M16 LED Grow Light by Truth LED Lighting - Review and Test
Hey everyone this is Nate from Growers House and today I'm showing off new led we got from American Green which is the parent company of Truth Led Lighting. This is a new LED company and they actually came out with a hobbyist grower led which we have here known as the Truth Lighting M16 which is their flagship LED. They also are also getting into the greenhouse commercial LEDs unit that is new that isn't available yet but you can find out more about it on their website. I heard about this new LED and I asked truth lighting if they would send us one and they were up for it. So they sent us this unit out to test. We're going to run this unit under our spectrometer and see what kind of light measurements it's going to give us and hopefully show off to you guys as the new comer on the market.
They are saying this unit is like a 1200 watt HPS equivalent if you are comparing it to HID/HPS lighting. It's rated at 760 watts and we did our own testing with a kill-a-watt meter and it came out to just about 714 watts at the wall draw at 120 volts, which came out to just about 5.97 amps. This unit can also be run at 240 volts and you can expect that amperage to be cut down to about 3 amps.
So this unit is a pretty good size at about 25 by 25 inches, and 3 inches deep. One of the cooler things about this unit is how large it is in general it will probably give you a really even foot print because of how big the unit is. you can turn on half the unit which gives you 50% light output or turn on the entire unit for 100% light output. The spectrum built into this unit is actually designed to go from veg al the way through flower (Full Spectrum). These are 3 W diodes with LEDs from bridgelux, epiled, and epistar. Another cool thing about this light is the way they built it is modular. Each panel has its own driver and its own spectral makeup. In this unit they are all full spectrum, but if you wanted to get a unit with its own spectral makeup you could contact Truth Lighting and they will help make your exact spectrum you want for each LED module. (They are working on price that right now) But I think it's the only LED company that I know that offers that option. So if you wanted to get a few of these and you wanted them to be all veg dominant, contact Truth Lighting and work out a spectrum for specifically what you are doing or if you wanted flower dominant they could do that too. These units here are currently built with both for full spectrum. If we turn it on you will see and you'll see it is super bright. But you can see here the obvious colors here of reds and blues and whites built into the light. This unit is very, very bright and has quite a few fans on it to make sure these LEDs stay cool and last for the entire rated life expectancy of 50,000 hours. Which in growing terms is usually about 4-5 years so that is a pretty good lifespan.
The spectrum on this light is obviously trying to focus on chlorophyll a and b, with a strong spike in the blue and two spikes in the reds around 640 and about 660 nanometers and in the low blues at 450 nm. You can even see a small bump up around the high red at about 740 nm. It has a good strong spectrum range for a led which makes it ideal for veg all the way through bloom.The most notable is the price point, they are going to come in at a really, really low price point with a high end product to try and get LED lighting to be a lot closer to the pricing of HID lighting (MSRP $1350). We are going to start seeing that more and more with LEDs as they become more available. So in the next few years you'll continue to see LEDs prices keep going down and the quality of the LEDs and light go up. And eventually maybe they will reach a point where it's no question LEDs are the way to go. We think right now it still a burgeoning technology.
Our PAR measurements are taken at 12, 18 and 24 inches above. You can see in the 12 inch it was getting some high readings basically around 2000 in the 1x1 footprint. If the light is raised you get an evening out of the footprint with a nominal reduction in intensity. We really thin that 24 inches is where this light should be hanging for an ideal 5x5 footprint. If you want to do a 4x4 anywhere between 18-24 inches would be optimal. The current msrp for this light is 1350$ we will be offer it for a little bit less than that. Other similar LEDs lights with similar wattage in this range are about $1800-$2000 MSRP so the Truth Lighting LED is definitely going to be a value priced performer. Tell us what you think about LEDs and what you think about this new modular style.
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