Hortilux SE Ceramic HPS 600w Grow Light Test & Unboxing Review
Hey everyone, Nate with GrowersHouse here. Today I got a cool shipment in from Mark at Eye Lighting Hortilux—and it’s something you don’t usually hear said together: Ceramic HPS. Up to now, growers typically knew CMH (ceramic metal halide) and HPS (high pressure sodium) as separate lanes. This lamp was developed by Eye Hortilux to run a ceramic arc tube at a higher, more stable wattage—so you can chase that ceramic-style spectrum while still getting 600W-class intensity.
What this system is: 600W lamp + a purpose-built fixture and ballast
The Hortilux SE Ceramic HPS 600W is a 600-watt lamp, and they built a specialty fixture and ballast to go with it. You can pick up the lamp by itself, but the recommendation is to run it with the matched fixture—especially because the ballast was designed specifically to drive this lamp the way it’s intended, rather than “kind of” running it on something close.
Why growers care: CMH popularity, but canopy penetration limits
One of the reasons this is interesting is that CMH has really taken off. A lot of growers love 315W ceramic lamps, but at some point people run into the same issue: they want more canopy penetration than those 315W lamps comfortably deliver, especially if they’re used to a more intense HID setup. In other words, if you’ve been running a higher-intensity HPS style of light and you switch to smaller ceramics, you can end up missing that deeper reach through the canopy. This Ceramic HPS approach is basically trying to close that gap.
And to be clear, this isn’t meant to replace every option out there—some growers will still prefer LED grow lights. The point here is that Ceramic HPS is aiming for a ceramic-like spectral feel while keeping the familiar “punch” of a 600W flowering lamp.
Spectrum notes: wider output that looks “whiter” than traditional HPS
What I really wanted to show is the spectrum and what to expect out of this thing. Compared to a traditional 600W HPS, the Ceramic HPS is able to put out a much wider spectrum. It still carries a lot of energy in the red region (so it can look almost white to the eye), but you also still get noticeable blue in the mix.
You can use this lamp all the way through your operation from veg through flower, although it’s a 2500K lamp—so on the Kelvin scale it leans more toward flowering. With that in mind, the goal of the comparison is simple: turn it on, read the spectral graph, and then put it side-by-side with a traditional HPS so you can see the difference in how the energy is distributed.
Results: why lumens can be a bad metric (and what to look at instead)
When you compare lumen output of the 600W Ceramic HPS versus a traditional 600W HPS, you’ll notice a dramatic difference—but that lumen difference is misleading. The majority of the light energy from a traditional 600W HPS is concentrated in the part of the spectrum where human eyesight is most sensitive, so the lumen reading looks “bigger” than it should for plant comparison.
Meanwhile, the 600W Ceramic HPS produces roughly the same total overall light energy as the traditional 600W HPS, but it spreads that energy across a broader range of the spectrum—some of which a lumen meter doesn’t capture well.
When Total Radiant Energy is measured from 350 to 800 nanometers, the Ceramic HPS comes in slightly higher: 275 watts (Ceramic HPS) versus 261 watts (traditional HPS).
In the spectral overlay, you can see how the focus of light energy has been shifted toward the red portion of the spectrum. Also, for anyone watching closely: that chart isn’t normalized—it’s showing intensity in watts per nanometer. The practical takeaway is that even if the Ceramic HPS shows fewer lumens, the total light energy across the spectrum is roughly the same as a super HPS, if not slightly higher. So, don’t get locked onto lumens—they’re a poor indicator for this comparison.
Technical snapshot: key specs and measured comparisons
| Category | Detail |
|---|---|
| Lamp power | 600W Ceramic HPS |
| Color temperature | 2500K (flower-leaning on the Kelvin scale) |
| Total Radiant Energy (350–800 nm) | Ceramic HPS: 275W vs Traditional HPS: 261W |
| Lumen comparison | Lower lumens can be misleading due to human-eye sensitivity weighting |
Fixture details: size, weight, and footprint
Here’s the physical fixture itself. In terms of style and layout, it’s similar to complete fixtures many growers recognize from the market. The approximate dimensions are 12.7 inches wide, 23.6 inches long, and about 7.1 inches tall (not counting extra height from hanging hardware). Weight is just over 20 pounds—around 23 to 26 pounds as remembered during the walkthrough.
Hanging height guidance for a 4x4 canopy
As a baseline, this fixture is made for a four-by-four-foot area and is recommended to hang about three feet above the canopy. That said, hanging height should move with plant stage: for younger plants going into veg, I’d likely start closer to four feet (or a touch higher). Then, as you transition into flower, you can come down toward three feet—and potentially a bit lower late in flowering once the plants are acclimated.
Conclusion: the practical win for hydroponic growers
So, stepping back, the big conclusion from the test notes is that the Ceramic HPS provides plants with slightly more Total Radiant Energy than a traditional 600W HPS, while distributing that energy more broadly across the spectrum. For hydroponic growers who want intensity and canopy penetration but also care about spectrum quality, that combination is exactly what makes this lamp interesting. And if there’s one metric to keep in check when you’re comparing lights like this, it’s lumens—don’t let that number steer your decision.
Lastly, a genuine thanks to Hortilux for sending it out. I’ve always liked what ceramics do for plant structure—they tend to come out full and healthy—so I’m excited to get this over real plants and see how it performs in more gardens. Happy growing.