When you grow weed indoors, you need to recreate a number of different elements which otherwise exist outdoors in nature. These elements include light, heat, air, nutrients, etc. and while all of them are very important, plants need high-quality lighting for better growth. Full-spectrum LED grow lights are among the best possible lighting that you can provide to your plants for good growth.
First COBs took the industry by storm. Then quantum boards did the same.
Does that mean that QBs are better? An improvement on COBs?
What is a Quantum Board Led Grow Light?
Quantum board led grow lights are the next step above chip on a board (COB) LED grow lights. The LEDs are connected to a carefully wired board. The quantum board may be sold as just a circuit board. In these cases, you combine it with a pin heat sink or conventional extruded aluminum heat sink.
The LED bulbs themselves share the same advantages as other LED lights such as a long life expectancy and energy efficiency. Quantum board LEDs are as controllable as other LEDs. For example, a 300 watt system can typically be dimmed down to 120 watts in the early stages of growth. A quantum grow light that matches a 150 watt CFL in light output uses around 80 watts while covering a roughly two foot by two foot growing area.
Quantum grow lights that cover a 6 foot by 6 foot area for vegetation growth may only provide enough light for a 4.5 by 4.5 blooming crop. But it will consume only 350 to 500 watts of power while matching the light output of a rough 1000 watt bulb.
The best quantum board led grow lights are properly sized for the growing area. Know that this may mean setting up several grow lights to get full coverage.
COB stands for Chip-on-Board and refers to the way LED diodes are packed together. With chip-on-board technology, many tiny LEDs are mounted in close proximity on a substrate to form one single module.
In essence, they are combined to form a single, extremely powerful, light source.
This contrasts with a surface mounted diode (SMD) technology. SMD is how standard LED grow lights are built.
Single diodes are mounted individually to a surface. They can be fairly close together, but not nearly as close as the tiny diodes that make up a COB. As a result, SMD LEDs each function as a single point of light.
These points of light are generally 3w or 5w chips, with some manufacturers now using 10w chips. A single fixture contains many of these chips.
COB LED Grow Lights, on the other hand, function as a single powerful light source and a fixture is made up of only a few of them. In some cases, a single COB makes up the entire fixture.
There is a reason these two types of lighting both had a revolutionary impact on the industry. They have several similarities and they are exactly the things that make them so appealing to indoor cannabis growers.
Same Principle
The main similarity is that both essentially use the same principle. It is simply the scale that differs.
A COB is made up of many tiny LED diodes tightly packed onto a single chip to produce a single, powerful beam of light. A quantum board also has many LEDs on it, but those LEDs are more powerful and more spaced out. Essentially, a quantum board is simply a very large COB.
Same Spectrum
The other major similarity is the color spectrum. Both COBs and quantum boards use full-spectrum white LED diodes.
They are available in various different color temperatures, from warm 3000K light to cool 7000K light. The most common color temperatures are 3000K, 3500K, 5000K and 6000K.
The warmer white light (3000K to 4000K) contains more red wavelength light, making it better for flowering, while the cooler light (5000K to 7000K) contains more blue and is thus better for vegging.
While “blurple” lights dominated in the past, the industry is coming to realize that white light is actually better for plants. That realization came about thanks to the popularity of COBs and quantum boards.
But it is true that plants especially like red light (and blue as well), so many quantum and COB LED fixtures now have supplementary diodes that add a bit of red, and sometimes UV, IR or blue as well.
DIY Setups
Both quantum boards and COBs are great for building your own lighting system. Several manufacturers of each even offer DIY kits that include all the components you need. All you have to do is put it all together. Alternatively, you can save even more and do it completely on your own, without the use of a kit.
While they are based on the same principle and they both use LEDs with an all-white color spectrum, the difference in scale makes them very different light sources. These are the main differences between the two.
Light Spread
The first major difference is in the way the light fills the coverage area. A COB is a single point of powerful light, that then emanates outward from that point. This means it has further to travel to reach the outside of the coverage area than it does the middle.
A quantum board is large and has diodes spread out across the entire surface area. That means that the light travels more directly to the canopy across a larger area, not just dead center.
The result is a much more even light spread for quantum boards. COBs give you a ton of intensity in the middle of the coverage area, but it drops off more toward the outside than a quantum board light.
Our article on the coverage area of a 1000w light goes into a bit more detail on light spread and what to look for.
Canopy Penetration
This is the flip side of the previous difference. Because the COB is such a powerful beam of light, it naturally penetrates deeper below the canopy, at least in the middle of the coverage area. Toward the outside, that penetration power diminishes considerably. Quantum boards get great penetration, too, just not as good as a COB (in the middle anyway).
Heat Management
Because COBs are such a powerful source of light, with many tiny diodes crammed onto a small surface area, they naturally emit a lot of heat. Single COBs can be cooled by heat sinks alone, but fixtures with multiple COBs need to have fans.
Quantum boards are always passively cooled. Usually this is done with a simple aluminum board, but sometimes a heatsink is used instead.
The fixtures as a whole still emit about the same amount of heat as other LED fixtures, including COBs, but because the individual diodes are spread out, passive cooling is enough to keep them from overheating.
Benefits of using Grow Lights for Growing Marijuana
There are a number of benefits of using LED grow lights for growing marijuana. However, the first and the biggest benefit that you get is that they are much more energy efficient when you compare them with older and traditional forms of lighting. Basically, they consume less power from the socket while offering you lighting which is equivalent to a higher wattage output, allowing you to save a lot on the electricity costs. In addition to that, the lifespan of LED grow lights is much longer (average of about 100,000 hours) when you compare it with older types of grow lights.
LED grow lights also provide you with full-spectrum lighting solutions in just one panel – and you don’t have to change your lighting setup once your plants mature into the flowering stage. Another huge benefit of using LED grow lights is that they do not heat up as much as some of the previous lighting options such as HPS lamps and Metal Halides. They are also free of any toxic elements and can be easily disposed after their lifespan has expired. Hence, full spectrum LED grow lights offer a large number of benefits and are the preferred form of lighting for growing weed indoors.
Either light works great to grow marijuana or any other type of plant, so you can’t go wrong whichever way you decide to go. But for most people, one type will be more advantageous than the other. Your decision will come down to a few key factors.