And even among the good ones, there is a lot of variation. You want to make sure you find the right balance between cost, ease of use, reliability and performance.
Let’s get started with our comparison of COB and quantum board led grow lights
COB fixtures and quantum board fixtures look completely different, but they actually have quite a few similarities. Let’s cover those first, before moving on to the differences between the two.
Same Principle
The main similarity is that both essentially use the same principle. It is simply the scale that differs.
A COB is made up of many tiny LED diodes tightly packed onto a single chip to produce a single, powerful beam of light. A quantum board samsung 301b also has many LEDs on it, but those LEDs are more powerful and more spaced out. Essentially, a quantum board is simply a very large COB.
Same Spectrum
The other major similarity is the color spectrum. Both COBs and quantum boards canada use full-spectrum white LED diodes.
They are available in various different color temperatures, from warm 3000K light to cool 7000K light. The most common color temperatures are 3000K, 3500K, 5000K and 6000K.
The warmer white light (3000K to 4000K) contains more red wavelength light, making it better for flowering, while the cooler light (5000K to 7000K) contains more blue and is thus better for vegging.
While “blurple” lights dominated in the past, the industry is coming to realize that white light is actually better for plants. That realization came about thanks to the popularity of COBs and quantum boards.
But it is true that plants especially like red light (and blue as well), so many quantum and COB LED fixtures now have supplementary diodes that add a bit of red, and sometimes UV, IR or blue as well.

Light Spread
The first major difference is in the way the light fills the coverage area. A COB is a single point of powerful light, that then emanates outward from that point. This means it has further to travel to reach the outside of the coverage area than it does the middle.
A best quantum boards is large and has diodes spread out across the entire surface area. That means that the light travels more directly to the canopy across a larger area, not just dead center.
The result is a much more even light spread for quantum boards. COBs give you a ton of intensity in the middle of the coverage area, but it drops off more toward the outside than a quantum board light.
Canopy Penetration
This is the flip side of the previous difference. Because the COB is such a powerful beam of light, it naturally penetrates deeper below the canopy, at least in the middle of the coverage area. Toward the outside, that penetration power diminishes considerably. eco farm quantum board get great penetration, too, just not as good as a COB (in the middle anyway).