting out a lot of light. And it's just the technology of the design of the board that puts it into a new category. It puts out what we'll call full spectrum white light. And it is a better light just across the board compared to these older school LEDs. With these lights, you also need a driver on the back and the driver tech and quality will also speak to the quality of the light itself. So when you're buying a higher end LED, you're getting basically more light output, higher build quality, better components across the entire board and even more intelligent design. We're getting into the really cool LED grow lights. This is a full spectrum, HLG 300R spec. R spec means red spectrum. So it does skew a little bit more towards that red spectrum of light. But I mean, the design, super flat, super compact. It's a passively cool design. You'll notice there's not a heat sink on here, but it's designed in such a way that it dissipates heat pretty well. Although if you are growing this in a compact space, you would still need to ventilate that space to get some of that heat out of there. But man, this guy comes in at something like $450. It's got a dimmer knob on here. You've got the good driver components. And it's really overall a pretty good light in the right about 500 range. I would say it's almost one of the best lights in that range. The micromoles per joule, which is again, that ability of this light to take electric energy and turn it into photons of usable light at a good enough density. It's 2.6 micromoles per joule, which is extremely high, especially in the world of LEDs. Okay. We made it to the big kahuna. This is the one, literally this one that we'll be giving away in this video to some lucky Epic Gardener. Now this is the HLG 550R spec. This is an absolute tank. I mean, this guy is quite slender. It's still passively cooled. You've still got your dimming knob. You have your fantastic driver technology and you have all of the top of the line Samsung diodes. So you have everything you'd want out of the highest end LED you pretty much have in this light. Now, is this something that you would use if you're a seed starter or a leafy green or microgreen grower? Definitely not. Most people buying this, they're growing a very specific kind of crop, if you're getting what I'm saying. So this guy comes in somewhere around the $1,000 mark. So it is quite expensive and it's designed to replace a 1,000 watt HID system. So this guy here, our ceramic metal halide that I showed you guys earlier, remember this was a 315 watt. And so this one, the HLG 550R spec is designed to replace something more or less three times more powerful than that. And it does a fantastic job at that. As you can see, the world of indoor grow lights is expansive and it can be quite confusing and expensive if you purchase something that you didn't really research or you didn't really understand. You can underbuy a grow light and you can also overbuy a grow light. So let's just recap. First of all, you have your T5 fluorescence. This one I really, really like. Four foot, four tube, great footprint, good output of light for things like microgreens, baby greens, starting seeds, growing leafy things to fruition. You can even get, if you swap the bulbs out to those 3000 Kelvin, you can grow something all the way through its grow cycle. But really for my purposes, what I would use that one for is a really large footprint seed starting area or small leafy green style area. Although again, you can get a full grow out of that. Next you get into the world of the HIDs. So this is the ceramic metal halide, but if you wanted, you could go with the metal halide or an HPS like I mentioned earlier. These lights seem to be the best of both worlds and they're combining and just usurping those two older lighting technologies. So this is the 315 watt one. They make a 630, but for most people in a small grow operation, this is probably going to be your best bet. Again, that cost amortizes out as you use that light longer. So initial setup costs can be a lot higher and then it goes down over time. It fits somewhere in between the HPS and the LED world as far as total cost over time. Now, then you get into the world of LEDs. So in LEDs, remember you have these old school, I'm not going to call them vintage, but it's just an older technology with that blurple style look. This one is from Prism Lighting Science. Now I'm not trash talking these. These still work great and a lot of growers get fantastic results from them and they can come in quite a bit cheaper than some of the higher end stuff that you see right here. The only thing that I would say is if you can afford to spring for something, even just a little bit extra, I think it might be a good idea to kind of future proof your growing operation. Okay. So then you get into the full spectrum, Samsung diode, white LEDs, the beautiful, beautiful world of these horticulture lighting group ones. So you have your small, your medium and your big kahuna. And all of these, it's very expensive right now because you're buying the best of the best. It's kind of like when you're buying a computer part and you get the absolute best processor out there, that's going to be a lot more expensive than the second best processor out there. So you're using the absolute best technology. And so that's why it's really expensive. But if you're a high end grower who wants and even demands results, then these would be the ones that I would recommend. These are just top of the line. And so that brings us to the giveaway. As we mentioned at the beginning, we're doing a truly Epic giveaway. It might be the biggest giveaway I've ever done on Epic Gardening where we're giving away the HLG 550 V2 R-Spec, this big kahuna right in front of you. So this guy is probably one of the most high end LEDs that exists right now, as well as being quite an expensive light to give away. So it's really, really good. And I'm excited to give it to whoever's the lucky winner. So video description, there'll be a link. In the pinned comment, there'll be a link. And remember this, this almost just barely scratched the surface of talking about lighting technology. There's a lot of terminology to understand. There's a lot of complexity, a lot of different brands. How far do you place your light away? You know, there's all these different concepts that I didn't even talk about here, but I really wanted to give you just, Hey, what are the benefits and disadvantages of each type of lighting so you can make a better, more informed decision, no matter what light you buy and have a truly Epic garden. So thank you so much for watching guys. Thank you so much for the support here on the channel. Good luck in the garden and keep on growing.