you need more experience.
Cobs can be of varying qualities, from your no name cheap Cob/Multichips from ebay all the way to cree, bridgelux, citizen etc. You shouldn't make blanket statements like you have done, comparing a 15w bulb to a 100w Cob from bridgelux is night and day for performance for example. Yes those led bulbs will grow a plant, so will a cfl or a t5 or hps or led.
Yeah, but it's 100 lm/w with the diffuser on, which only has about 85% transmission. Besides that, I don't have a warehouse full so more concerned about price and convenience of obtaining than efficiency. They don't put out that many lumens under normal current anyway, it's in the 120s for cool white type.
I mean they grow plants as well, actually better because it's more spread out. To be ever clearer, I mean I have grown with both and found the bulbs better, no burning/bleaching. I didn't mean they are identical in all respects, just that they grow plants as well or better from my observations. Costing a lot less makes them more attractive to me.
What cobs did you grow with? How hard were you pushing them?
Those led bulbs without filter are at best 120lm/W yes. COBs are well over 150lm/W. At least at the currents we use them on.
How is the price higher than COBs? I mean including the driver of course. 1500 lumens for $8 where I get them, 14w bulb. A CXB3070, for example, can put out about 10,000 lm at best, 5000k. That's like seven 14w bulbs, $56. A COB costs about $30. Can you get a driver for it plus shipping for $26 or less? I was also referring to preassembled COB fixtures, not DIY, because the bulbs are preassembled so for a fair comparison the COBs would have to be too. Most I've seen cost about $2 per watt, the bulbs cost about 50 cents per watt. You do the math. Show me one commercial COB fixture for less than $1 per watt, and not on Alibaba either, which is all knockoff crap.
CXB something, the way they wired the fixture (high bay) was a combination series/parallel, running them on a 1050ma driver split to half that by the parallel part of the wiring in which two COBs are paired in parallel (12 COBs total), so pretty soft, they can take something like 1800 ma as normal. Came out to 216w output. You can find them just by googling CXB high bay, it's the only ones Cree sells. Come with a big aluminum parabolic reflector on them, which I took off because they weren't helping, just made it too intense in the middle. They worked okay with the reflectors off but still on the too bright side. I guess the problem was that the COBs are all together in an array about 6" across, so not spread out much.
I've bought more fake crap from amazon and ebay then anywhere else. Even an SD card I bought at a best buy turned out to be a knockoff Samsung one. Alibaba has grown to be one of the largest online market places in the world, Just because its coming from China doesn't mean its a knockoff, do yourself a favor and research before posting whatever comes to your mind. Yesterday your blaming Cree for selling knockoff drivers when you hadn't even verified it was a knockoff.
Better how?
Why, you want me to get high quickly? WTF do you care how I dry a small bit of weed quickly to smoke myself? That really irks you doesn't it. In that case look, I'm putting this weed in the mic right now. I'm programming it, now I'm hitting start. Heh heh heh, Johnny ain't gonna like that one bit.
Irks me? What???
That's right, it disturbs you that I am able to get high quicker than you from fresh weed, cuz I own a microwave and you don't.