New light

I'd go with the mars ts1000 between theses two. and it is based on mostly quantiative reasoning vs opinion. though some qualitative reasoning is required and you'll have to interject your personal preferences to see if they differ from my conclusions below. in this case, i doubt it... it's not a HUGE difference, but the mars has greater utility for any average garden, imo. less expensive day one, more light produced /larger area of coverage, and only negligibly less efficient at producing light. More utility here for most contexts, i'd wager. Why: First, kudos to mars hydro for improving the integrity of their spec sheets. they look spot on as opposed to over-promising in the past. it's good to give some postiive feedback to companies that are basically money-sucking vampires, lol. i hope it is a successful change, but as the JC Penny story should tell you, customers are not very bright. (jcpenny decided they'd stop with the theater of "sales" and just tag things at the price they intend to sell them at and same as before with the so-called sales... it resulted in loss of sales even though the prices did not go up from before... average customers are a dumb lot beyond comprehension) or, the 1/3rd pound fast food burger failure is another perfect example of such stupid, retarded behaviour... customers thought a 1/3rd point burger was smaller than 1/4 lbs.. holy fucking christ! that is not made up. anyway i degress.. Efficacy -- this will impact longevity and therefore loss of efficacy over time. as in - will it be 90% or brighter than the first day it was turned on after 5 years o rwill it degrade much faster than advertised? It is also directly related to energy use.. a higher number means you get more bang per watt expended. in this case, it's negligible difference and 100w vs 150w so not apples to apples in regard to meeting needs.. one can cover more space and that can easily trump a slight difference in efficacy tht amounts to a few pennies per month. SF - 2.5 mars 2.3 these are middling to lower-end efficacy. Do not expect either to last "50,000" hours while maintaining at least 90% of original intensity. They may still run fine after 50,000 hours but will be less than 90% as bright as day one. this degradation is something that speeds up over time.. so once it gets beond 90% it is going downhill faster and faster over time. they will both degrade faster than 50k hours/90% of light because they are running hotter than the spec sheet tested them, which is where that 50k figure comes from. Regardless, you'll still get 3-5 really good years of use out of it. longer if you don't grow year round or grow autoflowers (lights run longer for autos, therefore more of its life expended per a year) (if running 24/7 for 3 years that's 26k hours, so 4-5 years of good use is probably more accurate then they will start to decline quicly.. maybe get 1-2 more years.. you get the gist) So, these will basically last just as long as each other with negligible difference. in fact, i'd give a slight edge to Mars retaining more for longer due to lower watts per diode == less heat per diode / less degradation over time bc both bridgelux and samasung have similar longevity curves, though the bridgelus start at a slightly lower efficacy. ------------------------ Light production: SF is 250 umol/s of PAR light produced. Mars is 340umol/s of PAR light produced. ---------------- Coverage: Oprimal area of coverage... you can go bigger.. but don't drop below an area and light schedule that provides less than 22 DLI. This is based on 35-40 DLI target for ambient atmospheric co2 targets... can go 133-150% higher if increase co2 in atmosphere to 1200-1300ppm. (also requires tight envornmental control to go 133-150% higher with added co2) DLI = daily light integral, google for backgorund info. it is best way to understamd the amount of light you provide to the garden per day and doesn't matter what teh size of teh garden is or whether it's photoperiod or autoflower etc. so you can compare apples to apples given vastly different garden sizes and light schedules. Autoflowers on 18/6 -- This needs about 600 ppfd to achieve a nearly 40 DLI. We simply divide umol/s produced by light by this value to determine M^2 coverage. SF1000 -- 250/600 = .42 m^2 coverage -- 2.12 feet by 2.12 feet, if square area. TS1000 -- 340/600 = .57 m^2 coverage -- just under 2.5 x 2.5 feet You can see the TS1000 covers more area and this is obvious becuase it produces more umol/s of PAR. (photosynthetically active radiation). The "600" ppfd is taken from a DLI table. crossed with 18 hours of use it results in 38.9 DLI. This will be damn near your maximum you can provide per day with ambient co2 levels.. like i said above, you can reduce this DLI (light spreads outmoer to cover lager area) while covering more but don't drop too far.. it may result in more weed, but at some point it'll become too larfy. what is best? too complicated for a one-size-fits-all answer sadly. I'd set your hieght from canopy based on this math... with free lux meter, you can measure mutliple locations and even ut coverage relative to the suggest dimension above. You still have some trial and error to fine-tune it after that based on observing plants... in the end, this math just gets you close and you still have to do what we always do.. gain experience. the two together are far superior than either alone. Photoperiods on 12/12 for bloom -- since bloom is the restrictive factor for coverage here. It takes 900PPFD (150% more vs 18hours/day) to reach same DLI. you can see dli is 1:1 directly proportional to hours of use per day. SF1000 -- 250/900 = .28 m^2 coverage -- 1' 8" x 1' 8" TS1000 -- 340/900 = .38 m^2 coverage -- 2' x 2' -------------------- summary Between these two, the efficacy is negligably different. They are listed at 120 $ and 110 $, respecitvely (sf, mars order as above). once you also consider the size of coverage difference, i doubt any math or reason could suggest a meaninfully different in cost over time. in fact, the utility of larger coverage could easily trump the 5-10% more efficient characteristic of the sf1000 as the money potentiall saved, proportional to smaller size of coverage, is going to be a pittance relative to 3-5 years of use. So, i'd probably go with the mars unless the smaller footprint of the SF1000 is absolutely perfect for your tent or garden size.. with no plans to change the size in next 5 years or so. It's less expensive up front, covers a larger area, and only 5% less efficient at producing PAR light than the SF1000. 5% when talking about 100-150w per month over 5 years is miniscule. I think the mars is more versatile because it can cover a larger area if you need to... some plants may crave a bit more and you'll be able to give a bit more. pertinent product info taken from: sf1000 -- https://www.spider-farmer.com/products/sf-1000-led-grow-light/ ts1000 -- https://www.mars-hydro.com/ts-1000-led-grow-light