I’m look at the Volt Grow VL-1 light. 440 watts. Samsung and Osram diodes. The company has been in the led market for years, but just recently entered the led grow light market. The specs look good and at $350, the price is right. My only concern is the Samsung diodes. They are using lm301z diodes. The company claims that the light spectrum is identical to the 301b, and claimed efficacy of 2.8 is achieved by using a greater number of these diodes. Is anyone familiar with the 301z diodes. @dbrn32
It is lower cost lower performance led in comparison to lm301b/h. Marketed as good bang for buck mid power chip.
Same story as usual here, where is third party test report? It’s probably at least a decent light for the cost. But if you’re giving up performance them would be in range of lights using lm561c, which are probably pretty cheap too. I agree that price point makes it tempting.
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Thats some bunk info right there. The LM301B and LM301Z are the same diode produced on the same machine, in the same dies, at the same time. The B is a higher binning than the Z. Binning is just how the diodes are sorted post production. As always without know WHICH CHIPS ARE ON THE BOARD you cant really make a fair or accurate comparison. I am also 100% positive many of the chinese lights that claim to be LM301B’s are in fact using all sorts of different Bin’s, which is how they keep the price low. Careful with advertised specs. Volt is a Highbay company, it would make sense their grow lights are highbay’s with some additional spectrum.
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Copied and pasted directly from Samsung lol. There’s nothing bunk about info i provided.
Op isn’t necessarily wrong, ran at lower currents could increase efficacy.
Samsung has confirmed that they sell no LM301 series diodes to China.
But you DIDNT copy the info from the lm301b to compare to the Z they are BOTH mid power diodes. more diodes per driver watt is a good thing, not a bad one. check the par output of a fixture of time. the one with more diodes will sag less per run hours. The B and Z are the SAME diodes that have been Graded. Samsung cant confirm it sells NO 301b’s to china, they are made in china {tianjin}. lmao. come on now… the properdence of bunk info. PS 301’s ARE 3030 diodes. which is just the package size… {3.0mm square}… Understand the lm301 isnt a horticulture diode, its for general lighting. The 301h is just marketing strategy of a 301b. The white coating they put on china lights to “protect the diodes” is to protect you from seeing the laser bin code on the chip, so you have no way of actually knowing what you are getting. All Modern LED Grow Lights {full spectrum} are built with High Bay chips. There is no magic horticultural research going on. You are getting whatever industry produces, just rebadged. Just so happens that plants dont really give a shit and all that spectral research from the 70’s was dog poo… i.e. weve come full circle from blurples, remember all that marketing wank? i do.
301z may come off same line, i don’t know because i really dont care. It’s definitely a different model number not a different bin number.
Here is your 301b data sheet, WITH BIN ALLOCATION. Note all 301z “flux bins” are “so” yet there is a number of “flux bins” for
301b
301z+
Samsungs binning is not limited to parts sorting. They can slap a different phosphor on same chip and add new bin any time they want. And i’m pretty sure they have. Nothing new, cree has done this for years.
To an extent. This still has to do heat and current, and those losses don’t always make up for differences in performance of one led to the next. If you take same leds at same junction temp and run at 50% current there is usually about 10% gain in efficacy.
Samsung also gives you info on how to read their model numbers
This old news, posted it years ago.
I do remember and still see it. However, there is definitely horticulture lighting research going on. Maybe not by these companies or to the extent they want us to believe, but Bugbee doing plenty and making his results public. On top of that, there are plenty of colored leds available that will crush radiometric performance of what most of these companies are selling. They’re just too expensive and configuration they have been used in past wasn’t proper.