The Best Cheap LED Grow Lights For Indoor Plants (2021 Update)

The most basic thing that one needs to know about growing weed is that it requires some basic elements of nature — air, water, heat, and light! While all four of these are available in the outdoor growing setup and exist freely in nature, the problem with growing weed outdoors is that it does not allow the grower to have any control over these factors. Basically, there might be a day where the sun might be behind the clouds — which means that both light and heat are being cut off — and there might be multiple such days. Furthermore, there might be a dry spell for a really long time and water might become scarce!

Hence, it is essential for any good ‘grower’ of weed to grow their cannabis indoors and under controlled environment which would ensure that they can emulate a ‘best-case scenario’ for their plants by providing heat and light with the help of grow lamps and air and water can also be provided in just the right amount!

Grow lights, in particular, are the most important because essentially what they are doing is that they are emulating the natural light and heat that the sun provides to the plants. Plants need light and heat because they use that to create pigments and energy with processes such as photosynthesis. This is what helps them grow stronger and healthier. Furthermore, especially for cannabis plants, grow lights are of another importance — based on the kind of heat and light you provide at different stages you can somewhat alter the chemical composition of the plants getting a stronger or a lighter flavor in the weed that you are going to smoke! Hence, it is essential to know about grow lights and understand their functions.

TYPES OF LED GROW LIGHTS

One thing that you need to know before you start growing your weed using LED grow lights is to know how many kinds of LED grow lights there are! Here’s a closer look at the major kinds of these lights.

Spread Style LED Grow Lights: Basically, in these kinds of grow lights, several small LEDs are spread out over a large area. There are two further divisions in the Spread Style lights — quantum lights and spider LEDs. Quantum boards, which make use of low wattage LED lights and are highly energy efficient and are good for plants which do not require too much of heat. The other kinds of lights are Spider LEDs, which are also low wattage lights but the way they distribute lights is different. They have a main spine out of which several ‘arms’ are coming out which are fit with LEDs. These are slightly expensive but also offer a good result compared to most other style of LED lights used for growing weed.
Traditional Panel: These are the good old trusted forms of LED lights which have been in use since forever! The basic characteristic feature here is that they use medium wattage lights and are slightly more compact compared to the spread style lights which are spread out. Multiple panels need to be used if you are growing a moderate to large quantity of weed.
COB Style LED Grow Lights: COB stands for Chip on Board. Instead of having multiple small diodes, COB LED grow lights usually feature large LED bulbs. They are known for providing intense light and heat and are being preferred by a number of growers of late! These usually come in panels where multiple COBs are put together to provide the best possible light and heat. Then there are also AutoCOBs, which basically are only one bulb.

Phlizon 1000W LED Grow Light CREE COB

This particular unit comes in a bright red color — a stark change from subtly-colored light panels from other manufacturers.

The light is a bit more intense than those with 3W chips, as this uses 5W LEDs instead — 110 of them. The optics are all jewel-quality glass focused at 90 degrees. In addition, it has two 15W UV-B tubes to enhance growth at the flowering stages. This panel runs cool and quiet with its built-in fans, and it comes with a 3-year warranty. California Lightworks is always a very well-recognized brand in the LED community, so you can’t go wrong here.

ECO Farm 1200W CREE COB LED Grow Light

The brand has been around for a while hence why they are able to make the installation easy for just about everyone (they’ve been in business for over 7 years and are a well-known brand in the industry). This light was definitely one of the more energy efficient compared to some of the other lights that we tested (especially the cheaper ones). We used ours in a 3x3 canopy and it worked great as the light was able to penetrate all open space.

This light does have the switch so you can toggle between veg/bloom mode, making this one of the premier lights for compact spaces. It can also be used for medium-sized spaces, so it’s an extremely versatile. It has the full spectrum of blue, red, and white for the veg and flowering stages.

ECO Farm LED grow light really is with high quality.

Why Choose Full Spectrum LED Grow Lights？

Here, let us take a closer look at what full spectrum LED grow lights are and the reasons as to why they are great for you if you plan to grow marijuana indoors. We also take a closer look at some of the advantages of making use of full spectrum LED grow lights.

A common grow light is basically made up of lights of two spectrums — red and blue. You can figure that out by looking at these lights as they emit a reddish-blueish hue and while many of them offer a fair mix of the two, you can figure out the dominant color in these lights if you look long enough. The process of photosynthesis happens perfectly between these two light spectrums and this is why most lights come with reds and blues. However, there’s more to plants than just photosynthesis and there’s more to grow lights than just the reds and blues. This is where full spectrum LED grow lights come into the picture! A full-spectrum LED grow light consists of all wavelengths including infrared and ultraviolet lights. Basically, the final output of the light here would be a white light.

In the simplest of terms, using a full spectrum LED light allow you to imitate the light of the sun in the closest possible manner which is good for the growth of your plant allows photosynthesis to happen in the best possible manner as well as boosts the generation of all the various types of pigments that the plant needs for a healthy growth. Furthermore, the concentration of light and heat can allow you to tweak the flavor of your plant as well which is something that weed growers love to do! Let us now take a look at what are some of the advantages of using a full spectrum LED grow light as opposed to a regular LED grow light.

• Compared to the LED grow lights that function only on a mix of red and blue lights, full spectrum lights tend to generate more quantity of photons which are great for the growth of the plants.
• This is the closest you can get to replicating natural sunlight in a controlled environment and the plants can benefit a lot from the various wavelengths.
• These lights are cooler in comparison to traditional lights and you do not require to set up extra heat dissipation systems such as additional fans.
• Reds and Blues are for specific phases of growth but a full spectrum grow light is basically your one-stop solution to all growth phases of your cannabis plant.
• These lights neither flicker nor do they require a stabilizer and are hence a great option for anyone looking forward to grow weed indoors as they provide a consistent and constant light.

Final thoughts

The Best Cheap LED Grow Lights allow us to garden indoors and in our greenhouses throughout the year. Grow lights mimic natural sunlight and utilize the correct color spectrum to encourage photosynthesis to help plants grow indoors. LED grow lights are energy-efficient, long-lasting, and have the full light spectrum, and we’ll cover the best LED grow lights in this article for indoor and greenhouse growing.