Lifted LED City 14 Grow Light Review

Whether you’re a commercial grower or just someone who grows as a hobby on a small-scale, the need for effective, efficient lighting should never be overlooked. The general belief for many seasoned growers is that it doesn’t get much better than a 1000 watt HID for indoor growing.

Although they have been proven to provide excellent harvests, there are so many disadvantages to growing with outdated HID lighting. Increased heat, limited spectrum, bulb changes, possible air conditioning costs – just to name a few.

Because of these drawbacks, many commercial growers have been looking for alternatives, and they’re looking at the LED industry. The search to replace the once thought, “holy grail of indoor lighting” brings up a really popular question – which LED can truly replace a 1000 watt HID?

City 14 LED Grow Light by Lifted LED

By offering better yields, higher potency, improved efficiency, and using much less energy than a traditional high pressure sodium or metal halide grow light, Lifted LED has designed and created one of the most phenomenal LEDs on the market.

Known as the City 14 Grow Light, it’s a true 1000 watt HID replacement that’s been proven to provide more effective lighting with cooler temperatures, an incredible lifespan, an advanced spectrum, and full connectivity through your tablet or smartphone. We had an opportunity to check out one of these powerful fixtures to see what it truly offers.

Spectrum

The general consensus among horticulturists is that the blue range of the spectrum is crucial for vegging, and the red range is ideal for blooming. While this is true, this simple generalization doesn’t provide all of the wavelengths of the spectrum to really make plants flourish. By incorporating both reds, blues, infrared, ultraviolet, and multiple full spectrum COBs, Lifted LED provides one of the most ingenious arrangements that we’ve ever seen.

By taking one glance at the City 14 Grow Light, you’ll see fourteen different modules that each contain ten individual diodes positioned around their own COB. This arrangement provides a full, balanced spectrum with an incredible amount of intensity – 2700 PPFD (μmoles/m2/s) at 12″. Proven to consistently outperform a 1000w HID, each module emits 11 different bands of light with peaks in the red and blue range.

Wireless Connectivity

One of the coolest, most unique feature of the Lifted LED City 14 Grow Light is the ability to connect and control your fixture with your phone or tablet. Although it’s currently only available for Android users, the iOS app will be released soon.

The Lifted App is designed to give you a full insight into your grow room as it presents to you a user-friendly interface that acts as a dashboard for your LEDs. With it, you can refine your spectrum, set timers, check the temperatures, and the overall status of your fixtures. It even lets you fully calibrate your lights so that they’re operating properly at all times. With access like this, we’re quite impressed with the amount of flexibility it can offer for commercial, agricultural, or large-scale growing areas.

Energy Use

One of the most popular reasons why growers are looking into LED lighting is because of the rising costs of energy. Every year the price of utilities get more expensive and LEDs have been proven that they’re a solution.

With an arrangement of fourteen modules each driven at 40 watts, and taking into account the energy used for the power supplies and cooling fans, the City 14 draws about 650 actual watts.

It uses roughly half of the energy that a 1000 watt HID fixture uses when you factor in the energy that the ballast uses. Also, there’s a good chance that you’ll be needing to use a few more hundred watts just to power the ventilation system that’s critical for the heat that a tradition HID fixture creates. In some situations, there’s so much heat output that you have to use an air conditioner that can often pull even more energy than your whole garden combined!

Size and Coverage

Measuring 18″ x 18″ x 4.5″, the City 14 is neither small nor huge. It’s actually a pretty good size! Weighing in at 37 lbs, it feels solid, well-built, and a bit heavy – but that’s totally fine in our book. We love a grow light that doesn’t feel cheap or lacking of quality. Right out of the box you’ll realize that you definitely do indeed, “get what you pay for” when it comes to commercial-grade LED grow lights like this.

With enough coverage for 7′ x 7′ of vegetative growth, and 5′ x 5′ for flowering or fruiting plants, it provides a healthy distribution of light for a fairly large area. Obviously the intensity of the fixture will vary with how far away you have it from the canopy of your plants, it’s an appropriate choice for all stages of growth – even seedlings and clones.

Heat and Cooling

Equipped with massive heatsinks and an assortment of quiet fans that are constantly active, the City 14 seems to run cool at all times. Even for long 18 hour days or consecutive days in a row, you won’t experience any issues.

A video posted by LIFTED LED GROW LIGHTS (@liftedled) on Feb 3, 2016 at 11:58am PST

The heat output is very minimal, and it’s designed with a generous amount of ventilation holes throughout the case of the fixture. It’s setup in a way to always provide circulating air so the diodes and COBs can run as efficiently as possible.

Lifted LED – The Company

Although a newer company, Lifted LED has come onto the market with an impressive lineup of advanced technology that proves to be a real contender for one of the best new releases of 2016. Founded by two brothers who grew up working in their family’s architectural lighting business, they have 10 years of hands-on experience with LEDs under their belts and over 24 years of experience with design and manufacturing process of architectural lighting.

Best of all, each and every one of their fixtures comes included with a generous 3-year warranty period that covers your investment in case of defects in the materials and workmanship. Additionally, they include a 90-day money-back guarantee that allows you to return your LED for a full refund if you aren’t fully satisfied with it. Also, free shipping is standard, and every order is processed within a 48 hours and shipped directly from them.

Lifted LED is located in Albuquerque, New Mexico in the United States and can easily be reached by phone, email, Twitter, Instagram, or through their website. They’re friendly guys and are really helpful to talk to if you’re in the market to grow indoors with serious results.

Final Thoughts

Designed to fully outperform and outlast any 1000 watt HID, the Lifted LED City 14 Grow Light offers some of the most impressive features we’ve seen to date. With an incredible PPFD reading of 2700 (μmoles/m2/s) at 12″, it truly delivers and with absolutely phenomenal results.

We’re huge fans of the wireless connection capabilities since it opens up a whole new advantage to controlling and configuring your growing area – even when you’re not around. This is a feature that can be a true game-changer in the LED grow light industry for large-scale operations that require precise fine-tuning.

Simple plug and play operation with no need for ballasts, air conditioning, or advanced airflow systems (and zero bulb changes) means that the City 14 will literally pay for itself in time. Although it may be a costly investment for some, it’s a worthwhile investment for anyone who wants to see what a true 1000 watt HID replacement can really do.