_Check out my other reviews:_ *"1000" LED Grow Lights Shootout pt 1:* ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-g6n8VhVGKDY.html *"1000" LED Grow Lights Shootout pt 2:* ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-WmjOSzSF-HI.html *Spider Farmer SF300 / SF600:* ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-RXbR-hcXeQ4.html *Spider Farmer SF2000:* ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-lK28aiRQ_Vs.html *Spider Farmer SF4000:* ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-Cl5P3sKDQ0o.html *Active Grow LoPro Max 320W:* ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-PCaesi_M5DQ.html *Maxsisun MG3000:* ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-Tw6-w2gybgo.html This UPS power station can backup a grow light! ► ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-h3sUUHCEqbs.html Check out my *Grow Light Cost Calculator:* ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-aToYhyPZMVs.html _Learn more about artificial lighting and plant growth:_ ► What is PAR vs ePAR Light? ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-kUpEQ4kU148.html ► The impact of Red or Blue light on plant growth: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-sfihE4IuFuU.html ► To avoid Tip Burn: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-gHWf4Hfi3hA.html ► Light Cycles & DLI: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-dQlOJ1zvoPI.html
@@Sarah-wt2zk I don't stare directly up at the diodes. That being said, I don't wear any glasses when using it. And it does not produce UV, so it is safe for skin. Here is the spectrum: albopepper.com/images/spider-farmer-sf1000-full-spectrum-led-grow-light.png
Doing my own research, before reading reviews, and watching videos I chose to get 2, Spider farmer 2000 lights. Everything I keep reading backs up my research, that I made the right choice. They seem like great lights with very low power consumption!
Thank you Big Time for explaining stuff and for keeping manufacturers honest by calling them out on their BS! There's too much rip-off out there lately online! We depend on people like you and you're few and far in-between. Excellent work!
By far, the most entertaining light science videos on the internet. I watch a lot of them, most are boring & overly complicated. Your videos make learning fun & I retain the knowledge. You are an excellent teacher.
Nerd alert: You gave a passing mention to the coating covering the Spider Farmer. I used to work in the semiconductor industry on monitoring/testing systems in caustic or acidic environments that used that kind of clear coating. It's called conformal coating (but we called it caramel coat). It's a mess trying to repair something covered in it and then it had to be reapplied in order to reseal the spot. The reason it was so hard to work with is because it's so durable that it even resisted the solvents needed to melt it to make the repair. The fact that they use it when it adds cost to the process is a +1 for me.
@@richgunckel6483 yes i have a sf4000 and turned all the way up it actually pulls 618 watts but i have it toned down to the 450 they say it is and its still super bright in my 4x4
I'm running an Sf-2000 as well. Difference is night and day and ya, that cost? How could you go wrong. Plus, if you contact them directly, they're usually willing to discount at least 10% of whatever the current price is. On top of deals that may already be on. They're competing in a high competitive, new quantum board market and love/need exposure. Just in case you ever want to buy another one😉!
AlboPepper , I was initially going to get this LED but opted for a 600W wakyme, considering it’s my first attempt. First attempt has proven to me that I’m capable and to be honest, I’m obsessed with this hobby therefore it’s time to upgrade. Hindsight, should’ve bought spider from the start. So..I’ve got a 3x3 with a TomJuana that’s fixing to flower and my sprouts (4) are in a closet I converted to a makeshift grow room with a crappy Walmart light. I am remedying that right now-if I get another 3x3 should I get the 2000? I don’t want to get another subpar light again, but I don’t want to over do it either. Can I go bigger with tent space with the 2000? I know you covered this , sorry,
Albopepper - You earned my subscription @ the end when you told all the companies with over priced LEDs where they can stick it. Thank you sir, the more people we get saying and doing this the better the community can grow. Here I go to binge watch your channel. Have a great one!
Thank you so much for all the work you do on this channel! I am just starting to do research on indoor growing and I keep returning to your channel for accurate and unbiased information and comparisons. All the descriptions on Amazon have a lot of marketing speak so it is difficult to make any informed decisions. Keep up the great work!
This is probably like the 3rd RU-vid comment I've made in my life, but I felt compelled to tell you that this is unequivocally the best product review I've ever seen. Thank you.
Haha i had to comment once i saw the "mari-tomatos" line. Just like your website and other videos you provide a lot of well balanced and insightful info. Keep it up and thanks for all the help!
Thank you for such a thorough and subjective review. I’ve been looking to buy my first real grow light and it’s videos like yours that have proven to be the most helpful since there can be so many fake reviews and biased sellers. I hope you’re at least putting the other grow lights to good use while you have them, if not, I’ll take them off your hands, haha!! Keep up the quality videos!
I love that "Sticky Fly Plant" you have there. I want these for medicine, but I also tried growing fly plants in the past because I am facinated with them. they always died in the winter, so maybe with grow lights now I will start some again in the future :)
This is the much greatly improved videography of Albo Pepper. You have an excellent presentation, content and performance with this new video. Please note that there are numerous folks and light manufacturers out there that still embrace grams/watt as a valid method to evaluate grow lights. However, when we discuss grow lights today in 2020 much scientific measurement theory is now pedestrian. In that effort, to name drop we need to check Shane, MIGRO and Bruce Bugbee, Apogee Instruments, among many others to observe that the grow light discussion has matured into a verbal lexicon that you have so eloquently presented. Thanks for providing this information.
Great review. I’ve been looking for a light to grow lettuce, peppers, tomatoes, strawberries, herbs and kale. I’m going to try doing this all hydroponically using the Kratky method. I’m very excited to have some fresh produce. This light seems like overkill but I like the quality, efficiency and dimmability. I hope this light lasts a long time and works well for a variety of veggies and fruit. In the future I’d love a video showing what you think is an ideal hydroponic Veggie grow setup is with affiliate links to everything you use. And show you setting it up. And you could do a follow video of you setting up hydroponic veggies in it (Kratky method preferred). And then you could do follow videos of how things go with it.
I recently built myself a 250 Watt board with Samsung Horticulture Linear arrays (L2). It's really simple: Go to DigiKey, buy the modules, an adequate heat sink, drill holes in it, put thermal paste on, drill holes for hanging cables, buy the adequate Mean Well Driver and you're good to go. 2.7 umol/J, lots of blue, red and a bit of green. At full power, the heat sink gets up to 45°C max. You can't go more efficient than that (for this price).
I almost ended up getting a blurple light for around the same price as the SF-1000. Thanks AlboPepper! I got the light in today and they come with a separate dimmer now! Not the one behind the driver.
I've been an old school outdoor maritomatoe cultivar since 1979 and never once brought it indoors due to stubborn beliefs. With age comes wisdom or so I'd like to think and now I've decided to try something new. This was a great video for leading along the path of understanding how to rate these dann things. Finally 70 videos later I find one that speaks my kind of English lol I thought I was the lone maritonatoe cultivar lol Thanks, great insightful video I'll take two. No really I'm going to order 2 for a 3x3 experimental (get a feel for it) set up 👍
The theme of Stranger Things starts playing...It's the science teacher at Hawkins Middle School, Mr. Clarke! ;) Seriously though, you do look like him, AlboPepper :) Thanks for this episode, very illuminating ba-dum-tishh Seriously again, it is.
Really very good review ,, very truthful and very realistic about what is being sold to us. Here in Ireland the price for the SF1000 is 162 euros (180) dollars and from what you are telling us ,,there are cheaper lights giving the same results . The SF4000 is 812 euros (904 dollars) and dose a much better job,, BUT my god the price ,,its crazy .
Each person only gets one guess. ;) However, I can assure you that that's not the reason. I decided to add in the text because I was re-uploading anyway. I had originally made a disclaimer at the end. But I figured it would be even more transparent to post the disclaimer at the very beginning too.
How is this light still holding up....I've seen it review by a bunch of people but I enjoy you in depth review. Thanks keep up the great work and stay safe
So far, so good. Been running the SF-1000 at 100 watts and the SF-2000 at 75 watts for 5 months. Plant growth has been the best I've ever had. Quite satisfied so far!
@@Albopepper awesome, I'm really think I might buy myself a lamp or 2 to start my hydro setup. Been watching your videos for a while and I love how in depth you go with your analayse. I will try and use that promo code of yours once I get out of the hospital and get settled back home. Take care and stay safe.🍻
As someone who is interested in growing vegetables during the winter this review was useful. Many reviews seem geared only towards cannabis which I don't care about.
Thank you for making this video. I’m aware of these scams but a lot of growers are not. Thanks again for saving the consumer! Also do you know if that spectrum graph given is accurate? I’m very interested
I have a variety of succulents in my garage for the winter. I have about 60 small plants. Is this a good grow light for succulents to keep them compact? Your video is very informative. Thanks!
When such lights were not available i made my own with white blue n orange LED that too focused ones without heat sinks as they don't need it was in 2008..for my plant house .just to match sun like colour problum was i had to solder hundred of them with set of three + a resistor..that too on a project pcb ..consumed lot of time ...but was worth back then
Great video, I feel like I'm reasonably up to date with how LEDs are evolving and have been looking for a review of the Samsung chips. Is a 4 channel light good enough to mature a "non-medical" tomato plant or perhaps an indoor orange tree? I thought a tiny amount of UV would promote growth or shew pests. Does UV or more channels help?
Thanks for watching Arthur. UV light does have some advantages as you've mentioned. But LEDs are less efficient at generating UV vs PAR wavelengths. I've seen good growth without the UV. But the broader the spectrum, the better. I think these particular models have a nice blend.
*$50 Amazon Gift Card!* Recently I encountered a situation which caused me to tweak & reupload this video. Even though it had just hit 149k views! To rebuild the video's performance, I'm awarding a $50 Amazon gift card to the FIRST RU-vid viewer who can reasonably guess why I re-uploaded the video. Each viewer gets ONE guess which much be posted in the video comments. You'll need a valid email address for finalizing the reward. _(Sorry but my family members don't qualify to enter.)_ See if you can guess what happened!
Looking to do micro greens, then in the future larger plants, would you recommend this light? At what distance, and would you do full power ( actually the 2000) or lowering it? Thanks love your channel.
Great content !, thanx for sharing. I would like to point out though, that comparing PAR efficiencies of lamps with different spectrum is like comparing apples and peppers :). A grow lamp with high blue content will have much better efficiencies than one with energies distributed more evenly across the whole visible range. Needless to say, if a grow lamp has UVB or NIR, that light will reduce efficiency. May be you could shoot a video and explain what is your ideal spectrum for different plants. Cheers
Another misconception when reviewing grow lamps is about the temperature of the heat sink. A relatively cold heatsink could mean that it is failing to dissipate heat correctly. Only way to be certain of the quality of the lamp is to measure the LED temperature and make sure it is below the recommendation. Measuring LED temperature is by no means straightforward though.
Hello thankyou for running this you tube demo. I have just bought the Quatum LED SF 1000 light for my Hoya propogation. My question is this. How high above the plants should the light sit? I will have them in a 3ft by 3ft reflective lined box. The plants are in clear plastic boxes to keep in humidity at 70% and heat 22 degrees. I have heat Matts coming and will have to figure out the heat in the plastic boxes by shifting their lids. But it's the height of the light I'm not sure about. I'm also not sure how long I should have the light going for. I'm watching your SF 2000 and you explain all my questions but I have the SF 1000. Inally its summer here I keep the plastic boxes at 23 and humidity of 60% ish. But I dont want direct sun light on them and naturally as the sun leaves my morning window I loose light so, is it better to grow them under the quantum or morning dappled natural sunlight... I'm a total virgin grower and learning hence me watching you...looking forward to your reply. Kate New Zealand
What do u think about the mars hydro ts 1000 compared to this? Basically the same or is the spider justified in being slightly more expensive?? Thnx bro 👊🏼
Nice vid. I was just looking at this light and wondering if it could do anything. Only thing that scares me is I think I read that they are made by Meizhi. I had one of their lights before where the bloom switch went out within a year, I contacted them because I was within warranty and all they wanted to do was send me a replacement chip and instructions on how to solder it in. Also wanted to charge me for the shipping. Crazy. I hope I’m wrong though because this light sounds good. Except for the name. Reminds me of spider mites...
Thanks for watching. From what I've read, the Spider Farmer company is an independent branch. In general, one thing that's nice about these light designs is that there are no switches or fans. Much less circuitry to fail. And the driver is a much better quality driver than others.
Might I suggest looking at the "clones" of the brand name competitor? Meijiu 480w and Kingbrite 480w are effectively the same chips and boards, and it will give you an additional opportunity to cast massive shade on the chinese middleman resellers. Bava makes some quality looking lights, but I don't know if their 720w is a true 720, since I can't get any light maps from them.
Thanks for the great video! Very informative!! I’m interested in the sf1000 and sf2000 for my nepenthes and carnivorous plants. However, before I purchase, are any of these products UL or ETL listed or certified? Also, would you recommend getting the sf1000 and running it at full power or getting the sf2000 and dimming it to best suit my PPFD needs?
Thanks for watching Steven! I'm not sure on the UL / ETL listing status. But my personal recommendation is to get an SF-2000 if it's within your budget. If you've seen my 2nd video in this series, you know that it's a great option. I'm currently running both right now for some seedling experiments. And I keep feeling tempted to buy a 2nd SF-2000 to replace the SF-1000. Both work great, but the underdriven SF-2000 is insanely cool to the touch. And you have an even larger area of consistent light coverage!
AlboPepper - Drought Proof Urban Gardening FYI I emailed Spiderfarmer directly and they got back to me promptly (great customer service). They said all their lights are ETL certified, which is great because my biggest worry is the safety of all these budget LED grow lights coming out of China. I also emailed HGL about their 100 V2 and they said unfortunately their only ETL certification is for their 550 V2 r spec. Just thought I’d post this in case anyone else was wondering about this very topic. Thanks for the reply! Looking forward to more videos.
The old philosophy for a LED lights worth was how big the diode wattage is. Example 5 watt diodes are going to penetrate deeper into a Canopy than 3 watt diodes. Then of course they went larger as you know with 10 watts. This light appears to have more diodes so I suspect the diodes are of a low wattage. What are your beliefs on this?
A photon doesn't know what diode it came from. All PAR photons have the potential to drive photosynthesis. But if you want to boost production and growth then you need to boost the number of photons. Photon quantity is what really matters and that's why we measure the PPF of a light or the PPFD over the surface that is illuminates. For better canopy penetration you need more photons. Also you might try to scatter those photons in various directions across the canopy. And something that helps quite a bit with that is including green photons. Those colors penetrate deeper into plant tissues. They also bounce around and hit lower leaves more easily. That's what counts. So what is the total light output of a fixture in PPF? And how efficient is it at converting electricity to light? That's what I look at. This talk about 5 watt and 10 watt diodes is all a bunch of smoke and mirrors. It's marketing hype designed to distract consumers from what really matters. A photon is a photon.
Would you still recommend this particular light today for $150? If so, do you believe one of these would be sufficient for 2-3 autoflowering maritomatoes (housed in a 32"x32"x63" grow tent)? I already purchased one after watching this review, but I'm wondering if I will actually need to buy another one. I'm hoping that isn't the case since I'm not sure I can really afford a second one of these, but I don't want to start a grow if I can't provide my plants with the energy they'd require. I'm new to this all, so I truly apologize if these are silly questions.
Hi Rae. Your questions are not silly. They are very good questions! Let me ask you this: Are you planning on doing a Sea of Green? Are you planning on 18hr light cycle? Or 24 hr light?
@@Albopepper Thank you so much for the quick reply, sir. This will actually be my very first grow attempt, so I was going to try to avoid manipulating the plants too much in order to get a feel of how the plants grow naturally. I love the idea of doing a sea of green (or screen of green) to maximize the space/light, but I embarrassingly haven't researched either technique enough yet to know how to properly/comfortably pull it off. However, I will always yield to expert advice and will start studying up on it if you think this is the way to go. I was planning on doing an 18/6 light cycle simply to conserve some energy, but I am 100% open to doing a full 24 if that is what it necessary. Thanks so much again. I am eternally grateful to you and your amazing videos for helping a "black thumb" like me learn how to grow my own medicine.
Have you heard much about the Meijiu lights from China (Alibaba)? I got one for Christmas, but I don't have the proper equipment to test the PPFD. My 240W model cost about $180 shipped, and I would love to know if it holds up vs the SF. Mine uses Samsung LM301H chips too.
thank you sir for your good and informative video i was thinking es sky 300 v2 was best lower voltage led light but now i think the spider sf 2000 beat it sf 2000 - 2.7µmol/J 202W (typical) $289.99 sky300 - 2.34 Umol/J* 300W €698.00 anyway witch one you will rather have for 3 by 3 area :)
Great video as always buddy. I say, take the free lights, give an honest review of them, and then give them away to some of your viewers. I would be happy to take all those overpriced LED's off your hands afterwards. Lol
The distance impacts the light intensity. And there is a direct relationship between light intensity, light duration and plant growth. In a 28" x 28" area, a distance of 24" would work well. But you need to also select the appropriate light cycle. Probably a 12hr ON / 12hr OFF cycle. That should produce a DLI of about 16. To cover a larger area, raise the light and then lengthen the day cycle duration accordingly.
Dear Al, I want to start growing microgreens very soon. I have seeds (only three variety since I this is my first try), will watch your video about potting mix next before ordering potting mix, and plan to get the light (Spider. . . 2000) from Amazon. The latter two will come fairly quickly. I have a question though. Can I use the lighting without a grow tent?
Thank you for the video, very very informative. I'm new to growing Maritomatoes :) and I have a question. Should I buy these LED lights? I'm growing 2x2 small tent, 2-3 autflower maritomato plants MUCH APPRECIATED
Thanks for watching! This light would be a good fit for that area. It should work well at a 12" distance with a good DLI at an 18 hr light cycle. And a DLI over 40 at 24 hr cycle.