Hydro Grow LED Review with Cammie Mckenzie

Hello Readers. Today we’ll be talking with Cammie Mckenzie, the president of Hydro Grow LED. First off, I have to tell you a quick story about Cammie that will help you know a bit more about the customer service you can expect from Hydro Grow LED.

Normally when I email asking for an interview, for whatever reason, it takes the company at least a couple of days to get back to me to let me know yes or no. Well, I emailed Hydro Grow LED one morning at 10:41am asking for a potential interview opportunity (keep in mind that this was my first contact with the company). At 11:21am (a mere 40 minutes later) I had received an email from an owner of the company (Cammie) telling me I could call them right now and do the interview if I was ready. Unfortunately I wasn’t ready, but hopefully this gives you a good feel for the type of service you can expect from Hydro Grow LED. The response time is absurdly fast.

Questions

Well, with that introduction in mind let’s get to the questions:

Nate: Cammie, thanks a ton for taking some of your valuable time to share more information about your lights and your company. I certainly appreciate it and I know that many of my readers do as well.

Nate: What advice can you give to those who are just getting their feet wet with LED growing technology? A lot of people want to try out LEDs but they feel overwhelmed by the amount of information out there (some of it is bad).

Cammie: The biggest piece of advice I can offer is “Do your research”.  Many companies prey on customers who know little to nothing about photosynthesis or LED Grow Lights, and often mislead these customers into believing they have the best product.  Those who educate themselves on photosynthesis, the emerson enhancement effect, and quantum efficiency will be able to weed through the gimmick salesman to find the products that are truly made for their gardens.  Also, take nothing at face value.  If a company claims their 300W can match a 1000W HPS, ask for the tests or data that proves their claim.  If they can provide no such data or proof, it’s easy to determine their product ratings have no real basis.  So don’t just “trust them” or “take their word for it” when they are unable to offer you proof of their claims.  A legitimate company should have documentation of such things.

Nate: Currently, what’s your most popular light?

Cammie: Our 336X-PRO is our most popular light.  It seems the bigger and badder we make them, the more our customers love our products.  The second best seller is the 336X followed by the 189X-PRO and 189X.

Nate: Which of your lights would you recommend to those just starting out with LED grow lights? From what I gather you have three main series or generations of lights. Which group of growers (or plants) are you targeting with the Penetrator series? The Penetrator Pro series? The Penetrator X-Pro series?

Cammie: The Penetrator and Penetrator PRO lights feature core technology developed by Hydro Grow that has dominated the LED Grow Light industry for the past 2 years.  These lights are designed for plants of any type as with all of our products, but were designed firstly for Cannabis.  The power from our 60 degree lens allowed these lights to penetrate deeper into plant tissues and maintain intensity further down the plants, which is perfect for Cannabis.  Our new Extreme LED Grow Lights (X or X-PRO) feature new Extreme Lens Technology that we developed to enhance performance and coverage.  These lights are the best of the best, but are certainly not for those on a tight budget.  Our Extreme LED Grow Lights are 100% our creation, whereas our Pen and Pen PRO lights were developed using pre-existing LED casings, PCB’s, etc… designed by the Chinese.  You won’t find a higher quality or higher output light than any of our Extreme models.

These lights are built to last.

Nate: If you had to name two or three specific criteria for potential customers to look at when buying an LED grow light, what would they be and why?

Cammie: Spectrum is #1, and this determines both how a plant will grow, as well as yield and growth time.  An improperly tuned spectrum will reduce growth rate, reduce yield, and even cause morphological changes within your plants.  We fully educate our customers on our spectrum and the changes we have made over time to achieve desired effects.  Knowing about photosynthesis and the other sciences mentioned above will help you determine which spectral outputs you should be looking for in a LED Grow Light, and which are wasted.

#2 is Warranty, because there are a lot of parts that go into LED Grow Lights and anything electrical is going to fail eventually.  Watch out for companies offering only a 1 year warranty on their products, as these companies pay no attention to quality or temperature and instead sell you a light that is designed to fail within 2 years.  LED Grow Lights are expensive, so make sure whoever you buy them from gives you support on the light for at least 2-3 years.

#3 is Results. If a company can’t show you proof of their claims, or that their lights are “the best” as they claim, then move on.  It’s 2011 and LED Grow Lights have been out since around 2007.  If a company can’t show you results this day in age, they probably haven’t even tested the lights themselves on plants.  They’re just in this industry to make a quick buck off the uneducated consumer.

Nate: Some of your competitors produce one light for the germination/vegetation stage and another light for the flowering stage. Some produce one light that has certain lights for vegetation and certain lights for flowering that you can turn on and off. Do you do anything like this? Do you think it’s necessary? I guess what I’m really trying to ask is can your lights effectively grow a great plant from start to finish or are they better at certain stages of the plant’s lifecycle?

Cammie: The problem with limiting spectral outputs in any stage of growth, is that you slow the rate of photosynthesis and bring about morphological changes within the plant.  Humans have been limited to HID and CFL technology for years, and due to limitations with these technologies have been given the choice of a blue-centric or red-centric spectrum.  One stunts a plant causing it to grow shorter and bushier, while the other causes a lot of stretching.  Plants have evolved to use both red and blue wavelengths however, in all stages of growth.  Evidence of this can be seen by looking out your window and starting at the sun, which delivers the same spectrum to plants year-round.  A properly tuned LED Grow Light will deliver a 100% bright spectrum, 100% of the time, and use red, green, and blue LED’s to fulfill all photosynthetic and quantum requirements.  Otherwise you’re limiting how fast your plants can growth and what processes during photosynthesis they can undertake by limiting the spectral input to the plants.

Nate: I’m always curious about the heat dissipation factors of these LED lights. My understanding is that an LED grow light will last much longer if a high-quality heat sink is in place. What’s your current heat sink setup?

Cammie graciously sent the following picture:

My first impression is, “That’s a lot of fins!” Fins are a good thing and I talk more about heat sinks in general at this post called Finding a Good LED Grow Light.

Nate: Second to last question. If you had to name one or two things that really separate Hydro Grow LED lights from your competitors, what would they be?

Cammie: Hydro Grow is in the only company in the industry who develops our own products.  From our heatsink design down to our new lens, or our spectrum, it was all developed in-house by our engineers and scientists.  We are a technologically and scientifically backed company, which is evident when viewing our site.  We don’t leave things to chance, we don’t make you take our word for it, and we prove beyond a doubt that we have the best LED Grow Lights in the world.  We are also growers, so every change we make to our design gets thoroughly tested before its release.

The main thing that separates us from everyone else is our knowledge of LED’s and plants.  You can ask me any question and I will have the answer for you in regards to plants or LED Grow Lights.  When calling our competitors you get a lot of BS and excuses, but with Hydro Grow you get real, tangible answers.

Nate: Anything else you would like to share with our readers about your LED grow lights or company?

Cammie: We’re now offering a 100% money-back guarantee on all of our new Extreme LED Grow Lights, as we have the utmost confidence you’ll want more of them after trying them for yourselves.  We’ll also have full PAR data published to our site within a matter of weeks, that no other company in the world has.  We lead the world in both development and data for LED Grow Lights.

Note to Readers: Normally I have more questions about spectral wave-lengths, actual wattage draw, beam angle, trial period, and warranties but Hydro Grow LED has all of this information already posted conveniently on their website. Pretty impressive stuff.

Conclusion

Thanks a ton for working with me on this interview Cammie. Cammie has done a lot to push the LED grow light evolution faster than it would otherwise be going. On behalf of me and all my readers we thank her for taking time to talk with us today.