@Gugu
Hey bud, hope all is well on your side.
Everyone probably feels like they on a tight budget, we all always wana make more than we currently do, plus it's not always about who has the. best light or the most light, it's more about how you use it. not for a second would I want anyone to think I "have it all figured out" cause I don't, but something personal I've learnt that's been a big change in my whole outlook on working with money and letting your money work for you is -
The reason people with a bit of extra money buy the more expensive stuff is not cause they "stupid rich" or just spend it cause they have it. There's a certain point at which the scales tip into the "stupid rich" part aswell, no doubt about that, but majority of the time people avoid the very cheapest options cause of the stigma around shopping cheap will have you spending more in the end.... it's bad investments to buy cheap stuff. a person with a bit of money wouldn't buy cheap stuff, cause it's almost always all a loss, where as if you buy something proper and it's a good investment you can use that and turn it around to work for you and make your money back at least or even if the investment is really good it can make more money from it.
if you think about it it's more important for a person on a really tight budget to skip over the cheaper options, if that makes any sense.
I've got a 300w blurple LED in a box. got it with my first tent as a combo, can't get someone to buy the light off me, also don't really wana sell it to someone with all the new tech out there. now I just keep it as backup or suplemental light. it's marketed at 300w, tested it and it pulls 240w, but it's got fans on a hestsink and what not so I'd say only around 200w goes to the diodes.
The concept has really shifted now, with those old school HIDs you needed a cool tube or hood with inline fan to cool the whole light down. Then LEDs came along with the first tech being shitty. QB LEDs came and went. The better part of the first LEDs had everything "built in" to one body, so it was plug and play. to ensure better output and longer lifespan of your light you would have the diodes mounted directly on a heatsink with fans blowing on the heatsink to keep everything running cool. Now with the newest tech the diodes are spread out as far as possible so it never even heats up. This also allows for the light coverage to be basically optimal if you in a tent you can have a whole canopy of lights and you can have the light very very close the plants with minimal to no light stress and this also allows for optimal penetration into the plant canopy. The older bigger QBs that ran kak hot also obstructed air flow, you couldn't get the plant close to it cause it's so hot, cause all the light is focussed on one panel in one spot, so you have to raise it far in order to let it spread and cool down to get better coverage then you loose penetration, where the bar style lights allow for free airflow and the airflow also allows the bars to be cooled down passively and everything is better even if you ran with cheaper diodes, but now all that's left is to look at the quality of the diodes. Luckily a team called Horticulture Lighting Group been working on this for years and teamed up with Samsung to bring us some of the very best plant growing diodes on the market for now. So we gotta think about this, cause growing plants is all environment based, it's not about who has the best light or who has the most light. It's how you use it, like they say
Now I got a DIY 300w LED bar light with a HLG driver and Samsung strips, it can put out 300w but I run her at 280 most of the time just for that extra few years addes at the end when she gets old. no electronic will ever be made that'll last forever, but we can try! If you look around on the internet for a branded LED with the same specs they'll go for up to 8-10k, I got my stuff from the source with some extras, slapped it together myself for 4k .