Closed terrariums rely immensely on light, which the CXhome LED Plant Lamp LM301B can hopefully provide. Light is the only thing that can penetrate an airtight closed terrarium, and it brings new energy into it every day. If you don't want to put your closed terrarium on a windowsill, but still use plants that need a lot of light, you'll have to resort to grow lights, or plant lights.
Plant lamps come in different price ranges, which largely differ in power consumption and brightness. The CXhome LED plant lamp LM301B belongs to the cheaper variants. In this review, we'll take a look at whether it can still keep up with the more expensive variants.
Read on here if you want to read more about lighting for closed terrariums.
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CXhome LED Plant Lamp LM301B - The Features
CXhome LED plant lamp LM301B is an Amazon's Choice product and consists of four or six individual lamps, each with 21 LEDs as illuminants. They emit average warm white light and have a power consumption of 40W. That's more than today's conventional lamps for the living room, but plant lamps have to be extraordinarily bright to have any effect at all. With 40 W for LED lighting, a good balance has been found between performance and electricity costs. The metallic parts of the lamp are made of aluminum. Thus they are quite light and weigh all together only 680 g. Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)
The lamp provides a continuous spectrum of light, so your plants get every wavelength. The blue and yellow wavelengths are particularly strong, but red and green are not weakly represented. Blue light gives plants extra energy to grow. Red light has been shown to help plants in the flowering phase. Yellow-orange light can help with the production of chlorophyll B. Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)
Different plant lamps have different light spectra, which are better or worse for one purpose or another. Approximately, however, they all look like this.
The product also has various functions that make operation more convenient. These include, for example, automatic on and off, which can activate at intervals of 3 hours, 6 hours and 12 hours.
In addition, the lamp can be divided into two sets of lamps via a so-called dual-channel control, which can be switched on and off independently of each other. Of course, the brightness of the lamps can also be changed. There are the levels 25%, 50%, 75% and of course 100% brightness. According to CXhome, the lamps have a service life of 50,000 hours.
In addition to the lamps, the package also includes a power plug and the wired remote control, as well as double-sided tape and cable ties for mounting. There are also installation instructions and a product manual for use.
Reviews on the CXhome LED Plant lamp LM301B
The CXhome LED plant lamp LM301B is an Amazon's Choice product, which is very positive. Overall, the product has a total rating of 4.4 out of 5 stars on Amazon, which is made up of a whopping 1625 reviews worldwide. 67% of the reviewers give the product 5 out of 5 stars. 21% give 4 stars. A total of only 11% give 3, 2 or 1 star.
Positive reviews
One user inspected the power consumption of the lamps and came to the conclusion that the lamps actually consume much less energy than indicated on the product. At the highest level (100% brightness), four rods are said to consume only a total of 19.5 W. At the lowest level of 25% brightness even only 3.1 W. That's something to be happy about when it comes to the electricity bill. After all, such plant lamps are switched on most of the time. We'll talk about the consumption in a moment on the negative side.
Another user states that the lines are very generously sized, so you don't have to worry about anything not fitting. She also says that there is hardly any heat under the lamps, and in this regard you do not have to worry that the plants will burn.
Several users also praise the double-sided adhesive tape and say that it holds really well.
Negative reviews
Most of the negative reviews refer to the lower power. Several users claim that the plant lamp is far too weak and only consumes 12 to 14 W instead of the 40 W specified on the product page. This may be true, but it has nothing to do with the illumination intensity.
Those who have read my about-me page know that I trained as an electronics technician, have a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering and am currently also studying for a master's degree. So I know a thing or two about lamps and their same.
Manufacturers must specify a maximum power rating when distributing products so that it can be calculated how many devices a power line can supply with power at the same time without being overloaded. The 40 W specified here refers to the maximum power consumption that can ever take place when using the entire scope of supply. So that would mean using all six lamps at the highest allowable operating temperature (CXhome specifies 50°C). This will probably never happen. A power consumption of 14 W is therefore quite plausible under normal circumstances.
If you really want to test the lamps, you have to measure the illuminance and not the power consumption. One user, who only gave one star, said she measured a PPFD value of 52 µmol/m²s under the lamp. What exactly this value means is not relevant. The manufacturer gives only 22 µmol/m²s at a distance of 60 cm. The light intensity is therefore high enough in any case, since the plants are unlikely to be more than 60 cm away from the lamps.
Now that we have that out of the way, other reviews still report defective cables or lamps themselves, although these are definitely isolated cases. The majority of buyers are extremely satisfied with the product.
Summary
The CXhome LED plant lamp LM301B is a so-called grow light for promoting plant growth. The product is convincing all along the line. It offers a full spectrum designed specifically for plants, consumes very little energy and is easy to install with the included double-sided adhesive tape, according to several user:ins. For a plant lighting of this price range, it is absolutely great.
You can buy the CXhome LED Plant Lamp LM301B here.
