LED Grow Light Review With Hydroponic Lettuce

The folks at thelashop.com came across my website and asked if I would review their 225 High Power Ultrathin Blue Red LED Plant Grow Light Panel.  I've tried, built and tested just about every kind of grow light out there so I jumped at the opportunity to try out their LED grow light.  About a week after they contacted me the package arrived from UPS and everything arrived well packaged and in perfect condition.  After opening the package there were 3 main components.

The LED Panel - 12"x12"

The LED Power Supply

The Hanging Kit For The LED Panel

The LED panel only took about 5 minutes to hang.  There are 4 hooks that clip to the back of the panel at each corner making it level once suspended.  I decided the best test for the light would be to grow lettuce since it only takes about 30 days to get a nice size plant from seed.  I germinated some lettuce in 1" rockwool cubes and put the best 3 plants into a deep water culture hydroponic system.  I used Maxigo for my nutrient solution running at 450 PPM.  I tested out the wattage of the light using a Kill A Watt meter and got a reading hovering around 22.2 watts which means that it would only cost me about 3 cents per day to run this light.  Below you can see photos of everything I just described.

The Kill A Watt reading and cost to run the LED light.  Click here to use this calculator yourself.

Lettuce Geminated In Rockwool Cubes

4 Days In the unit

9 Days in the unit

27 Days in the unit

I decided to end the growth experiment on day 27 because the lettuce plants started to bolt due to the high temperatures in my print shop.  The LED light itself does not give off any heat at all and is only warm to the touch.  The machines and other lights with it being summer are what caused the 90 degree+ temperature in the room.  At one point one of the lettuce leaves touched the LED panel and the only damage was one little spot on the leaf as you can see in the photo below.

This is where the LED touched the leaf.

My Final Thoughts About This Grow Light:

I thought the grow panel grew lettuce just as good as any other grow light that I have used but with the benefit of extreme low electrical use.  I have grow lettuce with CFL bulbs, fluorescent bulbs, and metal halide bulbs.  This was my first time growing with an LED grow light and very impressed with the results.  Here's a brief rundown of my thoughts:

• Energy efficient
• Light weight
• No heat
• Can be used close to the plants without burning
• Easy to set up
• The plants love it!

Below are the specs for this panel:

Specifications:

Here is a video I created showing this review in full step by step.

If you're interested in the 225 High Power Ultrathin Blue Red LED Plant Grow Light Panel, visit this link at thelashop.com: http://www.thelashop.com/225-high-power-ultrathin-blue-red-led-plant-grow-light-panel.html