What in the heck is a Quantum Board LED? Let’s check out the Spider Farmer SF2000 and find out. Welcome to The Hippie Geeks. If you enjoy this video, be sure to subscribe and hit the bell notification icon to catch all our new content!
Spider Farmer reached out to us about sponsoring a video covering their SF2000 Quantum Board grow light. They didn’t know it, but we are planning on doing another indoor grow this winter and were looking at picking up new lights anyways. After checking out reviews online it sounded like a very solid product and we told them we would love to check it out.
The light arrived in an unmarked cardboard box that was well secured, but still easy enough to open. In the box is a manual showing some of the light’s specifications, then once you get the top foam and cardboard off there is the light itself. Unlike a COB grow light, the individual LEDs are spread out over a larger space, giving you better coverage with a higher efficiency. It also means that the heat load is spread out over the entire panel so that the light does not need any active cooling on its own, it is completely silent. I am really excited about that part, as my recording room for Youtube is actually pretty close to the grow tent, and anything that reduces the noise levels is a solid benefit for me.
Zooming in gives you a better look at the individual Samsung LM301B diodes, which are very high quality, like everything else in this light and while you can’t really see it on the camera this entire side is covered with a clear rubberized coating that gives the panel some solid moisture resistance. When you flip the panel over, the use of high-quality parts continues with the Mean Well ELG-240-48A driver that is used to push all of those LED’s. It has a six-foot cord connected the driver. There is no power switch on the light, but I actually prefer that as it will be connected to a smart switch anyways.
Also in the box you will find the hanging wires and clips that connect to the edge of the board, and as a really nice touch they also send a pair of ratcheting hanging cords which is really great to see, when you buy this light it comes with everything you need to get it properly hung up and ready to go. Now that we have taken a look at the light itself, lets get it plugged in and see how well it works.
News flash, it works so well that the light completely blows out my camera and looks like this. On the upside, this gives you a really good look at the different colored LED’s that they use on this board. There is a nice mix of bright white and warmer LED’s, with several red ones in between the rows. Now, it is bright, surprisingly really, really bright. What I want to do though is put it in context against the lights that we had purchased a couple of years ago for our initial indoor grow. Those were very cheap, and advertised as a 300 Watt LED though its actual draw is closer to 140 Watts.
For our test I marked out a 24” by 36” grid on our kitchen table, with marks every six inches in a grid so that I would have uniform spots to take measurements from that were consistent from grow light to grow light. Once that was set up, I hung the light centered 18” above the table, and then took LUX measurements at each point on the grid and recorded the results.
First up is the old 300-watt light that actually draws 140 watts from the wall. In the center we have a decent result with 19.5k LUX, but it drops off quickly the further you get from the center with the corners all showing about 800 LUX. Not terribly surprising as all of the LED’s are very closely spaced, and the light only measures 9”x13”. We ran with nine of these plus a couple of other random lights our first year with some fairly decent results, and I think that it is pretty average for the performance you would get out of any of these lights in the same advertised wattage.
Now that we have a baseline from what we have used before, lets take a look at the Spider Farmer SF2000. Checking the Kill-A-Watt tells us that the light is drawing just under 200 Watts. Those numbers though, wow, just wow. Looking at the center output is up at 39.0K LUX, and the drop off across the board is much more gradual only getting to around 10K LUX in the corners. These numbers are both surprising and exciting. For an additional 30% power we are getting 200% of the performance at the center of the chart, and a whopping 800% increase at the corners. That is incredible, this single light is going to give me the performance of three of my old lights, and only use 200 watts to do so. Better performance at a lower cost to run, that is something that I can really appreciate. Not to mention a drastic reduction in the amount of hanging equipment for less lights, with the added benefit of not having a fan really makes this a better option in my opinion.
If you are interested in checking out the technology behind these lights or the company selling them, we will have links to their website in the description below. If you want to pick one up we will also have a link to it down there as well. As soon as we get the indoor grow going, we will revisit these comparisons, as I want to see the differences between the plants under this light, and the plants under the old lights. Keep an eye out in late November, as we will be putting up those videos.
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If you are curious about how well this light has been doing, check out our 5 Week Veg update video here:
https://youtu.be/V73ni_ZKveY
Spider Farmer Website:
https://www.spider-farmer.com/
Purchase this LED on their website:
https://www.spider-farmer.com/products/sf-2000-led-grow-light
Amazon Associates link to this LED:
https://amzn.to/361kX4L
Amazon Associates Link To Our Editing Equipment:
https://www.amazon.com/shop/thehippiegeeks?listId=CLMYMTSGQNSH&ref=idea_share_inf
As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
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