King Plus Double Chip LED Grow Light Review

Growing plants indoors can be an expensive, difficult, and time consuming venture if you’re not equipped with the right grow lights. It’s no secret that LED grow lights costs much more than your standard high pressure sodium, metal halide, or fluorescent lamp – it’s one of the main reasons holding growers back from trying LED in the first place. However, this generalization is becoming more of a fallacy since there are now several manufacturers that are releasing LED panels that cost much less than you expect, but still perform in an efficient and effective manner.

Take the King Plus Double Chip LED Grow Lights for example. Available in a wide range from 600 to 1600 watts, and priced starting as low as $140, there’s a lot of enticing aspects about them. We had the opportunity to try them out for ourselves to see if they lived up to their expectations. Over the course of the last 2 months, we’ve tested them for both seedlings, clones, vegging, and blooming. Needless to say, we were blown away by what they had to offer – insanely bright light and fantastic results with an entry-level price tag.

Double Chips

From first glance it may look like the King Plus LED Grow Lights are in the standard design – a white case with an even assortment of diodes placed in a grid pattern. But take a closer look and you’ll notice that these individual diodes aren’t quite the standard that you’ve seen before. In fact, they’re known as “Double Chips” and they’re literally twice as bright as your standard chip. Instead of a single 3 watt diode, there are TWO 5 watt diodes on a single chip. This is the first panel we’ve seen use this kind of technology and we must say – it’s quite nice at providing even, uniform, bright light for your plants.

Additionally, each diode is equipped with a “zener protector” that makes sure each LED is resistant to burning out. These protectors keep the entire lamp running, even if one small diode burns out. In the past, if one diode went out, the whole panel would die. Not in this case.

Cooling

Inside of each panel are multiple heatsinks with ball bearing fans that constantly run to keep things running in an ideal temperature range. Proper cooling is absolutely essential which is why there are several ventilation entries that promote substantial airflow as long as they’re operating.

Spectrum

Although you’ve probably seen the standard purple or pink light that most LEDs emit, you may not know the reason behind it. Instead of blasting a single color of light, there’s a complex spectrum that gives off all of the essential wavelengths of light in order to create an even mix of bright light. With the King Plus LED Grow Lights, a full spectrum was developed in order to assist in providing the proper color ratio that’s quite similar to natural sunlight that you’d find outdoors.

The blend of red, blue, yellow, and white lights come together to provide the proper spectrum for the garden. These colors are also paired with infrared and ultraviolet light in order to mimic the effects of the bright sun in the middle of a summer day. To get down to specifics, these panels emit a spectrum in the following wavelengths: 410nm, 430~440nm, 450~475nm, 620~630nm, 650~670nm, White, IR(730nm). However, do keep in mind that humans aren’t able to see infrared – so if you take a close look at the LEDs when the panel is turned on, you may not see every single diode lit up.

Hanging Height

Suspending the King Plus Double Chip LED Grow Light is quite easy to do. With the included free hanging hooks, you can connect each clip to the metal eyelets located on the top side of the panel. Adjusting them is easy since they ratchet into position and can be moved up or down with ease. However, figuring out the height that you need to suspend the panel over your plant’s canopy can take a bit of trial and error.

Although King Plus recommends about 1.2 to 2 meters of distance between the light and your garden, we found that it’s best to adjust the height based on the current growth cycle. When plants are seedlings or clones, they don’t need a whole lot of light. When they begin to veg, they’ll need a bit more, but still not a ton. However, the blooming phase is the most demanding and it’s during this time that you should hang them a bit closer. In fact, we placed ours as close as 20 inches from the tops of the plants with no ill effects. The plants seemed to love it!

Coverage

The amount of effective growing coverage varies with each size panel. As you add more wattage with more diodes, the coverage will increase.

• 600w Panel – 3 feet x 3.4 feet
• 800w Panel – 3.2 feet x 3.6 feet
• 1000w Panel – 3.4 feet x 3.8 feet
• 1200w Panel – 4 feet x 4 feet
• 1600w Panel – 5 feet x 5 feet

Actual Wattage

We see this a lot when it comes to LED grow lights. Many manufacturers are using an advertised wattage, but they don’t actually draw the same amount of power when plugged into the wall. Instead, it’s just a total sum of the maximum wattage if all of the diodes were driven to their full maximum level. What we mean by this is that the 1600 watt panel isn’t actually 1600 watts, it’s just an easy way to advertise it. To make things easier, this is the run-down of the actual wattage of each panel.

• 600w Panel – 120 watts
• 800w Panel – 160 watts
• 1000w Panel – 210 watts
• 1200w Panel – 250 watts
• 1600w Panel – 360 watts

Final Words

With an average rated lifespan of 50,000 hours, the King Plus Double Chip LED Grow Lights are designed to provide continuous years of successful indoor growing for both the beginner and experienced horticulturist. Packed with 10 watt double chip LEDs that are each equipped with their own zener protectors, it seems a lot of hard work went into the design and development of these grow light panels.

We feel that the efficiency is top notch, the quality is superb, and the price to invest in them is surprisingly low. King Plus even has their very own factories and professional grow laboratories to research, design, and develop some of the best budget-friendly LEDs on the market. Additionally, they protect every one of their products with an impressive three year warranty to guarantee peace of mind and long lasting efficiency for several grow cycles to come. We must say that their customer service is excellent as well – each time we’ve emailed them, they’ve sent us a detailed reply within 24 hours. Overall, we feel that these grow lights make an excellent investment for any indoor grower – small or large, hobby or professional.