It's easy to be confused by the idea of beam angle and how it can affect plant growth. Each individual diode (LED stands for Light-Emitting Diode) has a primary lens that can be designed to focus the light coming from the emitter anywhere from 30° to 180°. In LEDs, beam angle refers to this angle of the light cone the primary lens creates. It is important because it determines the intensity of light reaching the plant as well as the total effective footprint of the light.

HID (MH / HPS) bulbs have a 360° beam angle- half the light produced is aimed up and away from your plants, which is why a reflector is needed to try and reflect as much of this light as possible back down to your garden. LEDs in general are more efficient at growing plants than HIDs because LEDs only produce light aiming toward your plants. Properly-designed LED lights that use an optimal beam angle in the primary lens have no need for a reflector.

Each diode in every Black Dog LED grow light uses a 120° lens, which is the best angle to achieve a large footprint with intense light covering all of the growing area. Many other companies sacrifice the LED grow light footprint in order to achieve better canopy penetration by using a 60° or 90° lens, or even use secondary lenses to further focus the light into a narrow cone to make their light look better on paper; this is often the only option with weaker LEDs. Black Dog LED's PhytoMAX and Universal Series lights use only the most powerful 5-watt chips, so we can use a more oblique angle to create a generous, evenly-covered footprint while still maintaining superior canopy penetration.

Watt-for-watt, our lights have the largest, brightest, most evenly-covered footprint of any LED grow light on the market so you can grow healthier, high-quality plants everywhere in the footprint. We maximize your yield rather than just the reading from your PAR meter directly under the light!