{"id":1245,"date":"2019-11-11T23:47:03","date_gmt":"2019-11-12T04:47:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.briancbecker.com\/blog\/?p=1245"},"modified":"2020-04-12T19:45:31","modified_gmt":"2020-04-12T23:45:31","slug":"2019-11-11-mars-hydro-and-hlg-first-impressions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.briancbecker.com\/blog\/2019\/2019-11-11-mars-hydro-and-hlg-first-impressions\/","title":{"rendered":"2019.11.11: Mars Hydro and HLG First Impressions"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"
Mars Hydro TS600 on top, HLG QB120 on bottom.<\/em> <\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

I’ve been dabbling in grow lights for a few years now, starting with CFLs. My first LED light was a Mars Hydro 300W burple light. It made my greenhouse glow with an eerie glow that probably made my whole neighborhood think I was up to no good. Last year I got into HLG’s quantum boards, the build it yourself kind. This year, Mars Hydro’s new TS series of fanless LED boards was looking pretty attractive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cost-wise, I can build an 70W HLG board for around $53 ($35 for the QB120 board<\/a>, $12 for a low-end power supply<\/a>, $2 for board hanger<\/a>, $4 for ratchet rope hangers<\/a>, and assuming I have wire nuts and electrical tape on hand). Mars Hydro TS600<\/a> is $80 for 100 W. In terms of cost per watt, HLG comes out to 76 cents\/watt where as Mars Hydro comes out to 80 cents\/watt. Not a big difference! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So I picked up a TS600 and for first impressions, it seems pretty nice. It is lightweight, minimal assembly required, has a very nice sun-like color, seems to have a water-resistant coating over the LEDs, and has a lip to focus the light downward instead of just being a flat board. The driver is built in too. The HLG panels are quite nice too and are better suited for smaller plants where you want a light per plant (you can run 3 HLG panels for 210 W whereas the Mars Hydro you can only run 2 panels for 200 W). The power supplies I’ve been using with the HLGs do tend to die (I’ve replaced 2 out of 8 in the past year), so I’m hoping Mars Hydro is more reliable (my older burple light is still going strong). I have only just gotten the Mars Hydro light though, so haven’t done very much testing at all, but it’s looking promising. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve been dabbling in grow lights for a few years now, starting with CFLs. My first LED light was a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1245","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-greenhouse","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.briancbecker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1245","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.briancbecker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.briancbecker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.briancbecker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.briancbecker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1245"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.briancbecker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1245\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1248,"href":"http:\/\/www.briancbecker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1245\/revisions\/1248"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.briancbecker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1245"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.briancbecker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1245"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.briancbecker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1245"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}