Which LED Grow Light Is Best For Me? Mars Hydro Buying Guide
Mars Hydro has been producing LED grow lights for horticulture growers and cannabis cultivators for over a decade. There are many different Mars Hydro LED models, which makes it challenging when picking the optimal growing light for your plants. Currently, Mars Hydro provides four LED lines - TS Series, SP Series, FC Series, and FC-E Series; and supplemental lighting - UV & IR light bar and VG veg grow light.
Here are the features found in the entire Mars Hydro LED product line:
Whether for beginners or professionals, we'll provide ample information and customer cases below to help you find the best Mars Hydro LED grow light for the upcoming growing season and shopping sprees.
Mars Hydro has made several serious waves during the LED growing light history, and the establishment of the TS Series has been the most raging. From the release of the TS series in 2009 to 2023, the TS Series has undergone many upgrades and the latest 2023 version of the TS series has achieved the trinity of form, efficiency, and user experience. TS Series has become the best-selling LED grow light.
The TS Series is the first full-spectrum LED line of Mars Hydro. It is a quantum board LED grow light series with a patented reflector. With that reflector, a few scattered lights on the edge can be folded back to the central area 20 inches below, thereby reducing escaping light and enhancing the light intensity down to the plants.
The Mars Hydro TS series LED grow lights are for growers who are just starting to grow indoors, for growers on a budget, for beginners who are willing to grow their own medical crops at home, and for growers whose main focus is gardening, green foliage and a variety of ornamental plants. The TS series has just the right, not overly-intense light intensity for most home grows, especially inside grow tents.
Best of all, the TS Series has the most affordable price, starting from as low as $80 to the highest $340, and even lower if it happens to be on sale. Chances are that for less than $100, growers can get an efficient and powerful grow light with a professional spectrum.
For years since the SP Series was released, it has been compared to the TS Series. Which is better? It has no answers yet. But what Mars Hydro could tell you is that their different body design and diode source are the major differences that lead to their specialties.
The SP Series LED grow lights are single-bar grow lights with a unibody armed by thick aluminum heat-dissipating fins. The same number or even more diodes are gathered in line on only one light bar to achieve excellent penetration. In addition to this, the SP series has increased the proportion of red and far-red light in the full spectrum, which is intended to further increase the light penetration capability. The powerful light penetration is able to carry the light energy to the dense, deep canopy, so that the leaves and rhizomes that are shaded in the dark are able to get enough energy to grow stronger, thus feeding back to a healthier plant, especially flowering plants.
The Mars Hydro SP Series is designed for growers who need or have the ability to take advantage of high penetration, for growers who cultivate tall plants and giant plants, for growers who need the perfect flowering grow light, and is best suited for greenhouse operators and inter-canopy supplemental lighting seekers due to its slim profile. In the SP series, the SP3000 and SP6500 apply Samsung LM301B diodes, giving them also a commercially viable efficiency and quality.
The FC Series is undoubtedly Mars Hydro's best line of fixtures, including FC1500, FC3000, FC4000, FC4800, FC6500, FC8000, FC1000W and FC1200W. FC LED grow lights are powered by extremely-efficient Samsung LM301H EVO diodes and are designed in a uniform bar style to provide powerful intensity, precise spectral emission, and evenly-distributed PPFD.
The Mars Hydro FC Series is superior for growers who seek unbeatable lighting performance in their indoor grow systems. It was designed with the idea of building the best light line of Mars Hydro in mind and so every single wire and every component should be just in the right place. The broad spectrum formed by harnesses of Samsung LM301H EVO diodes could provide full-spectrum light to plants of all stages and still maintain more than 90% accuracy and efficiency after 36,000 hours of use. It’s proved that Mars Hydro FC Series is able to hit 3.0 g/watt.
FC Series is also the optimal choice for growers who require a completely uniform light distribution to coordinate with their techniques or setups, such as SOG grow technique, vertical farming, racking system, etc. Uniform lighting allows the plants to receive uniform energy, resulting in uniform and vertical growth and easier management. Therefore, FC Series is a commercial grow lighting solution for ambitious operators.
FC Series LED grow lights are for growers who cultivate plants of medium-to-low height. This does not mean that the FC series is not suitable for tall crops. The FC6500 and FC8000 have enough excellent light penetration to provide a reliable light source for tall plants. However, compared to Mars Hydro's SP series, the FC series performs better with medium-height and low plants.
If you hesitate to splurge on the top-end system and desire the benefits brought by uniform lighting distribution, the Mars Hydro FC-E Series LED grow lights will be your best choice.
The FC-E Series is a twin of the FC Series - they share the same designs of appearance and diode layout so growers can enjoy the benefits of uniform lighting as well. They are just as strong as FC series lights, but much cheaper - value-for-money alternatives to any multi-bar LED grow lights with the advantage of exceptional yields through uniform light distribution. So they share almost the same applications with FC Series.
The only difference is the diodes they use. The FC-E series does not apply high-end Samsung diodes, instead, the FC-E grow lights apply BridgeLux diodes, an American chip brand that has dedicated itself to the diode market for years. For more details on the differences and similarities between the twins.
The Mars Hydro FC-E Series LED grow lights are for growers who want to take the benefits of bar-style LED grow lights with lower upfront costs, for both individuals and commercials, for indoor racking systems and special technique grows, and for low plant cultivation as well.
In the most recent estimates, there are 570 million farms in the world, not to mention home gardeners and one-plant cultivators, so it’s hard to recommend a perfect match for every grow. But a plant grows by its nature. We encounter similar situations as plants mature. Therefore, Mars Hydro recommends their led grow lights in terms of the following situations:
This recommendation is more suitable for growers who have already determined the planting (flat)area or plant species, especially when you’ve already invested in grow tents.
A single LED model below can provide enough full-spectrum light for the area. Sort by light intensity provided, from lowest to highest:
Additionally Mars Hydro offers supplemental lighting for special use:
This type of recommendation will help prospective buyers discover the possible potential and specialties of Mars Hydro LED grow lights in practical application. Plants grow naturally even if growing indoors, so they experience the same growth stages from seed, germination, seedling, and vegetative, to pre-flowering, flowering, fruiting, or harvesting. There are also growth stages such as pollination development in some strict breeding labs, such as cloning in plant expansion, etc.
We recommend the following LEDs by their features, including wattage, spectrum design, body design, and so on, ranking in no particular order but wattage.
We grow indoor plants in farms, greenhouses, garages, cabinets, grow tents, on the tables, plant stands, racks, at home, in the grow room…There are various spaces that could be our happy gardens and profitable grounds. Gaining a happy accomplishment and substantial profits is not a difficult task, as long as the right grow light is chosen.
However, even with the same tools and seeds, different growers can get a thousand different forms. Therefore, we will only give a rough sketch here.
For commercial grows, we recommend the most popular choices for this application that were proven successful and profitable according to thousands of practical cases and collaborations with the Mars Hydro Team.
Sort by the most purchased:
Whether you want beautiful ornamental plants, nutritious food, reliable medicated harvests, controlled light experiments, or expect the fastest harvest, maximum yield, highest crop quality, and maximum marginal benefits, Mars Hydro always has a perfect LED grow light to satisfy your needs. We always provide affordable, high-quality, and reliable LED grow lights to expectant growers around the world for healthy and fast plant growth, year-round production, and sustainable control over the grow results.
And if you’re just getting started in searching for a complete grow setup with lighting, ventilation, and necessary tools, we already paired the best match for you, just have a look at Mars Hydro All-In-One Grow Tent Kits. Except for led grow lights, Mars Hydro also provides high-quality grow tents, ventilation systems and other grow accessories. Have a one-stop shopping experience at Mars Hydro!
Thanks for reading and hereby Mars Hydro Team wishes you a happy growing!
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