Medic Grow LED: Your experience vs. top-tier brands?

It's not about brand of the light manufacturer. It's about the diodes used and not overpowering them. e.g. a light can be made with lm301 diodes, which are the most efficiious diode, but if they are severely overpowered, they are dog shit all the same. So, depending on the brand of the diode used, you'd have to test how the light uses them compared to testing paramaters of the diode manufacturer. The diode manufacturer specifications cna be trusted, but even a brand with good reputation often lies on their light specs.. . often listing "3.10 umol/J" even though that only applies for 5000K lm301 diodes, if any are used, lol. Then there are 2-4 different "5000K" cct diodes that have varying efficacy too, lol....the "binning" process will impact resulting quality too. Most lights provide a suitable spectrum flux (that curve showing higher peaks of red and blue vs greed). Efficacy is the primary different... that is how much light vs heat produced -- heat being waste. higher efficacy lights will meet your umol/s PAR needs with fewer watts and generate less heat while doing so. At this point, that is the difference between 'top-tier' and mediocre products. As long as climate is controlled, results won't be much different, but it'll cost more to get there. On its own, DLI is DLI, regardless. never trust a light manufacturer's spec sheet unless already familiar with the diode specs and they jive together. now all diodes have the same specs. For th esamsung lm301, which is no longer in production.... It is tested at 0.20 watts. that is what longevity (50k hours until 90% of original intensity) and efficacy (umol/J) are dependent on to be accurate promises. Lights that power them at 0.5 watts per diode are fine to use, but will produce more heat and most definitely will not last 50k hours before they dim to 90%. That degredation over time will be significantly sped up. If they are charging a premium price it should be damn near .2 watts per diode.. a few hudredths higher isn't too big of a deal. Cheaper lights will run a lot more electricity through them and save on diode count. I bought no-brand lights from alibabba. I could tell when medic grow first came out they bought their stock from the same manufacturer in china. Same frame and such, but they slapped a brand logo on it. That doesn't mean they were engineered the same as mine, but simply comparing diode count would answer that question. The light i bought powers the diodes at around .23 watts per diode.. there are 2640 diode (including the 80 660nm which will insignificantly impact the messy math here) and 650w... .246 watts per diode. Slightly overpowered but in a mostly irrelevant way. So, look up parts. compare testing specs... this sin't a one-size-fits-all answer.. there's lots of ways to cut corners / costs and make a light that sounds good but is garbage when it comes to efficacy. Like i said, a good growing spectrum is pretty much guaranteed at this point unless it's old AF or a truly magnificently incompetent manufacturer.