Black Dog Platinum XL-U 750w LED Grow Light Unboxing Review & PAR Test

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Video Transcript:



"Hey everyone, it's Nate from GrowersHouse, and today we got a new LED grow light in stock. GrowersHouse is now carryingblack Black Dog LEDs, so we have Black Dog's complete line on our website. We decided we'd bring in their biggest unit, the Platinum XL-U LED Grow Light [Universal Series], which is actually their 750w LED unit. And that 750w is not what the diodes are times the wattage of the diodes. It's actually the draw from the wall. This unit [Black Dog Platinum XL-U] actually has 300 distinct 5w diodes, so if you thought about it that way (diodes [300] times wattage of diodes [5w]) maybe you'd call it a 1500w LED, but really out of the wall this one will be pulling 750w.



The Platinum XL-U is a pretty big LED. You'll notice that this is about 20 inches square, and if I bend it down this way, you'll see that it's about 5 inches high. So this 5 inch depth is pretty large you'll notice. Black Dog really wanted to have a really large housing so they could fit large heat sinks and fans to have amazing cooling capabilities. So this unit stays very cool as compared to some of the other LEDs on the market. That is a great feature for those growers looking to keep their environment cool switching away from HID lights or any other light source that generates a lot of heat.



Another interesting thing about Black Dog LED is that they use 16 different unique colors in their LEDs. Black Dog keeps it a secret exactly which nanometers or color wavelengths they use because they've spent a lot of time honing it in to match the photosynthetic curve you see on PAR (photosythetically active radiation) charts, where plants really use light most in specific colors.







Another unique thing about this LED light is that Black Dog actually has UVA and infrared (IR) LED diodes to help your plant out in the late flowering phase, which I don't know of any other LED light that has them in the diodes. For example, California Light Works has the UVB bulbs on the side, but this LED is the one that has the actual diodes where when you turn them on, it will look like the diodes aren't on. There will just be a very faint light. It almost looks like the diodes are out, but that's not true. It's just that IR and UVA are basically out of the visible spectrum of human eye sight. So if you get this unit, your diodes are probably not out, it's just those specific diodes focusing on those spectrums.



Other than that, the Black Dog Platinum is pretty hefty. I mean, we're talking about 47 lbs. So still light enough to be held by every grow tent on the market, but with the construction the way it is, this is all metal. It feels really tough--pretty heavy duty. It has nice carabiners on the top so that it can hold its weight.



What I also want to do is turn it on very quickly so you can see what this LED panel looks like. You'll see Black Dog designed it to be this large so that the unit can really have a lot of coverage. Rather than have a lot of the diodes focused on a small area, they were attempting to have more uniform coverage over a larger area. For example, this light can do about 4.5' x 4.5' for flowering or about 7' x 7' for veg, maximum.





Let me turn this Black Dog Platinum XL-U on so we can take a look at some of these diodes here. Turn on the switch here. Now that is very bright. Hopefully the camera can focus in on this for a second. I'll also turn it sideways a little bit to bend the light down. You can see that the spectral makeup is very different throughout the unit. This LED has reds, blues, whites, basically everything you'd expect out of an LED and want. If I move this down a little bit you can see how it changes.



Another thing I want to mention is that this unit comes with a 3 year warranty. Black Dog is based out of Colorado. Their LEDs also have a limited lifetime warranty, and that limited lifetime warranty is after 3 years if any parts need to be changed out on this, all you need to do is pay for the replacement part and Black Dog will install it for free. That leaves you with a company that's based in the US that will stand by their unit for the life of them. They've been around for quite a long time. Going on 5 years now. They're one of the oldest companies in the indoor LED growing market.



Black Dog just came out in October of 2012 with their new Universal Series LED lights, which this is one of them. They moved all of their old units from 3w diodes to 5w diodes. So all Black Dog LED units as of 4 months ago (October 2012) are now using 5w diodes and a more enhanced spectrum. If you're going to get a Black Dog, look for the Universal Series lights. Black Dog has them going from the BD-Micro [135w LED] being the smallest unit, all the way through quite a few product ranges including:

• Black Dog BD240-U 240w LED Grow Light



• Black Dog BD360-U 360w LED Grow Light



• Black Dog BD450-U 450w LED Grow Light



• Black Dog BD700-U 595w LED Grow Light

 



To the Black Dog Platinum XL-U 750w, being the largest unit.



Now that we've gone over this unit, we want to hang it over a 4' x 4' area and take some PAR readings and see what kind of numbers we get out of this here. One quick note that I will make before our test is that some of the diodes are focused on spectrums out side of the range that PAR measures. So we're interested to see what sort of PAR readings this gives off, but realize our PAR meter isn't measuring specific spectral ranges that some of these diodes are giving off. We have to take that into account. And I want to make sure you're all aware of that when you see the PAR charts we end up doing here in a second.



Here are the spectral readings for the Black Dog Platinum XL Universal Series 750w LED hung above a 4' x 4' growing area. We measured it at 12" above the 4' x 4', 18", and finally 24" above the area. And then we measured each square working out from the center, so 1' square, 2' square, 3' square, and 4' square and then took PAR readings at multiple different spaces making up 31 readings per footprint.



If you'd like to see these readings and more, click on the link in the description below and that will take you to our blog where you can click on these readings, enlarge them, view the infographic and see how this LED did in comparison to others in the market. That's it for today, this is Nate from Growers House. Take care."