LED Grow Lights: When To Choose Telos LEDs Over Bar LEDs

There’s a lot of hype around bar LEDs. They’re an amazing step forward in LED grow lighting, but not everyone has the space for such large LED fixtures. There are other excellent options that easily hold their own against bar LED grow lights. Our favourite bar LED alternative is the Telos LED grow light range. There’s just a lot to love about the system. Here's when they might be better suited to your setup.

The obvious reason for choosing a Telos is space. Telos LED lights are small enough to sit right at the top of your tent and still have space for an extraction system and supplemental lights.

Bar LED grow lights, on the other hand, take up the entire footprint of your tent. So you either have to position your extraction system above your light (only really suitable in a 2.2m tall tent) or outside your tent.

One of the things that people love about bar LED grow lights is that all plants are under a direct source of light. Even at lower hanging heights, all plants get a similar level of light.

However, the caveat is that you’re restricted with coverage area. Because all light is beamed, down, rather than out, you don’t have much wriggle room in awkwardly shaped or sized rooms.

The same isn’t true for a Telos LED grow light. Their specially designed optics create an even distribution of light on par with that of bar LED grow lights – all from a compact unit. This means they're easier to install in awkwardly sized and shaped rooms – and – in much tighter spaces.

A lot of people like to use CDM lights and LED lights alongside one another – especially in winter when you want to add heat to your grow room. With bar LED lights, you’d have to hang it below your CDM, which isn’t ideal. With a Telos LED, there’s enough space to mount your LED and CDM light at the same height.

Telos LED grow lights really come into their own in multi-light rooms. They’re designed with crossover light in mind in a way that creates a quality, high uniform spread of usable light.

This means that when using multiple Telos LEDs, you’ll get a more uniform spread than you would from comparable bar LEDs.

Better light uniformity means you don’t get hot spots or patches of greater light intensity. All plants grow at an even rate, and you don’t get taller plants blocking light to nearby plants. Overall, all plants can photosynthesise at their most efficient and effective rate.

In a Dialux simulation, you can see the difference in uniformity.

9 x 10 Telos Pro 285W in a 3m x 3m growing area (2565W in total)

• Telos LED uniformity: 90%

You can see that there isn’t much deviation between the amount of light that reaches the centre and the amount that reaches edges – even in corners.

Typical 660W bar LED light in a 3m x 3m area (2640W total)

• Bar LED light uniformity: 68%

There is a lot more deviation in light intensity.

Telos prides itself on having long-lasting and robust LEDs. They boast over 80,000 hours of use for the Osram diodes that make up each LED grow light. Plus, all Telos LED fixtures are tested after being hand made in the UK, which has led to their zero LED fault rate.

Telos LED grow lights are upgradable, thanks to the modular design of the units. You won’t need to rebuy a brand new fixture when Telos releases new LED modules. Instead, you can just buy the upgrade pack and install the new modules yourself, saving hundreds of pounds in the process. Plus, all Telos units are IP66 waterproof, so you don’t have to worry about those pesky humidity levels when growing using the system.

Currently, you can dim your Telos LED grow lights with a bit of DIY tweaking. If you want to do this, please let us explain how - call 0333 003 22 96 or speak to a member of staff in store. Generally speaking, we'd always recommend running your Telos at full power.

Wireless dimming will be introduced in spring 2021 - all existing models will be compatible with this feature.

So, there you have it, every kind of light has pros and cons. Bar LED grow lights are fantastic options, but Telos LED grow lights are also brilliant. They’re great for people with limited space, and even people with a multi-light set up who want the perfect light spread.