The Takeaway:
1. Our Pick: Black Dog LED Grow Light
2. Runner-Up: LumiGrow Pro 325 Grow Light
3. Also Great: LumiGrow LumiBar LED Strip Light
These days, “green” is in. It seems like everyone wants in on the act, and the first, best step people can take in that regard is growing, at least, some of their food. One of the hottest food items to grow yourself is tomatoes.
Whether you’re a hobbyist or a serious gardener, if you’ve got an indoor growing space to grow your food year-round, you’ll be in the market for a growing light at some point. We’ve evaluated several and have laid out the best grow lights for tomatoes below.
Our Pick: Black Dog BD240 LED Grow Light
Unfortunately, the BD240 model has been DISCONTINUED and REPLACED by the PhytoMAX-2 200.
PhytoMAX-2 200 is an LED grow light designed for indoor plant growth. It offers full-spectrum lighting, efficient energy use, and customizable settings, ideal for various stages of plant development.
There are so many things to like about the Black Dog BD240 that it’s hard to know where to begin. The fact that the lighting system uses heavy-duty, commercial-grade components is a big plus because that means longevity for you. Combine that with Black Dog’s lifetime warranty, and you know you’ve got a keeper, but there are a great many other nice features about the system too.
For starters, there’s the square housing. This matters because it provides a square footprint that distributes your light over a larger, more uniform area than other lighting systems. Add to that the Black Dog system provides true, full-spectrum lighting ranging from UVA to IR, and you’ve got a lighting system that will see you growing tomatoes or pretty much anything else like a Master Gardener. A genuinely superb lighting system all the way around.
Of course, there were other worthy contenders, and we’ll look at some of those next. At this point, it’s important to mention that before the advent of LED lights, all the best grow lights for tomatoes and everything else were fluorescent systems. LEDs have proved to be superior, however, in that they provide the same high-quality, full-spectrum lighting the plants need, but they do so in an even more energy-efficient manner than the old fluorescent systems. That’s why all our top contenders are LED-based.
Runner-Up: LumiGrow Pro 325 Grow Light
LumiGrow Pro 325 is a versatile and reliable lighting solution for serious indoor growers looking to maximize crop quality and quantity.
The LumiGrow Pro 325 Grow System is an excellent choice. The system is as enormously efficient as you’d expect from an LED-based system, providing the power of a 1000w HID HPS bulb but at a fraction of the cost. As their company website explains, the advent of LED grow lights means you no longer have to make the sometimes agonizing choice between crop yields and controlling costs. Now, you can have the best of both worlds, and the LumiGrow Pro delivers in style and at a reasonable price.
The system allows you to control the light spectrum via knobs built onto the top of the unit. As long as you hang the system low enough to reach them, that should be no problem, but if you happen to be a shorter person, it could present some logistics challenges. This, combined with the fact that the LumiGrow “only” offers a five-year warranty, were the twin reasons it did not make our top pick. We put “only” in quotes because a five-year warranty is impressive, undoubtedly higher than the industry standard. Still, the Black Dog offers a lifetime one, so it beats LumiGrow handily in that department.
Also Great: LumiBar 325 LED Strip Light
Its low-profile design and flexibility make the LumiBar a popular choice among growers looking for reliable and practical lighting solutions for their crops.
The LumiBar LED Strip Light by Lumigrow is a great little lighting system ideal if your growing space is long and narrow, say, confined to a single seedling table or shelf. If that describes your situation, this is probably the one you want, although this won’t be true for all customers. It comes with light spectrum controls in the form of a trio of knobs on the top of the unit.
If the unit is placed low enough that you can reach them easily, this won’t be an issue, but if you aren’t very tall or if you hang the unit high (which may be needed if you’re growing tomatoes), then it could present a bit of a problem. The unit comes with a five-year warranty, which is better than the industry average of three years, but it could not beat the Black Dog system with this, which offers a lifetime warranty. That, combined with the fact that it’s ideally suited for long, narrow growing spaces, were the twin reasons it didn’t get our top billing.
Honorable Mention: TotalGrow Solid State Volumetric
Offering the simplest installation of any unit we reviewed, the TotalGrow Solid State Volumetric Lighting LED is a great pick for growers who aren’t terribly technically inclined and don’t want to have to fuss with controls or any of the technical details. If you’re looking for a plug-and-play or “set and forget” system, this is probably the right pick.
It comes with a new 5-year warranty*, but the fact that it’s less feature-rich than the Black Dog, and offers less warranty, meant that we could not give it top billing. Even so, this will be an awesome lighting system for the right customer.
(*) 07-13-2016 Update: TotalGrow Lights recently contacted us to let us know about an increase in their warranty to 5 years.
Which are The Best Grow Lights for Tomatoes?
In trying to determine the best grow lights for tomatoes, we started with LED systems, which are, pound for pound, more efficient than fluorescent-style systems. From there, we looked at features, the presence of full-spectrum lighting, warranty, and other features that add value to the setup. While all the systems reviewed above are excellent, we think the clear winner is the Black Dog BD240 Grow light.
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