Meizhi LED Grow Light Review

Meizhi LED grow lights look outdated.

I think it’s the blue color.

Despite that, what is inside is not outdated. In fact, Meizhi recently updated everything about their lights (except the housing, obviously), which was the impetus for this review.

The result is a series of lights that does everything well. They are better than 95% of the market in every category.

But they do not lead the market in any category.

If you need a reliable light that has no major drawbacks, the Meizhi series is it.

If you need a light that specifically shines in one area, then there are other options that may be better suited to your needs (I mention them in the summary at the end of this article).

There are 5 horticultural LED lights in the Meizhi series. Let’s take a look at all of them, so that you can see which one is best for your needs. Obviously, you’d want the less powerful lights for a smaller grow tent and the more powerful ones if you have more grow area to cover.

 

Meizhi LED Grow Lights Comparison Table

 

Meizhi 600W LED Grow Light Review

I’ve decided to focus the review on the 600 watt version, because it is the most popular. This allows me to give specific figures and compare them to the competition.

Everything said about the 600 watt version goes for the 300 watt, 450 watt, 900 watt and 1200 watt versions as well, apart from the specific numbers, like wattage, coverage area, output, etc. You can find those in the comparison table above.

 

Meizhi 600 Watt Grow Light Features

• Uses 277 watts — save about 40% on your electric bill over HID lights
• Equivalent to a 400 watt HID system — but costs less to buy AND to operate
• Great full spectrum light — works for all stages of growth (but I’d like a few more white diodes)
• 3 by 3 foot core coverage — equivalent to a comparable HID system
• Veg and bloom switches — tailor light to your plants’ current needs
• Epistar LED chips — better quality and more efficient
• Daisy chainable — connect multiple lights using their power cords and run them from one outlet
• Runs on AC85 to 265V — will work in any country
• Rated for 50,000 to 100,000 hours — 5 to 10 years with no bulb changes
• 3-year warranty and 30 day money back guarantee — risk-free purchase

 

Advantages

The Meizhi series of LED plant lights don’t really do anything better than other top lights, but they do everything well. They have a lot of pros and rank near the top in most categories, but do not rank at the top in any.

Let’s begin with the output.

All Meizhi lights give you a good output, although the company unfortunately does not provide a PAR footprint. All they give is a single PPFD value dead center below the light at various hanging heights. It is 1463 umol per second per square meter for the 600 watt light.

This does not tell us anything about the output in the corners of the coverage area. I can tell you that the plants there still get sufficient light, but barely. In fact, I would say that the ideal coverage of this light is closer to 2.5 by 2.5 feet than the 3 by 3 feet claimed by the manufacturer.

Meizhi also give us the lumen output of their light (16,503 lumen), though I am not sure why. Lumen measures visible light, not the light plants need (measured by PPFD), making it a useless number when considering a grow light.

It is even more useless in a light that has mostly red and blue out put and very little yellow and green, which are the most visible wavelengths and thus have the largest impact on lumen. Because of this, the lumen output of this light is actually not impressive at all.

And that brings us to the spectrum.

I consider the Meizhi color spectrum an advantage, because it works well for plants during any stage of growth. It is not ideal, but is better than most competing lights. It includes diodes in the following wavelengths: 450~475nm (blue), 620~630nm (red), 650~660nm (deeper red), and white.

The spectrum is made up mostly of red. The ratio of red to blue is good, but I wish it had more white diodes. To me, that drops this light behind the best.

White light contains all wavelengths, including red and blue. It is heavier on green and yellow, which many manufacturers will tell you plants don’t need, but this is not true.

Plants do want these colors, just not as much as red and blue. Not having enough yellow and green light will hurt growth and yields.

Luckily, the Meizhi lights do include green and yellow light, but in very small amounts. A few more white diodes would make all the difference. Check out the BestVA series for lights that have the ideal spectrum.

All Meizhi fixtures have dual switches for veg and bloom. This allows you to save some money when vegging or seeding. You can turn off the bloom lights and cut power usage in half.

When flowering, I recommend turning on all the lights, instead of just using the bloom lights. Plants want blue light during flowering, too. Using every single diode on the fixture will really boost yields and give you far better results than only using the bloom diodes.

Meizhi recently updated their lights to add 120° lenses. These focus the light downward toward plants, but less so than 90° lenses would (many lights use 90° lenses). Generally, 90° lenses focus the light too much. They lead to better penetration, but in return, you have to hang the light higher and even then, coverage suffers.

120° lenses give you a better balance of light intensity (and with it deeper penetration below the canopy) and coverage area. Thanks to the lenses, the Meizhi 600 gives you a 3 by 3 coverage area. That said, I would limit my grow space beneath one of these lights to 2.5 by 2.5, at least during flowering.

You would be fine using it for a 3 by 3 area, especially in a tent or other confined space with reflective walls that help bounce light back onto your plants, but the plants in the corners of the coverage area would suffer a bit. Limiting the area to 2.5 by 2,5 ensures all the plants benefit from large amounts of light.

A great feature that not all brands include is the ability to daisy chain several lights together and run them from a single outlet. It saves you having to use power strips or installing additional outlets, when running multiple lights.

Meizhi even make it possible to simply use the light’s power cord for daisy chaining. Instead of plugging it into an outlet, just plug it into the next light. Many manufacturers require to to additionally purchase a special daisy chaining cord. It is a nice touch that you don’t need to do so with this light.

All lights in this series have an expected lifespan of 50,000 to 100,000 hours. That is longer than most budget LED grow lights, but not quite a long as the industry leaders (their lights are rated for 100,000+). The main reason for that is the fans. They are almost always the first thing to go out on LED plant lights and the lights with the longest lifespans have found ways to avoid having to use fans.

Most lights, like the ones reviewed here, need fans to keep from overheating. The good thing is: you can easily get the fans replaced if they go out. And 50,000 is still over 5 years of regular use.

What is interesting is that the fans are tied to the veg/bloom switches. Each switch turns on one fan, so you are not using both fans, when one would suffice. This saves them from overuse and also saves on power costs.

All Meizhi LED grow lights reviewed here are backed by a 3-year warranty. You’ll likely never need it, since Meizhi has one of the lowest failure rates among Chinese manufacturers, but it is nice to know they back their lights. They also offer a 30 day money-back guarantee, which gives you some time try out your light risk-free.

 

Disadvantages

I’ve mentioned above that Meizhi lights do everything well, but are not the best at anything. What this also means is that they lack any major disadvantages. In fact, that may be their biggest advantage in the end: their lack of a real con.

For me the biggest disadvantage is one that all Chinese manufacturers have in common: blatant exaggeration.

They claim higher wattages and large coverage areas and they often only provide output numbers dead center, so that they seem higher. The last two make sense, but I have no idea how they have gotten people to think that a higher wattage is a good idea. But that is a topic for another article.

All that said, Meizhi actually does much less exaggeration than other Chinese brands. Take the 600 watt light for example. It is obviously not 600w, since it uses 277w and is equivalent to 400w of HID light. The number is definitely inflated (and for no good reason, other than uninformed consumers use wattage as an indication of a light’s strength).

But saying this light is a 600 watt light, while incorrect, is still better than other brands who all claim that their equivalent lights are 1000 watts (and in some cases even 2000 watts, which is insane). Still, I’m not thrilled that we’ve reached a point where I’m actually praising a company simply for lying less than the competition.

Another disadvantage is that these lights are not waterproof. That means you can not use them in a greenhouse. Of course, you can’t possibly expect a light to be waterproof at these budget prices.

And finally, I would like to see more white diodes in the light. I already mentioned this above, but having more green and yellow wavelength light in the spectrum would be of great benefit.

The idea that only blue and red are important is outdated and was always only something that was pushed by LED manufacturers, because it was cheaper and easier to make red and blue diodes than to make them in other colors.

 

Summary of Meizhi LED Grow Light Review

So, do I recommend the Mezihi 600 watt LED grow light and the rest of the lights in the series?

Yes, I do, but I also recommend checking out some other lights first.

Because the Meizhi spectrum lacks light in colors other than red and blue, I would recommend first checking out lights with a better spectrum to see if they are a good fit for you.

The Phlizon COB lights are my first choice. They have the perfect spectrum and also a higher output and better canopy penetration, but they cost more and there are only three lights in the series.

If you need a light in a size Phlizon does not offer, or if you do not want to spend quite so much, then I would look at the BestVA series. They also have a great spectrum and they are priced in line with the Meizhi lights.

If you prefer a spectrum that is mainly red and blue (it would be great to supplement existing white light, for example), then you really can’t go wrong with a Meizhi light. Their is a reason one of their lights made my lists of the best sub-$100 fixtures, the top 3oo watt fixtures, and the top overall fixtures.

They do everything well and they sell for some of the lowest prices on the market. They might not look as slick as some of the other options (not a fan of the blue color), but they outdo just about all of them.

For that reason I give all of the Meizhi LED grow lights reviewed here a Grow Light Info rating of 4.6 out of 5. That is a very high score, but a bit lower than the lights mentioned above.