As we get further in to established technology it normally becomes more affordable. In 1996 a MB of ram was $54. if your system today has 16gb of ram that would have been a staggering $864,000 worth in 96.
Grow lights were always pricey. The old school metal halide and high pressure sodium lights were $$ to buy and even more $$ to run.
Fast forwarding to 2020 and legal grow we have offerings like Mars Hydro LED lights for $139. Hmm that was 4 years ago and lights don’t last forever. I started looking at spares.
I looked on Ebay and the feature image is a screen capture of that ad that caught my eye. $25 ea if I buy 2 was my make offer which was accepted.
They are not quite as bright as the Mars Hydro–with a Photone app I determined that the cheapie lights were running at 85% of the intensity of the Mars Hydro output. So that 15% equates to coverage of a smaller area/not as big of a plant would be a reasonable expectation
Light quality is good–not that weird “burple” of a lot of cheap lights.
It grows plants–I use them on starts/clones/autoflowers and save the more expensive lights for larger photoperiod grows/seed runs
A good indicator of the lights ability to perform is to just look at the size of the “driver” board on the top of the light. Nice & beefy? It should pump light. Small & wimpy? Little herb garden light at best.
For the record, I have replaced the Mars Hydros with VivoSuns that ran $89 ea on Amazon. So , overall comparable lights have become about $50 more affordable over the span of 4 years.